Influences and Impacts of a Global Economy on Metropolitan and Urban Growth

These changes are still in transition and we cannot predict with any accuracy how permanent these changes in business practices will play out in the future. While in years past, we had visions of the business norm being hundreds of employees working in a huge office high up in a high-rise office building, today’s norm is working near the washer and dryer to ease multitasking. Cinematography has for years used futuristic images of metropolitan cities to suggest an advanced and intelligent society.  Early visionary authors like Jules Verne, Fritz Lang, William Cameron Menzies and others gave us images of advanced society.  While many of these visions came to reality, it seems that recent changes in business needs and technologies have come to outlive those earlier visions.

For decades, the trend has been for buildings to go higher and higher.  Business districts were defined and separate from urban districts.  However, advancements in technologies now allow for members of the general population to interact on a global scale.  As a result of these technological advances, business transactions can now be managed anywhere there’s access to the Internet.  Our perceptions on the direction of metropolitan and urban sprawl has turned a corner in time and we suddenly find ourselves beyond our wildest dreams. Collectively, these futuristic images of tall, slender buildings that reach into the clouds created a sense of advanced civilization.  Now, because we have global access from just about anywhere, we have come to a turning point whereby vertical growth has outlived its usefulness.   While the technology being used to advance business may be state-of-the-art, the psychology of business is not always as quick in catching up.  There are still those who chose to remain computer illiterate.  However, the general trend of education and advances in technologies will eventually bring the general population to the table and has the potential of eliminating poverty worldwide.

There has also been a major impact on how global high-tech advances impact equality in race and gender.  Because the Internet provides a sense of anonymity and allows people from differing cultures to come together to do business, prejudice and class have no place and serve no purpose.  Business has become more pure in the sense that in business, the main priority is the bottom line, i.e.; how much money is to be made.  When business is blind, like the concepts of justice, the result is for an equitable and unbiased outcome.  Trade, whether international or local, benefits from prosperity.  Because the utility of trade outweighs risk of prejudice in the workplace, more opportunity is being based on ability – not race and gender.  While there have been many advances as a result of the way we are now starting to do business, there are some social ills that are still, associated with metropolitan and urban Sprawl.  Some realities stay with us; dense over population and urban sprawl still leads to high crime. It also feeds into people’s fears and anxieties of being under the constant threat of terrorism and natural disasters.  For years, attitudes regarding metropolitan lifestyles have changed according to economic winds. Now, an all-new factor has entered the equation and people can now chose to live wherever they like and still be an equal player in a global arena.  The television and movie industries have for years been on the cutting edges of technological changes and have also played a key role in bringing about a change in general attitudes about advances in technology. In the words of NBCUniversal CEO, Jeff Zucker, “This takes us into a whole new ballgame.”