The Global Cities Reader

Providing the first comprehensive survey of new interdisciplinary scholarship on globalized urbanization, this important volume contains fifty selections from classic writings by authors such as John Friedmann, Michael Peter Smith, Saskia Sassen, Peter Taylor, Manuel Castells and Anthony King, as well as major contributions by other international scholars of global city formation.

Classic and contemporary case studies of globalizing cities serve to illuminate global city theory within Europe, North America and East Asia, whilst contributing authors explore key topics including:

• the histories and geographies of globalized urbanization
• the social and economic order of globalizing cities
• pathways of globalized urbanization in the older industrialized world, the developing world and on the ‘margins’ of the world economy
• state restructuring, urban governance and socio-political contestation in globalizing cities
• culture, identity and representation in globalizing cities
• emerging issues and debates in contemporary research on globalized urbanization.

Containing wide-ranging discussions on major theories, methods, themes and debates, and a combination of theoretical and methodological contributions, comparative analyses and detailed case studies, this key textbook will appeal to a broad interdisciplinary readership at undergraduate and graduate levels in urban, globalization, development, cultural, and environmental studies.

CONTENTS

Part 1: Global City Formation: Emergence of a Concept and Research Agenda

• 1. Prologue the Metropolitan Explosion
• 2. Divisions of Space and Time in Europe
• 3. Urban Specialization in the World System: An Investigation of Historical Cases
• 4. Global City Formation in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles: An Historical Perspective
• 5. The New International Division of Labor, Multinational Corporations, and Urban Hierarchy
• 6. World City Formation: An Agenda for Research and Action
• 7. The World City Hypothesis 

Part 2: Structures, Dynamics and Geographies of Global City Formation

• 8. Prologue 100-Mile Cities
• 9. Cities and Communities in the Global Economy
• 10. Locating Cities on Global Circuits
• 11. World City Network: A New Metageography?
• 12. Global Cities and Global Classes: The Peripheralization of Labour in New York City
• 13. Inequality in Global City-Region
• 14. Global Grids of Glass: On Global Cities, Telecommunications and Planetary Urban Networks

Part 3: Local Pathways of Global City Formation: Classic and Contemporary Case Studies

• 15. Prologue Cities, the Informational Society and the Global Economy
• 16. The City as a Landscape of Power: London and New York as Global Financial Capitals
• 17. The Urban Restructuring Process in Tokyo During the 1980s: Transforming Tokyo into a World City
• 18. Detroit and Houston: Two Cities in Global Perspective
• 19. Global City Zurich: Paradigms of Urban Development
• 20. Global Cities and Developmental States: New York, Tokyo and Seoul
• 21. The Stimulus of a Little Confusion: A Contemporary Comparison of Amsterdam and Los Angeles 

Part 4: Globalization, Urbanization and Uneven Spatial Development: Perspectives on Global City Formation In the Global South

• 22. Prologue a Global Agora vs. Gated City-Regions
• 23. Building, Architecture, and the New International Division of Labor
• 24. The World City Hypothesis: Reflections from the Periphery
• 25. ‘Fourth World’ Cities in the Global Economy: The Case of Phnom Penh, Cambodia
• 26. Global and World Cities: A View from off the Map
• 27. Globalization and the Corporate Geography of Cities in the Less-Developed World
• 28. São Paulo: Outsourcing and Downgrading of Labor in a Globalizing City 

Part 5: Contested Cities: State Restructuring, Local Politics and Civil Society

• 29. Prologue the Global City as World Order
• 30. Global Cities, ‘Glocal’ States: Global City Formation and State Territorial Restructuring in Contemporary Europe
• 31. World City Formation on the Asia-Pacific Rim: Poverty, ‘Everyday’ Forms of Civil Society and Environmental Management
• 32. ‘Global Cities’ vs ‘Global Cities:’ Rethinking Contemporary Urbanism as Public Ecology
• 33. The Neglected Builder of Global Cities
• 34. The Globalization of Frankfurt Am Main: Core, Periphery and Social Conflict (2000)
• 35. Urban Social Movements in an Era of Globalization 

Part 6: Representation, Identity and Culture in Global Cities: Rethinking the Local and the Global

• 36. Prologue: Towards Cosmopolis – A Postmodern Agenda
• 37. The Cultural Role of World Cities
• 38. World Cities: Global? Postcolonial? Postimperial? Or Just the Result of Happenstance?: Some Cultural Comments
• 39. ‘Global Media Cities:’ Major Nodes of Globalizing Culture and Media Industries
• 40. Willing the Global City: Berlin’s Cultural Strategies of Interurban Competition After 1989
• 41. Exploring Colombo: The Relevance of a Knowledge of New York
• 42. Culturing the World City: An Exhibition of the Global Present (2005) 

Part 7: Emerging Issues in Global Cities Research: Refinements, Critiques and New Frontiers

• 43. Prologue: Whose City is it?
• 44. Space in the Globalizing City
• 45. Globalization and the Rise of City Regions
• 46. The Global Cities Discourse: A Return to the Master Narrative?
• 47. Immigration and the Global City Hypothesis: Towards an Alternative Research Agenda
• 48. Pathways to Global City Formation: A View From the Developmental City-State of Singapore
• 49. World City Topologies
• 50. The Urban Revolution

438 pages / 19 x 24,5 cm / English