{"id":4442,"date":"2014-01-10T16:51:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-10T16:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blogs\/what-is-a-global-city-2\/"},"modified":"2017-07-25T10:22:02","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T14:22:02","slug":"what-is-a-global-city-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/what-is-a-global-city-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a “global city”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo by Erika Matthias.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last month, just a few minutes into a conversation with Gary Lawrence, AECOM\u2019s chief sustainability officer, we ran up against a barrier that is all too common an obstacle for those of us trying to communicate ideas and opinions about the notion of sustainability. We were both talking about global cities as though the other understood perfectly well what was meant.<\/p>\n

There are terms that we use in our daily life that we all think we understand. Just as the word \u201ctable\u201d conjures an image of a board with four legs similarly in everyone\u2019s mind, we assume that the term \u201cmass transit\u201d or \u201curban growth boundary,\u201d or\u00a0\u2014 and this is the really tricky one \u2014\u00a0\u201csustainability\u201d are likewise universally understood. It is a rare but highly productive discussion that begins by unpacking the meaning of these treacherous terms of art.<\/p>\n

On this occasion we stopped and asked, \u201cWhat is a global city?\u201d<\/p>\n

Numerous studies have defined such places on a variety of scales \u2014 population, economic transactions, points of intersection in a globalizing society, centers that influence global culture, and many other characteristics.\u00a0 But a global city is not simply a very large city with an aggregation of attributes somewhere in the world. A global city transcends its characteristics \u2014 its physical and financial artifacts \u2014 to become a key node in the network of global humanity.<\/span><\/p>\n

For a city to truly be global, there must be psychological and emotional attachments that cause individuals to be concerned for the city\u2019s success even if they are not residents.<\/p>\n

In this sense, every city\u2019s boundaries are artificial. However we choose to characterize urban conurbations in the future, our perception of boundaries has to change if we are to engage our global cities in driving more sustainable outcomes for humanity.<\/p>\n

Read Gary’s Op Ed on the subject in Environmental Leader here<\/a>.\u00a0Contact him at gary.j.lawrence@aecom.com<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Jill<\/a><\/p>\n

Jill Jago is an independent communications strategist.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo by Erika Matthias. Last month, just a few minutes into a conversation with Gary Lawrence, AECOM\u2019s chief sustainability officer, we ran up against a barrier that is all too common an obstacle for those of us trying to communicate ideas and opinions about the notion of sustainability. We were both talking about global cities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":4443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[197,256],"tags":[191,312],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-resilience","category-urban-design","tag-connected-cities","tag-global-city"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4442"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aecom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}