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Global City (global + city)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	94%

Selected Abstracts

Tourism in US Global Cities: A Comparison of New York and Los Angeles

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2001
David L. Gladstone
Tourism has become a key component of both the Los Angeles and New York City economies and an integral part of each city's urban redevelopment efforts. Its growth has influenced each city's social structure and built environment in remarkably similar ways. We describe the economic and spatial characteristics of tourism in the two cities, focusing on its labor market effects. We find strong similarities in economic importance and some aspects of labor relations. We find differences in spatial and design consequences as well as certain labor market effects. Utilizing the general framework of regulation theory, we analyze the ways in which economic culture, local autonomy, and urban regimes contribute to the regulation of the tourism industry in the two cities. We also discuss how labor and community, and advocacy groups respond to, and in turn influence, the politics and economic culture of the cities in which they operate. [source]

The Urban Question as Cargo Cult: Opportunities for a New Urban Pedagogy

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2008
ROB SHIELDS
Abstract Urban research is unreflexive toward its object of study, the city, compromising its methodologies and theoretical capacity. This polemic draws on examples such as ,creative cities', which have been profiled and analysed for their local recipes for economic success. ,Global cities' have become stereotypes of a neoliberal form of the ,good life' to which much recent urban research is a handmaiden, a hegemonic knowledge project. These ,metro-poles' of value are a form of urban pedagogy that presents lesser local elites with lessons to be followed. A form of cargo cult theory suggests, build it and wealth will come , hence the symmetry of urban scholarship with the fad for city rankings in pop journalism. In contrast to neo-structural analyses of the global city, other research focuses too closely on regional geographies, local forces and urban affordances. A synthetic level of theory is proposed to bridge the divide which marks urban and regional studies. The ,urban' needs to be rediscovered as a central question. The urban is an object of theory and the city is a truth spot. The urban is more than infrastructure and bodies but an intangible good or ,virtuality' that requires an appropriate methodological toolkit. Résumé La recherche urbaine manque de réflexivitéà l'égard de son objet d'étude, la ville, ce qui compromet ses méthodologies et sa capacité théorique. Cette critique part d'exemples tels que les "villes créatives" dont on a établi le profil et l'analyse pour en déterminer les recettes locales de réussite économique. Les "villes planétaires" sont devenues des stéréotypes d'une forme néolibérale de la "bonne vie" au service de laquelle se met généralement la recherche urbaine, un projet de savoir hégémonique. Ces métro-pôles de valeur constituent une sorte de pédagogie urbaine qui expose aux moindres élites locales des leçons à suivre. Un genre de théorie du culte du cargo suggère qu'il suffit de construire pour voir la richesse arriver, d'où la symétrie entre les travaux de recherche urbaine et la mode pour les palmarès de villes dans le journalisme populaire. Contrairement aux analyses néo-structuralistes de la ville planétaire, d'autres études se consacrent de trop près aux géographies régionales, aux forces locales et aux affordances urbaines. Un niveau de théorie synthétique est proposé pour franchir la ligne de démarcation des études urbaines et régionales. Il faut redécouvrir "l'urbain" en tant que question centrale. L'urbain est un objet de théorie, la ville est un lieu de vérité. L'urbain est plus qu'une infrastructure et des entités, c'est un bien intangible, une "virtualité", qui nécessite un jeu d'outils méthodologiques approprié. [source]

Development Zones, Foreign Investment, and Global City Formation in Shanghai*

GROWTH AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2005
YEHUA DENNIS WEI
ABSTRACT The rapid economic ascent of China and the increasing integration of the world economy in the past two decades have made metropolises in China such as Shanghai and Beijing emerging global cities. Foreign investment is a central force underlying the emergence and transformation of the Chinese metropolises into global cities. This is especially true in Shanghai, which has experienced massive infusion of foreign investment. Varied forms of foreign investment or development zones have been created to promote foreign investment inflows, yet remain under-studied. This paper analyzes structure, performance, and underlying factors of development zones in Shanghai, and discusses the implications for global city-formation; it unfolds the variations among development zones, and illustrates the significant role of the state and local conditions. As the literature on global cities dwells primarily on the experiences of advanced economies, this paper further contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics of emerging global cities in the developing world. [source]

Security Zones and New York City's Shrinking Public Space

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2010
JEREMY NÉMETH
Abstract Urban scholars lament the loss of public space due to heightened security and behavioral controls borne of economic priorities and anti-terror concerns after September 11th 2001. Owners and managers of government buildings, banks and courthouses have closed streets and fitted the surrounding space with concrete barriers, bollards and moat-like structures to prevent potential terror attacks. These are reasonable protections in emergency situations, but, as threat levels fall, these zones fail to incorporate a diversity of users, privatizing the space for those with security clearance. The ubiquity of these zones encourages us to consider them as a new type of land use. To test this statement, we describe the results of site visits to two high-profile New York City neighborhoods (one with numerous civic buildings, the other populated with corporate headquarters). Using a simple tool we developed, we find that 27% of aggregate non-building area in the two districts is now in a security zone. Interestingly, the percentage of space within each district that can be classed as a security zone is reasonably similar, providing insight into the way in which terror targets are internally and externally defined and justified. We argue that this new type of land use is an important and permanent feature of twenty-first century global cities. Résumé Les chercheurs en sciences urbaines regrettent la perte d'espace public, incriminant souvent les contrôles accrus de sécurité et de comportement suscités par des priorités économiques ou des préoccupations anti-terroristes depuis le 11 septembre 2001. Propriétaires et gestionnaires de bâtiments publics, banques et tribunaux ont fermé des rues et équipé l'espace environnant d'obstacles en béton, de plots et de quasi-fossés afin de parer aux attaques terroristes potentielles. Ces protections sont normales en situations d'urgence, mais lorsque la menace décroît, les zones concernées ne parviennent pas à diversifier leurs usagers, l'espace étant réservé aux détenteurs de droits d'accès. L'ubiquité de ces zones pousse à les considérer comme un nouveau type d'occupation des sols. Pour vérifier cette affirmation, nous présentons les résultats de visites dans deux quartiers éminents de New York, l'un regroupant de nombreux bâtiments publics, l'autre une multitude de sièges sociaux. Au moyen d'un outil simple développé par nos soins, nous constatons que 27% de la surface cumulée non bâtie dans les deux secteurs sont désormais dans une zone sécurisée. Il faut noter que, dans chaque secteur, la proportion de l'espace qui peut être classé en zone sécurisée est relativement similaire, donnant un éclairage sur la façon dont les cibles terroristes sont définies et justifiées sur les plans intérieur et extérieur. Selon nous, ce nouveau type d'occupation des sols constitue un caractère important et permanent des villes planétaires du xxie siècle. [source]

The Transnational Capitalist Class and Contemporary Architecture in Globalizing Cities

