Globalization and urban environmental transitions: Comparison of New York’s and Tokyo’s experiences

Abstract

This article argues that urban environmental transitions (McGranahan et al. 2001) are experienced differently by cities, such as New York and Tokyo. While New York has experienced shifts in its environmental burdens over long periods of time and in sequential order, Tokyo, which developed rapidly under the forces of globalization, has experienced shifts in environmental burdens over shorter periods and simultaneously. Starting from the viewpoint that associates long waves of development with the Western experience, the paper demonstrates that there were different transitions among sets of environmental conditions within the United States in general and New York City in particular. Then, the focus turns to the contemporary urban development of Japan and Tokyo. David Harvey’s (1989) notion of “time-space compression,” helps to explain the compressed and telescoped transitions.