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Social Polarisation in Global Cities: Theory and Evidence

Department of Geography, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK

This paper examines the debate over social polarisation in global cities. It focuses on the claims made by Sassen that the processes of economic change in such cities are leading to a growing polarisation of the occupational and income structures whereby there is absolute growth at both the top and bottom ends of the distribution and a decline in the middle of the distribution. It is argued that while these claims may hold true for New York and Los Angeles, possibly because of their very high levels of immigration and the creation of large numbers of low skilled and low paid jobs, her attempt to extend the thesis to all global cities is problematic. In other cities professionalisaton appears to be dominant. Evidence on occupational change in Randstad Holland is presented to support this argument.

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