Managing Global Risks in the Urban Age

Singapore and the Making of a Global City

Yee-Kuang Heng

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472447999
• eBook ISBN: 9781317101642
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The first full-length exposition of what it terms a global city-global risks nexus, this volume crosses disciplinary boundaries to draw upon research from Security Studies; Geography; Sociology; and Urban Studies. Innovative in its approach integrating theories about Global Cities with those positing a Global Risk Society, Yee-Kuang Heng positions this research in the midst of two concurrent global trends that will gain more significance in coming years. The world is experiencing the consequences of not only rapid globalisation, but also urbanization. In 2008, the UN declared that more than half the world's population was now urban. At the same time, highly connected global cities like New York, London, Tokyo and Singapore also face rapidly spreading global risks such as pandemics and financial crises. Unique in developing a typology of global risks that threaten a global city like Singapore, beyond its Asian focus, the book also draws out thematic and policy lessons pertinent to other global cities. 'Global cities' do not simply materialize. They are dependent on a range of stakeholders at various levels that produce and re-produce its command and control capabilities, in the face of global risks. Singapore's experiences managing global risks in the financial; aviation; and maritime domains are common concerns shared by many countries and cities that have, or aspire to develop, similar critical infrastructure.

Chapter 1
Urban Order, Global Risks

Global Cities in the Firing Line

This book is about what it terms the global city-global risk nexus. The analysis contained herein is motivated by a central security paradox of the global age: the hyper-connected global cities that facilitate globalisation’s key processes – such as air travel and financial transactions – are also paradoxically most vulnerable to security risks (WMD proliferation/pandemics/economic meltdown etc.) associated with globalisation. Yet, this bourgeoning global risk-global city nexus and the implications for Security Studies have so far neither been theorised nor assessed in depth. How can academics begin to systematically conceptualise and map this global city-global risk nexus? What are the implications for civil society, industry, and policymakers at various levels, from municipal to national and global? Such previously overlooked questions are addressed here, as the vulnerability of global cities to global risks now appears to be a constantly recurring pattern. The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003 transmitted through air travel demonstrated how global connectivity, previously seen as unequivocally positive for a global city like Toronto, also heralded ‘certain dangers and vulnerabilities’.¹ In 2009, the worldwide spread of H5N1 swine flu was an unwelcome reminder that for global cities such as Dubai and Tokyo – which responded by targeting its aviation sector for screening passengers and planes – air travel was seen to provide the initial ‘sparks’ or ‘seeding’ events for such undesirables to enter the city.² Fears of such rapidly-moving pandemics are here to stay. Singapore, perhaps more than any other global city, had unfortunately close-up experience of several different types of global risks in succession in the Noughties. Reflecting on the accumulative impact of the September 11th terror attacks, the SARS outbreak; and financial turbulence which adversely affected Singapore between 2001 and 2010, its Deputy Prime Minister summarised that these ‘crises reinforce the reality of Singapore’s vulnerability to dangers, some unexpected, that can originate at any time and place in today’s globalised world’.³ Singapore as a global city is particularly suited to study the impact of global risks because, as its Prime Minister mused, ‘we are an open, cosmopolitan city, highly connected to the world. In our globalised world, disorder or worse breakdown of political authority in one country threatens regional and international security’.⁴

Thriving on being the most connected in an inter-connected world, these global cities face up to a cruel paradox on a daily basis. They are also acutely exposed to what the June 2011 OECD report Future Global Shocks termed ‘events – such as pandemics, financial crises – that begin locally and rapidly spread their impacts through contamination or contagion to societies and economies … interconnectedness could make global shocks more likely’.⁵ According to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2011 ‘Global Risks Report’, the world faces ‘ever-greater concerns regarding global risks, the prospect of rapid contagion through increasingly connected systems and the threat of disastrous impacts’.⁶ The 2013 version of the ‘Global Risks Report’ noted that ‘global risks do not respect national borders’.⁷ Many of these concerns expressed have particularly resonance for global cities. Riding on the coat tails of globalisation might have made global cities as important as they are, but they can also become rather precarious places in the process.

