So to speak of "global cities," let's use
the ranking which is practically the rule of law:
the MasterCard ranking, whose #1 in 2008,
---since we don't have the latest figures, this will work--
was London, a prime example of a global city, followed by
New York, Tokyo, and with Singapore in fourth.
I'll go down the list quickly, for as you'll see
it is made up of mostly American and European cities; we have to
go much, much lower in order to reach African cities,
or Asian cities. Yet these are the ones which interest us today:
Singapore, as we've mentioned,
Dubai in the U.A.E., and Kuala Lumpur,
which we find in here in 38th position,
Dubai in 37th in 2007,
moving down a bit in 2008, and Kuala Lumpur with a steep drop in 2008.
Abu Dhabi... the fourth city,
is not on this list of global cities.
Four cities, four countries: Malaysia, Singapore, the U.A.E,
Kuala Lumpur 1,500,000, Singapore 4,700,000,
Abu Dhabi, a very small city with fewer than 700,000
and a city such as Dubai which is on par with Kuala Lumpur, with 1,500,000.
The goal is not to calculate demographics based on this data
which are certainly of interest, but rather to quickly dive into
these other cases, and see how they
have treated urban space in a different way.