Study guide: Globalization and Uneven Territories

📋 Course Outline

1. Globalization and uneven territories
2. Expanded Triad and emerging powers
3. Maritime facades and global trade
4. Borders, free trade and protectionism
5. Global metropolises and world cities
6. Southern countries in globalization
7. National territorial inequalities
8. Shrinking cities and deindustrialization
9. Urban fragmentation and local inequalities

📖 1. Globalization and uneven territories

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Territory: Territory is an appropriated space shaped and used by human actions, and it is not limited to states.
• Globalization: Globalization is a long-term process that links territories worldwide through economic, cultural, and human flows.
• Territorial inequalities: Territorial inequalities are gaps in how places benefit from globalization, producing uneven inclusion across space.
• Selective integration: Selective integration is when some territories participate in globalization while others are only partially connected to its flows.

📝 Essential Points

• Globalization integrates territories unevenly rather than uniformly across the world.
• A limited set of highly connected and powerful spaces functions as engines of global integration while others are marginalized.
• Marginal territories may experience exclusion, dependency, or selective integration that reinforces inequalities.

💡 Memory Hook

Unevenness is structural: few engines connect; many places ride the margins.

📖 2. Expanded Triad and emerging powers

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Triad: Triad is the core set of dominant territories that structure globalization through economic, political, and technological power.
• Expanded Triad: Expanded Triad is the broadened set of the most integrated territories in globalization that includes East Asia, North America, and Europe.
• Emerging country: An emerging country is a state integrating into world capitalism via several years of strong economic growth.
• BRICS+: BRICS+ is the group of well-known emerging countries whose rising weight challenges the older North-South divide.

📝 Essential Points

• The traditional Triad developed in the 1980s–1990s and is formed by the United States, Western Europe, and Japan.
• Expanded Triad accounts for nearly 80% of global GDP through dense networks of multinational corporations, financial hubs, and technological innovation.
• BRICS represent nearly 30% of the world’s GDP and nearly 50% of the world’s population in 2023.
• Since the 2000s, emerging countries have partially caught up but often still face persistent social inequalities and rising geopolitical ambitions.

💡 Memory Hook

Triad expands: engines stay in the West/North, but East Asia grows into the upgraded set.

📖 3. Maritime facades and global trade

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Interface: An interface is a contact zone between spaces of different natures that generates exchanges between them.
• Maritime facade: A maritime (oceanic) facade is a coastal zone extending inland from a few dozen to several hundred kilometers and organized around ports.
• Maritime checkpoint: A maritime checkpoint is a key strait or passage that concentrates strategic maritime connections in global trade routes.
• Hinterland: Hinterland is the terrestrial space that supplies and distributes goods connected to a port system.

📝 Essential Points

• Maritime trade is dominated by three major facades: East and Southeast Asia, Northern Europe, and North America.
• The Eastern Asian facade is described as currently the most dynamic and powerful and includes leading container ports.
• Malacca Strait and Taiwan Strait are named as major checkpoints linking the Eastern Asian facade’s foreland to global sea routes.
• In Europe, the Northern Range runs from Dunkirk to Hamburg, while Rhineland Europe is identified as the EU’s economic core tied to it.

💡 Memory Hook

Ports are the hinges: foreland meets hinterland via sea routes.

📖 4. Borders, free trade and protectionism

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Border: A border is a lever of regional integration when it enables intense economic, human, and cultural flows on both sides.
• Free trade area: A free trade area is an economic zone where member states remove customs or tariff barriers in agreed sectors.
• Protectionism: Protectionism is a set of policies that shield domestic industries using tariffs, subsidies, import quotas, or similar restrictions.
• World trade: World trade refers to the global organization and governance of trade, including the institutions that promote liberalism or limit protectionism.

