Nylonkong

Time has a focus on the three global cities of London, New York and Hong Kong suggesting that if you understand how these cities fit in with the global economy and culture, you understand our times. Time says:

Connected by long-haul jets and fiber-optic cable, and spaced neatly around the globe, the three cities have (by accident — nobody planned this) created a financial network that has been able to lubricate the global economy, and, critically, ease the entry into the modern world of China, the giant child of our century. Understand this network of cities — Nylonkong, we call it — and you understand our time.

…Even in the darkest times, the Nylonkong cities had the sort of hidden strengths that would be their salvation. All had a certain adaptability hardwired into their people. All were once centers of manufacturing, but all have been able to shift their economic focus to the service sector as factories moved from New York’s lower east side, or London’s Park Royal estate, or the thousands of tiny enterprises in Kowloon, to the American sunbelt or up the Pearl River delta from Hong Kong to Guangdong province…The network of international trading and personal contacts that shape New York, London and Hong Kong facilitate their key industry. If the 19th century was the age of empire and the 20th one of war, so the 21st century, to date, is an age of finance. It is the banks and investment houses, the mutual funds and money managers, taking in their clients’ cash and spreading it around the world, who have made today’s global economy what it is. In Victorian times, London alone could fulfill this function.

From being dismissed as long past their prime a quarter of a century ago, New York, London and Hong Kong have gone on to extraordinary heights. Tying themselves together, they have also knitted the world into a seamless fabric, financing and transporting the container vessels and the streams of data that have made today’s global economy a phenomenon that has increased the life chances of countless millions. Welcome to Nylonkong, and the world it made.

A Tale Of Three Cities - TIME [via Richard Florida]