Housing Prices Rise in Major Cities Worldwide

The Newsweek article below tells us the story of rising housing prices in the major cities around the world and sites those who say the international housing market in the super wealthy center cities of the world looks nowhere near coming to an end. Though the authors set the piece in Manhattan, they tell readers that the international housing boom is not limited to traditionally wealthy countries. The fastest growing housing markets are in rapidly urbanizing places like Shanghai and Mumbai, where "prime-real-estate prices shot up by 90 percent in 2006".

The steady boom is fueled by capital from the high-end service industries, like banking and insurance. The authors write that these mostly highly paid service workers have a disproportionate effect on the property prices of cities world wide. They write, "there is now a class of property buyer who can collect pied-à-terre apartments in Paris and Buenos Aires the way the merely wealthy collect cars or wine."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17553511/site/newsweek/

Yet the glitz and glamour of jet-setting property owners with million dollar flats in all continents, is only one face of globalization. In his book, Planet of Slums, Mike Davis tells us that for the first time in history most of the world' population lives in urban centers and by 2030, the population of those living in cities will constitute 5/8 of the worlds population. Urbanization is not, however, synonymous with economic growth. Instead, the growth of cities around the globe is characterized by poverty, displacement and a need to find work.

A large majority of people who will inhabit these cities will be working poor, many of whom will be completely ‘redundant’ in the world economy, left to make a living inside of a massive underground economy. While many cities spend most of their money developing and planning to attract wealth to their centers, there is no preparation for services for the rest of the population. Currently, one billion people live in slums surrounding the major financial centers of the world, in homes without light or water, erected from cardboard, plastic and cement blocks. "Instead of cities of light soaring toward heaven," writes Davis, "much of the twenty first century urban world squats in squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement, and decay."