📝 Essential Points

• Trade liberalization is associated with GATT in 1948 and continued through the WTO in 1995.
• The WTO is stated to have 166 members and to represent 98% of global trade and global GDP.
• A border can be treated as a line, a control point like an airport or checkpoint, or an interaction area depending on context.
• The U.S.-Mexico border is presented as a hybrid system combining intense cross-border flows and strong security measures.

💡 Memory Hook

Border modes: line, checkpoint, or interaction—choose the framing that matches the task.

📖 5. Global metropolises and world cities

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Metropolis: A metropolis is a large urban area that exercises command and organizational functions over a region and connects it to the world.
• Global city: A global city is an urban center whose influence is exercised on a global scale through finance, decision-making, innovation, and cultural production.
• Megalopolis: A megalopolis is a vast urbanized area made of several conurbations.
• Global megalopolitan archipelago: A global megalopolitan archipelago is the network of the world’s major cities connected through intense flows of capital, goods, information, and people.
• Megacity: A megacity is a city with more than 10 million inhabitants.

📝 Essential Points

• Metropolises can be classified as regional, national, or global based on the extent of their influence.
• Global cities host major financial markets, multinational headquarters, political institutions, and influential cultural industries.
• Three named megalopolises are the American Northeast, Western Europe, and East Asia.
• Major metropolises spread urbanization models worldwide through standards and built forms such as glass towers and vertical skylines.

💡 Memory Hook

Global city = worldwide reach through money + decisions + innovation + culture.

📖 6. Southern countries in globalization

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Partially integrated into globalization: Partially integrated territories benefit from resources or low labor costs but still have political and economic shortcomings that limit full integration.
• Virtually absent from globalization: Virtually absent territories have a relatively limited role in global trade and little weight in global decisions.
• Failed state: A failed state is a state whose political or economic system is so weak that the government no longer controls it.
• Southern countries: Southern countries are described through two positions in globalization: partial inclusion or near absence with low trade weight.

📝 Essential Points

• Southern territories can be included through resources and low labor costs while still remaining structurally constrained.
• Some very low-role cases are linked in the text to failed states suffering from globalization.
• Examples of partially integrated southern countries include Vietnam, Thailand, Algeria, Nigeria, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, and Colombia.
• Examples of virtually absent cases include Sierra Leone, Haiti, Somalia, Venezuela, Libya.

💡 Memory Hook

Southern integration comes in two grades: partial entry vs near-exit tied to state and trade weight.

📖 7. National territorial inequalities

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Urban shrinkage: Urban shrinkage is demographic and economic decline that structurally reduces a city’s population density and economic functions.
• Deindustrialization: Deindustrialization is the weakening or loss of manufacturing-based economic activity that disrupts jobs and local development.
• Rust Belt: Rust Belt refers to former manufacturing regions in the United States highlighted as affected by deindustrialization.
• Territorial inequality within countries: Territorial inequality within countries is the uneven distribution of wealth, services, and development across regions inside the same state.

📝 Essential Points

• Globalization deepens territorial inequalities within countries even when it increases growth and international exchanges.
• Nigeria is used to illustrate uneven integration: southern regions link to global oil exports while northern regions remain marginalized.
• In China, coastal regions concentrate wealth and industry while northern (Dongbei) and western regions are described as less prosperous.
• In the United States and France, deindustrialization is linked to job losses, declining services, and demographic decline outside major metropolitan areas.

💡 Memory Hook

Inside nations, globalization sorts: connected regions gain, others shrink or lose industry.

📖 8. Shrinking cities and deindustrialization

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Shrinking city: A shrinking city is a city affected by urban shrinkage that reduces both population density and economic functions over time.
• Density of the population: Population density is the number of inhabitants concentrated in a city and is treated as a key element impacted by urban shrinkage.
• Economic functions: Economic functions are the city’s roles in production and employment, which decline during urban shrinkage.
• Social effects: Social effects are the downstream consequences of demographic and economic decline for urban communities.

