Small cities at global crossroads

A global city is able to use its open spaces, heritage structures and ethnic enclaves to tumble wash different subcultures and create a new experience. This is a luxury smaller cities do not have.
Dwarka, Rohini, Virar, Hebbal and Tambaram have little in common, except for one thing. They are all outliers of that phenomenon: the global city. Yet each time the metro, bus or the local train pulls out of these remote places and makes its way to the city centre—be it New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore or Chennai—the aspirations of people inside the belly of those steel monsters become no different from people staying in more posh places of these cities.
Trains and roads of a global city serve as the neurons of a city but to create the urban experience they need to carry the ebb and flow of a city's culture. Actually, make that cultures. Global cities are able to take a million sub-cultures, each insufficient in itself, and create a whole that is more than the sum of its parts.
Rome perhaps, was the first global city. It had the pull that could draw in an Israeli charioteer or a Spanish slave seeking their fortunes. That is perhaps the one identifying mark of a global city—it is a magnet to fortune seekers from all over. Will a Vietnamese doctor come to work in Mumbai, or will an Iraqi shipping magnate want to set his base here?
Most likely, no. Then, no Indian city really qualifies for the label then. Not that the concept is new to India. Bombay and Calcutta were magnets a few centuries ago- certified by the variety of names borne by heritage buildings. David Sassoon, a Baghdadi Jew built up a business empire in India. Though after several decades of navel gazing, things had come to a pass where Indians seeking their fortune would end up in places like Dubai and Singapore. Now though, our metros are trying to make up for lost time.
Many smaller cities in India dream of becoming another Mumbai, Delhi or Bangalore. They may indeed be able to create better physical infrastructure – roads, rails – but can they create a global city culture?
"I don't think smaller cities in India can and will become large metros and certainly won't be global," says Mr Abhay Pethe, professor of urban studies, Mumbai University.
To understand where Pethe is coming from, it is essential to realize that all global cities resemble the last few overs of a one-day match. They carry an air of the unexpected about them. Walk into any of these cities and it is easy to believe that anything is possible. This comes from attracting a huge variety of people different cultures (world-view) and who possess differing skills: banking, musical or even culinary.
In a smaller city, the worlds of these different skills would have never come together. A global city is able to use its open spaces, heritage structures and ethnic enclaves to tumble wash different subcultures and create a new experience.
This is a luxury smaller cities do not have because even while they try and attract different ethnic groups, difficult as it is, they also need to appear culture neutral as well. Hyderabad is one city that has seen a huge rise in migrant population because of IT boom. “I think Hyderabad needs more time to absorb them while they need more time to Hyderabad,” says Dr Balaji Utla, CEO, Satyam Foundation, a Hyderabad-based NGO that works in urban areas.
"Becoming partly denationalized is one feature that makes a city truly global. This does not mean that national culture has to go. On the contrary: there may well be an accentuating of national culture, as it becomes inserted in global tourism. But the national coexists with a growing number of other cultures," says Saskia Sassen, professor of Sociology, Columbia university who also coined the term "Global City" in a book having the same title. Sassen's research shows that all global cities have been driven by a major increase in the population of high income professionals, male as well as female.
Such a profile of people does not wear its cultural affinity on its sleeve. This is a departure from the past. Take, for instance, Mumbai. "Its ethnic areas of Kalbadevi, Girgaum, Mohammed Ali Road, Parsee Colony allowed a psychological comfort to the new arrivals to the city," says Sharda Dwivedi, historian and the co-author of a book on Mumbai. The ancient city of Delhi too has such a layered existence.
"Delhi is a premier example of a city where the new energy or order, represented by the structured bazaars in the various malls and the old energy of circularity, represented by open bazaars of Sarojini Nagar Market and Old Delhi both flow together,” says Navina Jafa, secretary general of Foundation for Arts, an NGO. In the earlier times, the global city's two-tier structure of a culture-neutral surface and the sub-cutaneous world of multiple ethnicities was easy to develop and easy to navigate. You knew where to go to. No longer.
Global city of today is so uniform looking that it might be difficult to tell Singapore from Shanghai. “People living in the city seem to like to make their success visible in lifestyle, clothing, going to luxury restaurants, driving fancy cars—this is quite different from the old rich who preferred a more discrete public presence. Because of this predilection of make their status highly visible though consumption and lifestyle, they create a demand for new types of urban spaces. Architects and real estate developers seem to be happy to build the corresponding environments,” says Sassen. That's why the mall, the lounges and the glass buildings.
So what do global Indians think are the zeitgeist that makes for a global city? Liquor baron Vijay Mallya reportedly has 42 homes all around the world. He says his favorite city in the world is Paris- this for obvious reasons like Fashion, culture, wine, food, history, romance and ambience. But also, he says because of the attitude of the people- the C'est la vie (that's life) thing.
Commenting on what's the intangible that makes a city special, he says it is the energy levels of the people, the ability to go out eat/drink and party. This is very important. Mumbai, for instance, he says, has a lot of energy. Bangalore he says is losing its buzz. It has great people, but how can you have life in a place where everything shuts down at 11 pm? By that measure, can Ahmedabad or any other city in Gujarat ever be a great city in the global sense. Well, expats say the hardship allowance for their tenure in the state is more than what they make for a stint in Vladivostok!
Money can you buy you a bridge, a road a flyover, a train or even an airport for a plane, but the city's air of anticipation is a priceless commodity and it will be a while before smaller Indian cities manage to breathe it.

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