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2005
LESLIE SKLAIR
The focus of this article is on the role of the transnational capitalist class (TCC) in and around architecture in the production and marketing of iconic buildings and spaces, in global or world cities. The TCC is conceptualized in terms of four fractions: (1) Those who own and/or and control the major transnational corporations and their local affiliates (corporate fraction). In architecture these are the major architectural, architecture-engineering and architecture-developer-real estate firms. In comparison with the major global consumer goods, energy and financial corporations the revenues of the biggest firms in the architecture industry are quite small. However, their importance for the built environment and their cultural importance, especially in cities, far outweighs their relative lack of financial and corporate muscle. (2) Globalizing politicians and bureaucrats (state fraction). These are the politicians and bureaucrats at all levels of administrative power and responsibility who actually decide what gets built where, and how changes to the built environment are regulated. (3) Globalizing professionals (technical fraction). The members of this fraction range from the leading technicians centrally involved in the structural features of new building to those responsible for the education of students and the public in architecture. (4) Merchants and media (consumerist fraction). These are the people who are responsible for the marketing of architecture in all its manifestations. (There is obviously some overlap between the membership of these fractions.). My conclusion is that many global and aspiring global cities have looked to iconic architecture as a prime strategy of urban intervention, often in the context of rehabilitation of depressed areas. The attempt to identify the agents most responsible for this transformation, namely the TCC, and to explain how they operate, suggests that deliberately iconic architecture is becoming a global phenomenon, specifically a central urban manifestation of the culture-ideology of consumerism. L'article porte sur la classe capitaliste transnationale (TCC) au sein et à la périphérie de l'architecture, et sur son rôle dans la production et la commercialisation de constructions et espaces iconiques dans les villes mondiales ou planétaires. Cette classe se conceptualise en quatre fractions: (1) Ceux qui détiennent et/ou contrôlent les principaux groupes transnationaux et leurs sociétés affiliées locales (fraction économique): En architecture, il existe de grands cabinets d'architecture, d'ingénierie en architecture et d'architectes promoteurs immobiliers. Par rapport aux grosses sociétés multinationales de la finance, de l'énergie ou des biens de consommation, les recettes des plus importants cabinets sont assez faibles; pourtant, leur place dans l'environnement construit et la culture, notamment en milieu urbain, compensent largement leur impact relativement mince sur le plan financier et économique. (2) Les acteurs politiques et bureaucratiques de la mondialisation (fraction étatique): Il s'agit des politicients et bureaucrates à tous les niveaux de responsabilié et de pouvoir administratifs qui décident effectivement de ce qui est construit et où, ainsi que de la régulation des changements apportés à l'environnement construit. (3) Les acteurs professionnels de la mondialisation (fraction technique): Leur diversité va des techniciens de renom, surtout impliqués dans les caractéristiques structurelles des nouveaux bâtiments, à ceux qui sont chargés d'enseigner l'architecture aux étudiants et d'éduquer le public. (4) Marchands et médias (fraction consumériste): Ce sont les personnes responsables de la commercialisation de l'architecture dans toutes ses manifestations. Ces quatre fractions présentent bien sûr des intersections. On peut déduire que bon nombre de villes planétaires , ou aspirant à le devenir , ont opté pour une architecture iconique comme première stratégie d'intervention urbaine, souvent dans un contexte de réhabilitation de zones en déclin. Identifier les principaux agents responsables de cette transformation (la TCC) et expliquer leur mode de fonctionnement conduit à suggérer qu'une architecture délibérément iconique devient un phénomène mondial, plus précisément une manifestation urbaine essentielle de l'idéologie-culture du consumérisme. [source]

Gender, Public Space and Social Segregation in Cairo: Of Taxi Drivers, Prostitutes and Professional Women

ANTIPODE, Issue 3 2009
Anouk De Koning
Abstract:, Cairo's cityscape has transformed rapidly as a result of the neoliberal policies that Egypt adopted in the early 1990s. This article examines the spatial negotiations of class in liberalizing Cairo. While much scholarly attention has been devoted to the impact of neoliberal policies on global cities of the South, few studies have adopted an ethnographic focus to examine the everyday negotiations of such transformations. I examine the ways young female upper-middle-class professionals navigate Cairo's public spaces, both the safe spaces of the upscale coffee shops and the open spaces of the streets. Their urban trajectories can be read as the footsteps of the social segregation that has increasingly come to mark Cairo's cityscape. I conclude that the bodies of upper-middle-class women have become a battleground for new class configurations and contestations, literally embodying both power and fragility of Cairo's upper-middle class in Egypt's new liberal age. [source]

Looking Forward by Looking Back: May Day Protests in London and the Strategic Significance of the Urban

ANTIPODE, Issue 4 2004
Justus Uitermark
This paper deals with the question of how oppositional movements can adapt their protest strategies to meet recent socio-spatial transformations. The work of Lefebvre provides several clues as to how an alternative discourse and appropriation of space could be incorporated in such protest strategies. One of the central themes in Lefebvre's work is that the appearances, forms and functions of urban space are constitutive elements of contemporary capitalism and thus that an alternative narrative of urban space can challenge or undermine dominant modes of thinking. What exactly constitutes the "right" kind of alternative discourse or narrative is a matter of both theoretical and practical consideration. The paper analyses one case: the May Day protests in London in 2001, in which a protest group, the Wombles, managed to integrate theoretical insights into their discourse and practice in a highly innovative manner. Since cities, and global cities in particular, play an ever more important role in maintaining the consumption as well as production practices of global capitalism; they potentially constitute local sites where global processes can be identified and criticised. It is shown that the Wombles effectively made use of these possibilities and appropriated the symbolic resources concentrated in London to exercise a "lived critique" of global capitalism. Since the Wombles capitalised on trends that have not yet ended, their strategies show a way forward for future anti-capitalist protests. [source]

Postcolonial Scholarship,Productions and Directions: An Interview With Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

COMMUNICATION THEORY, Issue 3 2002
Radha S. Hegde
This interview took place on December 18, 2000, in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's office at Columbia University, New York. In a room lined with books and papers stacked high, Spivak spoke about postcolonial scholarship and its global challenges. Spanning a diverse range of interests, Gayatri Spivak's work has influenced critical scholarship across multiple disciplines throughout the world. Her scholarship has significantly shaped the course of postcolonial thinking and has had profound impact on conceptualizing issues of culture, identity, communication, and transnationalism. When asked about her interest in the areas of global communication flows, new technologies, and the politics of culture, Spivak referred us to two of her recent essays where she writes about global cities and cyberliteracy in the journal Gray Room and in Judith Butler's edited volume What's Left of Theory. In this interview, we asked Spivak to speak to issues concerning the intersections between communication and postcoloniality. [source]

"THEY COME IN PEASANTS AND LEAVE CITIZENS": Urban Villages and the Making of Shenzhen, China

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2010
JONATHAN BACH
ABSTRACT This essay examines the ongoing process of postsocialist transformation at the intersection of cultural and economic forces in an urban environment through the example of the so-called "urban villages"(chengzhongcun) in Shenzhen, China, a booming southern Chinese city and former Special Economic Zone next to Hong Kong. This essay ethnographically examines the role of former rural collectives encircled by a city that has exploded from farmland to an export-driven city of over 14 million people in little over one generation. These villages form an internal other that is both the antithesis and the condition of possibility for Shenzhen city. By co-opting the market economy in ways that weave them into the fabric of the contemporary global city, the villages become as much an experiment as the Special Economic Zone itself. This essay analyzes the urban,rural divide as complicit in each other's continued production and effacement and explores how village and city exploit the ambiguities of their juxtaposition in the making of Shenzhen. [source]

The Urban Question as Cargo Cult: Opportunities for a New Urban Pedagogy

An alternative urban world is possible: a declaration for urban research and action

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 4 2003
Action (INURA)Article first published online: 17 DEC 200, International Network for Urban Research
At its June 2002 meeting in Paris and Caen, France, the members of the International Network for Urban Research and Action (INURA) collectively agreed on a declaration to express the organization's urbanist agenda. This declaration operates on two levels: one makes five statements conceived in the tradition of earlier (for example situationist) manifestos; the other is a set of concise statements on the state of the globalization process in the era of globalization and neoliberalism. Subsections of the declaration deal with an urban world, a global city, migrant cities, unsustainable urban-natural relations, neoliberalization, attacks on democracy, community vulnerability, the rise of racism, and some thoughts on possible alternatives. The strategic purpose of this declaration was to be an intervention at meetings of the international urban community, for example for the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in January 2003 and similar regional and local events. The declaration is published here in order to invite debate among other scholars and activists on the issues raised in its theses and statements. Lors de ses rassemblements de juin 2002 à Paris et Caen, les membres de l'INURA (International Network for Urban Research and Action) ont convenu ensemble d'une déclaration visant à exprimer le programme urbanistique du Réseu. Cette déclaration agit à deux niveaux: l'un énonce cinq propositions dans la tradition de manifestes antérieurs (situationnistes, par exemple), l'autre est une série de communications concises sur l'état de la démarche mondialiste à l'ére de la globalisation et du néolibéralisme. Les paragraphes de la déclaration abordent univers urbain, ville planétaire, villes de migrants, relations ville-nature insoutenables à terme, néolibéralisation, attaques contre la démocratie, vulnérabilité des communautés, montée du racisme et quelques réflexions sur les options possibles. Cette déclaration avait pour objectif stratégique une intervention lors de rencontres de la communauté urbaine internationale, comme au Forum social mondial de Pôrto Alegre en janvier 2003, ou d'événements locaux et régionaux similaires. Elle est publiée ici afin de susciter un débat entre d'autres intellectuels et militants sur les problèmes que posent ses thèses et propositions. [source]

