Why do so few cities have everything? - FT中文網
登錄×
電子郵件/用戶名
密碼
記住我
請輸入郵箱和密碼進行綁定操作:
請輸入手機號碼,透過簡訊驗證(目前僅支援中國大陸地區的手機號):
請您閱讀我們的用戶註冊協議私隱權保護政策,點擊下方按鈕即視爲您接受。
FT商學院

Why do so few cities have everything?

The number that can claim to hasn』t kept pace with a growing world population
00:00

A reader gets in touch with a quibble. I wrote last month about the profusion of Michelin stars among restaurants that serve the (once-patronised) food of India, China and Nigeria. I’d connected this to the story of our times: the seepage of power and prestige from the west and its allies. Their cuisines used to hog the Guide, as their economies used to hog world GDP.

The Michelin trend is real enough, said this informed reader. In London. Elsewhere, even in cities of general open-mindedness, the Euro-Japanese grip on the finest end of fine dining hasn’t budged.

I could counter-quibble, but not much. Instead, the email set off a broader thought. Why, in a growing world, can so few cities make a plausible claim to contain everything?

The global population has doubled over the past 50 years to 8bn. Our species now produces over $100 trillion of output per annum in current prices. And this stuff sloshes around with an ease that was unknown in the middle of the last century. Thanks to shipping containers, successive tariff-cutting rounds and the mutation of once-communist countries into prolific exporters, almost anything can get almost anywhere. So, albeit with more friction, can people. Migrants constitute a larger share of the world’s population than in 1960.

Given all this, there should be a multitude of what I am going to call “total cities”. A total city is one in which a person can find almost literally anything: any cuisine, at low, middle and extortionate price points; any art form, exhibited or performed to world-class standard; any language spoken, not in scattered households but in communities of appreciable size. If you are dating in a total city, you might go out with someone from each continent in one calendar year without pausing to notice the fact. I grant that Antarctica requires work.

As soon as cities outside of London and New York are named, arguments kick off. Paris? I’d include it. Others wouldn’t. Tokyo?

In an 8bn world, there should be lots of cities that readers agree are total. Instead, well, would it take more than one hand to count them off? Would you get past the index finger before starting a fight among ourselves? As soon as cities outside of London and New York are named, arguments kick off. Paris? I’d include it. Others wouldn’t. Tokyo? Not heterogeneous enough for some. Dubai? You can eat almost anything, meet almost anyone but not yet see a Vermeer on a whim. Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Sydney, Bangkok, Toronto: each incurs dissent. Is the number of cities who meet the criteria much higher than when the world held 4bn souls?

Now, a few disclaimers. I don’t suggest “total” means “better”. Houston, with its abundance and range of migrants, and no lack of art, has a stronger claim to total-ness than most European capitals. You can still favour Rome, though. Total needn’t even mean good. The average person doesn’t become, as I do, a claustrophobic diva when denied immediate access to everything (“I can’t believe there are just four Uzbek-Galician wine bars in this dump”) or the ambient sound of foreign voices. As various elections over the past decade have shown, wanting the world on one’s doorstep isn’t a universal taste.

It is strange, though, that the world can grow and grow while the agreed-upon world cities remain more or less consistent. True, some things, such as access to visual art, are naturally constrained. Canonical paintings are few, and one in the Met is one that can’t at the same time be in the São Paulo Museum of Art. But most things that make urban life great are, as economists put it, non-rivalrous.

We are left with a puzzle, then. In the end, a total city relies on three things: raw numbers of people (nearer 10mn than 5mn, I suggest), openness (a foreign-born share of perhaps a third), and enough wealth to sustain all those amenities. It follows that a world that has undergone steep population growth, mass migration and steady enrichment throughout my life should have thrown up, I don’t know, a dozen or so uncontested total cities by now. Instead, consensus falls apart after one or two. Given the present reversals of globalisation, it is conceivable that no one reading this will live to see another.

版權聲明:本文版權歸FT中文網所有,未經允許任何單位或個人不得轉載,複製或以任何其他方式使用本文全部或部分,侵權必究。

喝不起咖啡的巴西人把矛頭指向總統盧拉

食品通膨正在影響拉丁美洲最大國家左翼領導人的支援率。

大批民衆在葬禮上悼念黎巴嫩真主黨領袖納斯魯拉

真主黨爲五個月前在以色列空襲中喪生的領導人舉行葬禮,試圖展示這個遭受到重創的運動的力量。

BMW暫停在牛津生產電動迷你車的6億英鎊投資計劃

在本田、福特和捷豹路虎過去十年關閉英國工廠後,這家德國汽車製造商進行了審查。

一週展望:美聯準首選的通膨指標是否會下降?

美國將公佈個人消費支出指數;中國香港股市的上漲行情引發關注;歐洲股市的優異表現出人意料。

研究:數據中心相關汙染在美國造成54億美元公共衛生成本

最新研究結果凸顯AI基礎設施建設熱潮帶來的日益加劇的環境和健康影響。

全球畢業生面臨就業的艱苦鬥爭

大學畢業生本應從勞動力市場的緊縮中受益。爲什麼仍有這麼多人在找工作?
設置字型大小×
最小
較小
默認
較大
最大
分享×