Income inequality and the imprint of globalization on U.S. metropolitan areas

Inequality in metropolitan areas is at least partly framed by a paradoxical triangle of competing constituency motives over resources allocation. Chief among these motives is the penchant for urban economic development, leaving ecological sustainability and socioeconomic equity as “subordinate” considerations. For global cities in particular, understanding inequality in such a context highlights the extraordinary intensity of economic development motives in sustaining their worldwide centrality, connectivity and command over the forces of globalization. As a comparative empirical study of 53 large U.S. metropolitan areas, this paper examines economic development within a global city that plausibly explains its propensity for heightened income inequality. It applies an empirical-based path analysis in tracing essential workings of the paradoxical triangle in a global city's ongoing struggle to maintain global eminence. As an exploratory inquiry, it examines heightened income inequality as a function of (a) the global city's assemblage of strategic “cornerstone” resources to sustain global advantage, and (b) the concomitant polarizing effect of such assemblage on metropolitan employment structure.