the age of globalization (Sakia Sassen1997:167). Such efforts of reclamation are best
apprehended in the polarization paradigm that is used today in defining these cities.
While for instance the designation of “global cities” fits those conurbations based on the
location and the roles they are assigned as articulators and headquarters of financial and
economic matters in world system (Friedmann in William Carroll 2007:2297), the
antithesis of these features identified in other cities may basically account for why they
will only fit into the categorization of the non-global.
What is more, “the more globalized the economy becomes,” the higher the agglomeration
of central functions in relatively few sites, that is global cities” (Sassen in Herman
Boschken 2008:24). But because the polarization between cities catalyzes struggle and
competition, no non-global city is expected to be content with its position. The desire to
progress and attain global relevance, more than a mere wish, remains at the core of the
not-so-acclaimed cities of the world. They therefore try to copy or simulate the dynamics
of the relevance and privilege of the global cities in order to keep hope alive. For as
Boschken (24) remarks, owing to the influential status of the global cities, and “eager to
exhibit benchmarks of their own status-centrality in the new world order, many
minimally global cities have sought a short cut by mimicking the more physically evident
attributes of global cities”. No doubt, there is a tincture of derision in the Boschken’s
perception of the mimickery of the non-global cities. But one must go beyond this model
of mimickery in order to identify with the “desire” of Lagos as “a sailing ship/ pursuing a
known star”. Once the bill of sceptism is expunged, it begins to dawn that London, for
Lagos, exudes global features of relevance at political, economic, cultural and social
levels, and there is a challenge this holds for Lagos and indeed Nigeria to be so globally
relevant someday, a desire that is far from disingenuous.
In an extension of the aspiration of the city, despite the daunting challenges, it remains
undaunted. Rather, for it, the present becomes an interface between history and the
future:
The lagoon speaks
like a foetus remembering the future.
listening from the depths of formlessness song
for the Words that break