THE L.A. SCHOOL AND POLITICS,NOIR: BRINGING THE LOCAL STATE BACK IN

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 5 2009
STEVEN P. ERIE
ABSTRACT:,This essay critically reevaluates two key components of the L.A. School of Urbanism research program. First, we reconsider the L.A. School's alternative to the concentric circles model of urban growth developed by the Chicago School. Second, we reexamine its account of Los Angeles's modern development and transformation into a global city. We conclude that the L.A. School, much like the Chicago School it critiques, pays insufficient attention to politics and political institutions. Understanding how Los Angeles improbably grew from a frontier town to regional imperium and global city requires urban scholars to bring the local state back in. Based on recent scholarship, we argue that the local state played a critical and, frequently, autonomous role in key policy areas, such as city planning and water provision. By bringing the local state back into the L.A. growth story, L.A. scholars can offer a more robust theory of urban growth. [source]

"We have a little bit more finesse, as a nation": Constructing the Polish Worker in London's Building Sites

ANTIPODE, Issue 3 2009
Ayona Datta
Abstract:, This paper examines how male Polish builders in London construct themselves relationally to English builders as they negotiate their place within the labour hierarchies of the building site and in the London labour market. This is based on semi-structured interviews and participant photographs taken by Polish migrants arriving in the aftermath of the European Union expansion in May 2004, and now working in building sites across London. These buildings sites are mundane elements of a global city which employ transnational labour, and where differences between Polish and English builders become significant discursive tools of survival in a competitive labour market. The paper illustrates how Polish workers mark themselves as "superior" to English builders through the versatility of their embodied skills, work ethic, artistic qualities, and finesse in their social interactions on the building site. This paper thus provides new ways of understanding the meanings of work and the complexity of identity politics within the spaces of low-paid manual work in a global city. [source]

The origins of the global city: ethics and morality in contemporary cosmopolitanism

BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 1 2003
Deiniol Jones
This article makes the case for a strong delineation of ethical and moral categories in contemporary international relations theory,specifically, within the theory of cosmopolitanism. The argument draws on the history of ideas, particularly observations about the nature of Stoicism in classical political thought, and a range of contemporary ,ethical' texts to make the case that there is a missing ethical category in contemporary approaches. Contemporary reflections on world citizenship and the global city, such as those contained in Linklater and Held, adopt a specifically moral notion of normativity and neglect an ethical component which is both distinct and theoretically practicable. The article offers a specific policy area,the area of international drug control,as a potential area of policy application. [source]

"But They are Like You and Me": Gay Civil Servants and Citizenship in a Cosmopolitanizing Singapore

CITY & SOCIETY, Issue 1 2009
CHRIS K.K.
Abstract In July 2003, Singapore's then-Prime Minister triggered public outrage by declaring that the state would now employ openly gay Singaporeans as civil servants. Besides questioning how such a seemingly inconsequential statement could generate such controversy, I also interrogate why the state had reversed its previously homophobic stance. I argue that, as a city-state with aspirations to become a global city, Singapore attempted to market the "difference" of its sexual minorities to appear cosmopolitan and attractive to the "creative class" of professional labor. By contradicting the sexual exclusivity inherent in normative notions of citizenship, however, this cosmopolitanizing drive triggered the moral outrage. Furthermore, I assert that despite its apparent message of tolerance, the state's declaration remained an empty marketing ploy. While it has enabled homosexual Singaporeans to assess their status as citizens, the state has neither legalized it nor struck down existing anti-sodomy legislation that fundamentally contradicts it. By exposing the declaration as only an exploitative façade that discursively conscripted gay and lesbian Singaporeans into cosmopolitanizing the country for the state, I highlight the limits of discourses of difference in Singapore. [source]

Explaining Trade Flows of Singapore

ASIAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 1 2004
Hans C. Blomqvist
The objective of this paper is twofold. First, the development of the trade patterns of Singapore and particularly between Singapore and its South-East Asian partners will be outlined and interpreted against a backdrop of relevant trade policy measures, for example in the context of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Second, a simple model of the gravity type is applied in order to establish and quantify the role of various trade determinants. Despite the fact that Singapore has strived at being a ,global city', it remains rather heavily biased towards East Asia as far as foreign trade is concerned. The role of ASEAN in particular is strong, even if the role of entrepôt trade tends to exaggerate the degree of integration between the economies of Singapore and ASEAN. It also seems clear that the latter, as an organization, has not contributed much to the development of trade relations between its members. Rather the closeness and the liberalization of these economies during the last 15 years or so appear to have been decisive. It is interesting to note that the newer members of ASEAN seem to have been integrated quickly in Singapore's economic network. [source]