Urban growth is intricately linked with the growth of industry. This is evident from the urbanization trends in countries where industrialization has occurred. Developed nations such as the U.S. and England have seen a steady rise in urban populations since the dawn of the Age of Industrialization and that trend has continued into what used to be known as the Third World. Industry creates jobs that lure people from rural areas into urban centers. As industry has spread to all corners of the globe, it has given many poorer countries the chance to partake in the global financial market. Neo-liberal policies over the past three decades have pushed for globalization as a means to allow transnational companies to do business more easily. Globalization processes allow industrialists to tap into the cheap labor forces in developing nations in order to produce goods more cheaply and efficiently. Global finance, and the transnational companies that drives it, has brought industry into developing countries, and has dramatically changed the geography of those countries for better or for worse. On the downside, however, as states become intricately linked to one another through the global financial market they become more vulnerable to economic and political effects from one another. Globalization is often thought of as a non-physical entity, yet it has very real physical effects and is intricately tied to the very real third-dimensional growth of the urban landscape and has a direct effect on human, cultural and physical geography.

The capitalist dynamic that has driven globalization and global finance is, like the earth, make of tectonic plates that move and shift against one another, according to an analogy used by David Harvey (Harvey, 2011, p.1).  Sitting on top of these moving plates are cities, inhabited by the humans that work.  They are vulnerable to any changes that occur within these plates. Global finance, and profits derived from labor and production, has sustained the development of urban cities.  While global finance has infused wealth into developing nations, these countries have had to pay a high price in terms of a loss of national sovereignty.  “Globalization, by severing the national tie between production and distribution, also disconnects the national tie between productivity and wages, thereby undermining the pivotal role of collective bargaining in national macroeconomic regulation (Fujita, 2000, p.2198).”  Capitalism and global fiance can cause devaluation of land just as it can place more value on labor. Countries that were once dominated by subsistence farmers find that rural land and products are devalued, while skilled or semi-skilled labor is elevated in value, thus creating a situation where urban areas become more valuable for both what they offer to individuals as well as in actual monetary value (Harvey, 1982, p.425).

Developing nations all over the world are seeing a rapid rate of urbanization and development of their capital cities. These sparkling modern cities could be viewed as border-less states since they have developed and grown directly from global finance instead of simply by the nation that inhabits the state. Geographer Peter Dicken disagrees with this viewpoint. He states that “While some of the state’s capabilities are, indeed, being reduced, and while there may be a process of ‘hollowing out’ of the state, the process is not a simple one of uniform decline on all fronts (Dickens, 2003, p.122).” It is, however, a goal of transnational corporations who favor globalization to homogenize global finances by creating one giant nation less-state, devoid of pesky borders and such that make doing business so tricky. The desire to create an urban topography that allows global interests to freely flow through urban centers around the globe is a goal of neo-liberals who favor globalization. For example, Tony Blair is quoted as saying “globalization is changing the nature of the nation-state as power becomes more diffuse and borders more porous. Technological change is already reducing the power and capacity of government to control its domestic economy free from external influence (Dickens, 1994 p.159).” Globalization processes are evolving states from a traditional sovereignty by national leaders to one controlled by transnational corporate CEO’s, a change that is greatly effecting the way in which urban centers are being developed.