📝 Essential Points

• Urban shrinkage is described as structurally impacting population density and the city’s economic functions.
• Urban shrinkage generates considerable social effects through linked demographic and economic decline.
• In the U.S. Rust Belt, deindustrialization is connected to job losses, population decline, and social difficulties in former manufacturing areas.
• In France, deindustrialization weakened many regions outside major metropolitan areas while wealth concentrates in large cities like Paris.

💡 Memory Hook

Shrinkage hits two levers: density and economic functions → social effects follow.

📖 9. Urban fragmentation and local inequalities

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Urban fragmentation: Urban fragmentation is a partial or absolute divide within a city across social, economic, and political dimensions.
• Winning territories: Winning territories are parts of cities that benefit from global flows of capital, jobs, and services.
• Losing territories: Losing territories are parts of cities left aside where access to housing, infrastructure, and public services is limited.
• Middle-class growth: Middle-class growth is a process in developing countries that reshapes urban societies and makes inequalities more complex.

📝 Essential Points

• New York City is used to illustrate sharp contrasts: Park Slope is wealthy while Longwood in the South Bronx is poor with unemployment and housing insecurity.
• Marseille is used to show territorial sorting: northern districts concentrate poverty and social problems while other districts are among the wealthiest in France.
• In Casablanca, wealthy neighborhoods coexist with informal settlements and peripheral districts with weaker access to services and infrastructure.
• The text warns against treating fragmentation as a strict divide because middle-class growth can blur urban inequality patterns.

💡 Memory Hook

Same city, opposite fortunes: flows create winners; neglect creates losers.

📅 Key Dates

1. 1980s-1990sDevelopment of the Triad concept describing dominant globalization territories
2. 2000sEmerging countries experience rapid growth and partial catch-up
3. 1948GATT is created to promote liberalism and limit protectionism
4. 1995World Trade Organization (WTO) is created
5. 2023BRICS+ weight is given for nearly 30% of GDP and nearly 50% of population
6. 1994NAFTA is reinforced at the U.S.-Mexico border
7. 2018USMCA is adopted at the U.S.-Mexico border

📊 Synthesis Tables

Maritime facades and trade organization

⚠️ Common Pitfalls & Confusions

1. Confusing globalization with even integration: the text stresses uneven inclusion and reinforcement of inequalities.
2. Mixing up interface with border: interface is about exchange zones, while border can be line, checkpoint, or interaction area.
3. Treating the Triad as fixed today without the expanded Triad: the text moves to East Asia, North America, and Europe.
4. Assuming free trade areas remove all barriers in all sectors: the definition specifies removal of customs/tariffs in certain sectors of trade.
5. Thinking all cities are equally global: the text distinguishes regional, national, and global metropolises.
6. Believing fragmentation is always a strict divide: the text says it is not strictly binary because middle-class growth complicates patterns.
7. Equating urban shrinkage only with homelessness or crime: the text defines it through demographic and economic decline affecting density and economic functions.

✅ Exam Checklist

1. Define globalization and territory and explain why globalization does not integrate territories evenly.
2. Identify what the Triad is and list its original three dominant territories as stated.
3. Explain what the expanded Triad includes and state the share of global GDP given.
4. Define emerging country and describe how BRICS+ is presented as changing the North-South divide.
5. Define interface and maritime facade and connect maritime interfaces to ports and exchange between foreland and hinterland.
6. List the three dominant maritime facades for global trade and mention the named straits or ranges linked to them.
7. Define border, free trade area, and protectionism and state what the WTO is said to represent.
8. State the given figures for WTO members and the percentage of global trade and global GDP.
9. Explain how borders can appear as a line, a control point, or an interaction area.
10. Define metropolis, megalopolis, global city, megacity, and global megalopolitan archipelago.
11. List at least two example global cities named and state the mechanisms of global-city influence.
12. Describe how major metropolises spread global standards in urbanization with built-form examples.
13. Distinguish partially integrated southern countries from those virtually absent and mention the connection to failed states.
14. Recall the named examples used for partially integrated and virtually absent southern countries.