What globalization is not

Not all megacities are global. Some megacity qualities, such as having a large dominating economy, are necessary for a city to reach global status, although not in themselves sufficient to achieve that end. Global cities may sometimes overlap with megacities but they are also sharply different from them. Megacities are defined within a local context and with reference to their size, scope and complexity, whereas global cities are defined by their international stature and their communications with the rest of the world. For example, by local standards, Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) is a megacity. Its population of 12 million covers an area of more than 3,000 square miles and it is packed with more than 20 communes. Its proper functioning depends upon a sizeable infrastructure of highways, electric grids, reservoirs and bridges. Yet Kinshasa should not be mistaken for a “global city”. Outside of Africa its connection to the rest of the world is tenuous and its economic integration into the global economy is almost non- existent.

Further, globalization is very different from “internationalization”. Globalization is not, as Thomas Friedman wrongly put it, an act of discovering faraway continents and it certainly did not show up because Columbus crossed the ocean in 1492 (Friedman 2005). If travel outside the known world constituted the presence of globalization, we could go back centuries and call the movement of Neanderthals across Europe an early form of “globalization”. Rather, globalization represents a qualitative change in the substance of international intercourse. That qualitative difference can be measured by the rapid, if not instantaneous absorption of values, information and symbols across boundaries. Things do not just move rapidly, they are assimilated, absorbed and reacted to across boundaries in a stroke of a computer key.

Understanding globalization

Fundamentally, globalization is a process that is driven by multidimensional forces. The key words are “process” and “multidimensional”. By “process” we refer to a condition that is not a permanent state of affairs but a continual flow of activity involving the cross- national integration of people, economies, business firms, social organizations and governments. We can think of this process as affecting cities with differential impacts. Some cities have been able to ride its waves exceedingly well, some have been crushed by it, while others have been barely affected.