Global Cities of Australia

Globalization has increased competition among large cities around the world. Despite the fact that advanced technology and globalization have made it possible to virtually run a global business located anywhere, central business districts are still important for multinational entities in order to perform operations that are necessary to run a business. These multinational businesses try to find the best facilities and most favorable location for them to run a business, which in turn creates rival among large cities, oftentimes called global cities. (Sassen, 2005)

There are two cities in Australia that can be defined as top global cities: Sydney and Melbourne. According to A.T. Kearney Global cities index (2014), Sydney’s position in global city ranking is 14 whereas Melbourne’s ranking is 25 (p. 4). The rival between these two cities has shaped urban and regional planning in both cities: in Sydney, the city central is devoted to finance business whereas in Melbourne, Southbank is full of large infrastructure for finance and service sectors. Even the nation’s capital, Canberra, was founded due to the rival of these two cities. But is Canberra a global city?

First look at the bush capital would indicate that Canberra is definitely not a global city. Indeed, it does not have an international airport and its infrastructure is far from Sydney’s or Melbourne’s infrastructure. In addition, Canberra is not competitive in sustainability measures and has relatively low proportion of workers in financial, marketing, and other service industries (Hu, 2013).

However, Canberra has high proportion of well-educated residents and work force in research and innovation fields. Indeed, knowledge is one of the most important assets of Canberra. According to measurements like access to Internet and people movement -%, Canberra has outperformed Sydney which is a strong signal that Canberra meets many features required from a global city. (Hu, 2013)

References

A.T. Kearney 2014, Global Cities, Present and Future: 2014 Global Cities Index and Emerging Cities Outlook, A.T. Kearney, viewed 4 November 2014, < http://www.atkearney.com/research-studies/global-cities-index/full-report>

Hu, R 2013, Centenary Canberra: A city on the world stage, Globalization and Cities Research Program, viewed 4 November 2014, <http://www.globalisationandcities.com/uploads/1/5/7/5/15751464/canberra_a_global_city_report.pdf>

Sassen, S 2005, ’The Global City: Introducing a Concept’, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 27-44.