- ‘Real’ and ‘dummy’ Impacts of integrative and disintegrative Forces on a metropolitan Economy, Calcutta, India    152 kb by    Sen, Joy | joysen610@yahoo.co.in    Short Outline The paper evaluates ‘real’ and ‘dummy’ impacts of integrative and disintegrative globalization forces on a metropolitan economy of Calcutta through a mapping of relative strengths and opportunities of its territoriality and economy. Abstract An approach to evaluate the ‘real’ and ‘dummy’ impacts of integrative and disintegrative forces on a metropolitan economy Case study: Kolkata (Calcutta), India The understanding of the impacts of integrative and disintegrative forces on a metropolitan region can be better mapped through the overlapping of two important components: one, a spatio-economic morphology of metropolitan sub-regions and two, a more realistic classification of the metropolitan socio-economic structure based on the real and dummy impacts of these forces. Spatio-economically, standard metropolitan structures exhibits polarization of a highly urbanized core with high population density as against peripheries where such characteristics are marginal or insignificant. The paper questions this standard viewpoint by analyzing the shades of opportunities and challenges available within these sub-regions in accommodating the different priorities of market-driven changes with a globalization agenda trying to transform their diverse economic bases according to these shades. The diversity or the varied shades provide an important tool to assess ‘relative shift-share’ within the constituent sub-regions and consequential population dispersal based on new creative economic activities and their territorial focuses. At the same time, the paper provides a four tier probe of the socio-economic structure of the metropolitan population in terms degrees of economic status (thresholds of income and expenditure pattern, affordability, accessibility preferences) defined as ‘real-haves’, ‘dummy-haves’, ‘real-have-nots’ and ‘dummy-have-nots’. Unlike an too simplified high-middle-low income hierarchy, the four-tiered approach offers a more realistic over-view of the forces that may not be really ‘integrative’ or really ‘disintegrative’. Combining these two components, the paper presents an approach to map the ‘real’ and ‘not so real’ or ‘dummy’ opportunities and challenges of these forces in the case study of the metropolitan economy of Calcutta (Kolkata) that is so strategically located in South Asia and the adjoining Asia-Pacific. Keywords: ‘real’ and ‘dummy’ impacts, sub-regional variations, ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ Keywords Keywords: ‘real’ and ‘dummy’ impacts, sub-regional variations, ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2006: Cities between Integration and Disintegration   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper