What is a Global Economy?

Australia, like all Western economies, has post-industrialised, meaning that the majority of the employment and wealth generation is in knowledge production and consumption. This means that most people are employed in industries such as banking, insurance, education, administration, call centres, tourism, and other industries that are more concerned with ideas and services, rather than tangible goods and services.

This is quite visible in Fitzroy, as nearly all the factories in the district have moved, especially the labour intensive textile industries. Factories have been converted to residential apartments and working mans pubs now look like barren design studios. Sociologists term the inner-city knowledge workers 'the new middle class' (as opposed to great Australian suburban middle-class fashioned during the long postwar boom). The new middle class pays heavily for lifestyle rather than lawnmowers (and are some of the beneficiaries from economic globalisation whilst the losers are those with manual skills that are not competitive in a deregulated, global economy).(4) Can you determine what the major themes are in Fitzroy in terms of local and global economic forces?

(4) For a less evocative, but more in depth study of this see: David Ley The New Middle Class and the Remaking of the Central City, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996.