A better understanding of this emerging global risk-global city nexus can help explain the changing nature of security challenges in Asia as the region becomes increasingly urbanised and globalised at the same time. Indeed, while Asia’s security context has usually been characterised by maritime territorial disputes and geopolitical moves by the major regional powers, a far wider spectrum of security risks also exists, particularly for its global cities where most of the population lives. In 2012, China declared that more than half of its citizens were now city-dwellers. By 2050, three-quarters of humans are expected to be urbanites and within Asia, more than 55 per cent of the population will be urban by 2030. In 2008, the UN announced that more than half of the world’s population was urban for the first time in human history.⁸ Consequently, it is often claimed that ‘the influence of cities – in politics, business, and culture – has never been greater’.⁹ The implications can be important because by studying how these cities relate to one another above and beyond the traditionally formal focus on nation-states, ‘we stand to learn a great deal more about the nature of the world-system itself’ and how it is evolving.¹⁰ In a ‘Special Issue on Global Cities’ in the journal Foreign Policy, it was predicted – defying conventional wisdom – that ‘the age of nations is over. The new urban age has begun. The 21^st century will not be dominated by America or China, Brazil or India, but by the city’.¹¹ As we mark the ‘world’s inaugural urban and metropolitan century’,¹² at the same time it must be noted that this phenomenon is relatively recent, whereby it is only in the past 30 years that urban places and urban living have become commonplace.¹³ Cities are now seen as humanity’s real building blocks: they generate over two-thirds of the total world economic output, have high population densities, wield political influence, and possess an innovative edge.¹⁴ While contemporary globalisation has reshaped the world immensely, making it far more interdependent than before, the globalisation phenomenon is most apparent in cities where mass congregations of people live and work. Some geographers see urbanisation as intrinsically related to the accelerating globalisation of recent decades;¹⁵ at the pinnacle are the shining ‘global cities’ that epitomise the globalisation phenomenon, whether in terms of business activities; human migration; cultural interaction or information exchange. The 2008 Global Cities Index compiled by A.T. Kearney claimed that ‘the world’s biggest, most interconnected cities help set global agendas, weather transnational dangers, and serve as the hubs of global integration. They are the engines of growth for their countries and the gateways to the resources of their regions’.¹⁶

This book makes the case that Security Studies would enhance its explanatory and analytical abilities by expanding its focus beyond nation-states towards increasingly significant Asian cities and urban centres that now have global relevance not just in terms of economics, finance, but increasingly, security too. Asia hosted five of the world’s top twelve global cities – Seoul, Beijing, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo – according to A.T. Kearney’s Global City Index in 2014. The analysis contained herewith centres on Singapore (ranked ninth in the aforementioned A.T. Kearney Index in 2014), rather than a more conventional focus on Western cities, either London or New York. As existing literature on global cities ‘tends to exhibit an Anglo-American bias’,¹⁷ there is a need to incorporate other global cities, recognising the richness in varieties by shifting the focus towards Pacific Asia.¹⁸ Furthermore, Singapore depends more than any other global city on connectivity for its survival, but this very fact has also brought with it exposure to global risks. Beyond a narrow interest in Singapore however, this Asian global city’s first-hand experiences of managing global risks reflect the changing nature of security in a global risk society. There are broader implications that arise through a comparative analysis of the shared experiences of other global cities such as London, New York, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, showing where active learning of ‘best practices’ is underway.

Scholars working in sociology, migration, architecture, the arts, political economy, cultural studies, developmental studies or geography and urban planning, have already generated a copious amount of publications on the concept of ‘global cities’. Urban planners, environmental scholars and geographers have even started pondering some security challenges global cities face and implications for their respective fields. Within Security Studies however, there does not appear to be similar research momentum developing; theoretical and conceptual tools remain under-developed for examining global cities as the primary unit of security analysis. Yet, the field has broadened recently through concepts such as ‘non-traditional’ and ‘human security’. Global risks such as WMD proliferation, financial crises, and terrorism are now firmly on the agenda, but how might scholars systematically evaluate the implications for global cities and their vulnerabilities? Developing an analytical framework derived from hitherto disparate fields of literature, this book seeks to establish and develop connections between sociologist Ulrich Beck’s World Risk Society which has inspired a range of literature on globalisation and risk, with writers such as Saskia Sassen and Manuel Castells on global cities, and Stephen Graham on urban dimensions of security. In 2012, Beck posited that ‘the concept of “global risk society” raises several questions: how does the anticipation of a multiplicity of manmade futures and its risky consequences affect and transform the perceptions, living conditions and institutions of modern societies?’¹⁹ For all his renown on globalisation and global risks, strangely enough there has not yet been a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Urban Order, Global Risks
• 2 Mobilities, Flows and Infrastructures: The Making of Global City Singapore
• 3 Financial Centres as Portals of Global Financial Risks
• 4 Connectivity Hurts: Premier Airports as Gateways of Global Risk
• 5 Major Port Hubs and the Circulation of Global Maritime Risks
• 6 Global Cities: Premium Sites and Paragons of Global Risk Management?
• Bibliography
• Index