287.4
The Ontology Of The Global City-Regions
The global world is made of hundreds of city-regions interlinked and networked. Yet the ontology of the global city-region is still to be defined.
It includes a different substance than the XX° century metropolis, or the generic and endless city of today. It is a web of contracts much wider and global than in the National epoch. In the past the contract was Principal-Agent: the Principal being the State, the Agent being the City. Whose main role was to provide streets and social housing, schools and welfare. Today the agglomerating substance of global city-region is relational contracting among actors which are global in many cases: enterprises, services, networks. Their places have a variable geometry and geography, functionally defined and no longer territorially bounded.
Relational contracting is a partnership contract where asymmetries arise. The main asymmetry is about information access, which is selective among and within cities in the digital era. A second asymmetry is about mobility which is still more selective: those who can move (financial markets, multinational enterprises, big buyers, world experts), those who simply cannot (sub-contractors, client enterprises, contingent labour). Within global city-region governance mechanisms should include new constitutional orderings by bridging social capital and linking divided actors and fields.