Ecotopia and globalization

Posted by admin on Nov 21, 2006 in Volume 14 Issue 1 | 0 comments

We live in a “post-everything” world. More often than not, our political, economic and social structures are defined in the wake of some major paradigm shift or event. We are a post-modern, post-industrial, post-Cold War, post-9/11 society. “Globalization” is another term thrown around when referring to the integrative nature of contemporary world, political, and economic systems. Yet crisp and neatly defined generalizations such as the “universal homogenous state” or “McWorld” often fail to consider that liberal democracy and free market economics are evolving constructs.

As the 21st century begins to unfold, there is a growing desire to define where exactly this “post-everything” direction will take society. Social critics of all stripes bemoan the rise of corporate behemoths like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s that have larger profit margins than the GDP of some small countries.

There certainly is no shortage of evidence pointing to the decline of the federal government’s influence and fiscal policy in light of “Every Day Low Prices.” But to say that corporate logos and slogans alone create a homogenized world is to miss examples of emerging regional-global economies. A prime example of this exists in the transformation of the Pacific Northwest.

The Pacific Northwest demonstrates this emerging pattern as an economic and cultural hub that is increasingly independent from the political epicentres of Washington D.C. and Ottawa. Of course, there has always been a sense of neglect and alienation in this region. It is not a novel observation that Vancouver is culturally, politically and economically more connected with Seattle than it is with Toronto. Likewise Oregon has more kinship towards British Columbia than it does towards New Jersey. Globalization merely serves to enhance this already evident cross-border affinity and strengthen the cultural bond of this geographic region.

In the Pacific Northwest, the majority of the population condenses in the metropolitan areas of Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland. Combined, these three metropolitan areas have a population of nearly 9 million people, and a combined economy of $250 billion. These three busy ports have access to the Pacific trade routes, as well as railways and highways to the rest of the continent. Consequently, infrastructure in this region is geared towards trade with the outside world.

Internally as well, the influence of the Vancouver-Seattle-Portland area stretches far beyond the Cascades. Global corporations such as Boeing, Starbucks, Microsoft, Nike, and Amazon.com all began and are headquartered there.

The quest for the bottom line is kept in check by progressive, environmentally-friendly attitudes. These attitudes reflect the co-existence of a highly educated population with an abundance of spectacular natural resources. This, combined with the temperate climate and strategic geography of the Pacific Northwest, makes Vancouver-Seattle-Portland an anticipated leading city-state in the new decentralized North American order. This scenario would see Vancouver-Seattle-Portland competing with other high-tech regions like the Tucson-Phoenix corridor in Arizona, or the “Research Triangle” in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.

In this vein, the future of the “global village” would essentially create a neo-classical landscape where the primary centres of wealth and political influence are in powerful city-states, not nation-states. Western political structures essentially would come full circle back to a city-state model – but this time on a global scale.

As the international political boundary between Canada and the United States becomes increasingly obsolete in the era of global markets, the Pacific Northwest is poised to become a stronger, more integrated economy and cultural centre than ever before.