BEVERLY HILLS —This week's Milken Institute Global Conference brought together more CEO’s, heads of state, hedge fund managers, and industrialists than, I reckon, any other annual gathering in the United States. It’s a strange event at which to be an urbanist – and not just because it takes place in one of our most unusual cities, Beverly Hills. 

Planners, developers, and sundry folk love and believe in our cities. Many of us love our cities, and we are inspired daily by their dynamism and, in some case, their enormity. Los Angeles has 4 million people. And it functions (sort of). Amazing, right?! I think so.

But then you pass the Splenda to a CEO in the coffee line and realize that the annual revenue of his or her company might exceed that of a city’s budget, or even its gross metropolitan product. That’s humbling. It’s more humbling when you consider that some of these companies, from Twitter to Google to all the finance companies, hardly exist in physical space. They might employ a handful of people and deliver all of their products online. 

As global capital becomes more powerful, more autonomous, and more placeless, it’s crucial to consider how the capitalists feel about cities.

One version holds that global capital has colonized a few cities, or parts thereof, that serve the business and lifestyle demands of the ultra-wealthy. They offer hotels where meetings can take place, airports where they can land private jets, free-trade office parks where they can avoid taxes, and overpriced real estate that they can collect when they need some shut-eye. The capitalists don’t care about these cities’ fortunes as such, and they are happy to displace and exploit local populations. These are the “boutique” or “luxury” cities of Manhattan, Moscow, Dubai, London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Beverly Hills.

That’s the dark, Mike Davis version. 

The more sanguine version holds that the world’s financial leaders appreciate cities for many of the same reasons that planners do. They bring people together and embrace diversity. They foster innovation and development of new knowledge. When designed well and not crushed by debt, they are great places for everyone to “live, work, and play” (to cite my least-favorite reduction)