LONDON, A GLOBAL CITY LONDON, A GLOBAL CITY
Method 2: Commenting on 2 documents
Stage 1: introduction - Presenting the documents
Similarities: These documents both deal with the characteristics of London, a global city (def) in a context of accelerated globalization (def). They both focus on London inner city so are on a local scale.
Differences: Source 1 is a typographic map of London from Time Out London student guide whereas the 2nd doc is a testimony by a Londoner about Stratford Olympic urban regeneration posted on 28 Jan 2016 on a Guardian blog.
Announce structure: In a first part, I will show that London is a attractive city thanks to the map but in a second part I’ll focus on the drawbacks of regeneration with the text.
Stage 2: Analysing the documents
| DESCRIBE THE DOCS - What you see Structured and detailed description |
INTERPRET THE DOCS - What you know Add & structure definitions of key notions |
| 1. London, an attractive and powerful global city (map) | |
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- Environment: parks such as St James |
- Attracts tourists (green & historical city), business people (global CDBs), highly skilled professionals (high-tech clusters) & students (colleges): massive flows of people (see notions) (open borders for them) Because powerful multipolar command functions (see notions) + well connected (6 railway stations) to national & international (Eurostar) networks = a transport hub with fast multimodal transport infrastructures (see notions) => Transition with blog: Apparently successful rebranding: re-imaging (map) & regeneration (Docklands, Olympics) (defs in notions 1E) |
| 2. The limits of regeneration (blog) | |
| P1 The question: the project, the plan versus its impact, the facts, real life - The Olympics regeneration was a big project but what is its actual impact on people living, working there ? P2 The answer: not as perfect as it was supposed to be - Trendy area, supposed to be fantastic but for high-income newcomers because higher housing prices & cost of living - Social pbs unsolved by regeneration & deliberately hidden |
- The planned regeneration for the 2012 Olympics -like the Docklands one in the 1980s, was needed in deprived neighbourhoods and supposed to be sustainable (see defs in Rebranding 1E) BUT conflicting goals of urban regeneration: less social inequalities vs more economic assets (see notions) so usually unsustainable (def) => A more divided, polarised and not inclusive city as gentrification and super-gentrification (defs) of the inner city => higher standard of living & quality of life BUT low-income groups driven out to now deprived suburbs (suburbanisation) => new segregation |
Stage 3: Concluding
Assess docs (reliable/biased justified): Both docs are reliable (full references) & biased with doc.1 too positive (re-imaging) and doc.2 too negative on regeneration so globally balanced (+ & -).
Sum-up ideas: To recap, both docs show how difficult it is for a global, powerful city to remain attractive and at the same time be inclusive. + Nuance/opening This challenge is even more important in a context of competition with other global cities like New York or Paris.