World Cities Beyond the West


Book Description

This study was the first systematically to cover those cities beyond the core that most clearly can be considered world cities: Bangkok, Cairo, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Mexico City, Moscow, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, and Singapore. Fourteen leading authorities from diverse backgrounds bring their expertise to bear on these cities across four continents and consider the major regional and global roles they play in economic, political, and cultural life. Conveying how these cities have followed various pathways to their present position, they offer multiple perspectives on the interplay of internal and external forces and demonstrate that any comprehensive discussion of world cities has to engage a multiplicity of perspectives. With an introduction by Josef Gugler and an afterword from Saskia Sassen, this substantial volume makes a major contribution to the world cities literature and provides an important impetus for further analysis.




Urban Theory Beyond the West


Book Description

Since the late eighteenth century, academic engagement with political, economic, social, cultural and spatial changes in our cities has been dominated by theoretical frameworks crafted with reference to just a small number of cities. This book offers an important antidote to the continuing focus of urban studies on cities in ‘the Global North’. Urban Theory Beyond the West contains twenty chapters from leading scholars, raising important theoretical issues about cities throughout the world. Past and current conceptual developments are reviewed and organized into four parts: ‘De-centring the City’ offers critical perspectives on re-imagining urban theoretical debates through consideration of the diversity and heterogeneity of city life; ‘Order/Disorder’ focuses on the political, physical and everyday ways in which cities are regulated and used in ways that confound this ordering; ‘Mobilities’ explores the movements of people, ideas and policy in cities and between them and ‘Imaginaries’ investigates how urbanity is differently perceived and experienced. There are three kinds of chapters published in this volume: theories generated about urbanity ‘beyond the West’; critiques, reworking or refining of ‘Western’ urban theory based upon conceptual reflection about cities from around the world and hybrid approaches that develop both of these perspectives. Urban Theory Beyond the West offers a critical and accessible review of theoretical developments, providing an original and groundbreaking contribution to urban theory. It is essential reading for students and practitioners interested in urban studies, development studies and geography.




Urban Theory Beyond the West


Book Description

Since the late eighteenth century academic engagement with political, economic, social, cultural, and spatial changes in our cities has been dominated by theoretical frameworks crafted with reference to just a small number of cities in the ‘Global North’. This volume seeks to redress that balance and focuses on theoretical engagements with cities beyond ‘the West’.




Seoul, Korea's Global City


Book Description

Seoul, as one of Asia’s rising global cities, has been a place where enormous changes in politics, industry, and culture have taken place over the last five decades. This book explores the new urbanism in Seoul from the perspective of global political economy, focusing on the contexts in which the city has witnessed the transformation of its population structure, such as the rise of the global urban middle class and the city’s increased nodal function in commodity chains. The burgeoning signs of Seoul’s status as a global city are discussed in terms of transnational tourism and the frequency of study abroad, the immigrant community, and cross-border cultural flows. Examining the labour structures within the city, economic growth policy, the role of advanced information technology, and neoliberal urban development, the authors also examine the local response in the city to its emerging status. A study of the development of the Korean capital and its deep embeddedness in the world economy, Seoul, Korea’s Global City will appeal to scholars of sociology, geography and economics with interests in political economy, urban studies and Asian studies.




Ordinary Cities


Book Description

With the urbanization of the world's population proceeding apace and the equally rapid urbanization of poverty, urban theory has an urgent challenge to meet if it is to remain relevant to the majority of cities and their populations, many of which are outside the West. This groundbreaking book establishes a new framework for urban development. It makes the argument that all cities are best understood as ‘ordinary’, and crosses the longstanding divide in urban scholarship and urban policy between Western and other cities (especially those labelled ‘Third World’). It considers the two framing axes of urban modernity and development, and argues that if cities are to be imagined in equitable and creative ways, urban theory must overcome these axes with their Western bias and that resources must become at least as cosmopolitan as cities themselves. Tracking paths across previously separate literatures and debates, this innovative book - a postcolonial critique of urban studies - traces the outlines of a cosmopolitan approach to cities, drawing on evidence from Rio, Johannesburg, Lusaka and Kuala Lumpur. Key urban scholars and debates, from Simmel, Benjamin and the Chicago School to Global and World Cities theories are explored, together with anthropological and developmentalist accounts of poorer cities. Offering an alternative approach, Ordinary Cities skilfully brings together theories of urban development for students and researchers of urban studies, geography and development.




The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History


Book Description

In 2008 for the first time the majority of the planet's inhabitants lived in cities and towns. Becoming globally urban has been one of mankind's greatest collective achievements over time. Written by leading scholar, this is the first detailed survey of the world's cities and towns from ancient times to the present day.




Planning World Cities


Book Description

This major comparative text on urban planning, and the global and regional context in which it takes place, examines what have been traditionally regarded as 'world cities' (New York, London, Tokyo) and also a range of other important cities in America, Europe and Asia. The authors show the role planning has played in the way cities have responded to the forces of globalization, and argue for the importance of diverse – rather than one-size-fits-all – planning practices. This fully revised second edition systematically brings the debates on the impact of globalization right up to date and provides integrated coverage of the latest planning theory and practice. It also contains extended analysis of the implications of the rapid growth of Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing. New material is included on the impact of globalization on poorer mega-cities like Mumbai and Johannesburg.




The Making of Global City Regions


Book Description

Publisher description




The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies


Book Description

Provides comprehensive coverage of major topics in urban and regional studies Under the guidance of Editor-in-Chief Anthony Orum, this definitive reference work covers central and emergent topics in the field, through an examination of urban and regional conditions and variation across the world. It also provides authoritative entries on the main conceptual tools used by anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, and political scientists in the study of cities and regions. Among such concepts are those of place and space; geographical regions; the nature of power and politics in cities; urban culture; and many others. The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies captures the character of complex urban and regional dynamics across the globe, including timely entries on Latin America, Africa, India and China. At the same time, it contains illuminating entries on some of the current concepts that seek to grasp the essence of the global world today, such as those of Friedmann and Sassen on ‘global cities’. It also includes discussions of recent economic writings on cities and regions such as those of Richard Florida. Comprised of over 450 entries on the most important topics and from a range of theoretical perspectives Features authoritative entries on topics ranging from gender and the city to biographical profiles of figures like Frank Lloyd Wright Takes a global perspective with entries providing coverage of Latin America and Africa, India and China, and, the US and Europe Includes biographies of central figures in urban and regional studies, such as Doreen Massey, Peter Hall, Neil Smith, and Henri Lefebvre The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies is an indispensable reference for students and researchers in urban and regional studies, urban sociology, urban geography, and urban anthropology.




New World Cities


Book Description

For millennia, urban centers were pivots of power and trade that ruled and linked rural majorities. After 1950, explosive urbanization led to unprecedented urban majorities around the world. That transformation--inextricably tied to rising globalization--changed almost everything for nearly everybody: production, politics, and daily lives. In this book, seven eminent scholars look at the similar but nevertheless divergent courses taken by Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Montreal, Los Angeles, and Houston in the twentieth century, attending to the challenges of rapid growth, the gains and limits of popular politics, and the profound local effects of a swiftly modernizing, globalizing economy. By exploring the rise of these six cities across five nations, New World Cities investigates the complexities of power and prosperity, difficulty and desperation, while reckoning with the social, cultural, and ethnic dynamics that mark all metropolitan areas. Contributors: Michele Dagenais, Mark Healey, Martin V. Melosi, Bryan McCann, Joseph A. Pratt, George J. Sanchez, and John Tutino.