World City

Cities around the world are striving to be 'global'. This book tells the story of one of them, and in so doing raises questions of identity, place and political responsibility that are essential for all cities. World City focuses its account on London, one of the greatest of these global cities. London is a city of delight and of creativity. It also presides over a country increasingly divided between North and South and over a neo-liberal form of globalisation - the deregulation, financialisation and commercialisation of all aspects of life - that is resulting in an evermore unequal world. World City explores how we can understand this complex narrative and asks a question that should be asked of any city: what does this place stand for? Following the implosion within the financial sector, such issues are even more vital. In a new Preface, Doreen Massey addresses these changed times. She argues that, whatever happens, the evidence of this book is that we must not go back to 'business as usual', and she asks whether the financial crisis might open up a space for a deeper rethinking of both our economy and our society.

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.

A massive population shift transformed Los Angeles in the first decades of the twentieth century. Americans from across the country relocated to the city even as an unprecedented transnational migration brought people from Asia, Europe, and Mexico. Together, these newcomers forged a multiethnic alliance of anarchists, labor unions, and leftists dedicated to challenging capitalism, racism, and often the state. David M. Struthers draws on the anarchist concept of affinity to explore the radicalism of Los Angeles's interracial working class from 1900 to 1930. Uneven economic development created precarious employment and living conditions for laborers. The resulting worker mobility led to coalitions that, inevitably, remained short lived. As Struthers shows, affinity helps us understand how individual cooperative actions shaped and reshaped these alliances. It also reveals social practices of resistance that are often too unstructured or episodic for historians to capture. What emerges is an untold history of Los Angeles and a revolutionary movement that, through myriad successes and failures, produced powerful examples of racial cooperation.

This classic work chronicles how New York, London, and Tokyo became command centers for the global economy and in the process underwent a series of massive and parallel changes. What distinguishes Sassen's theoretical framework is the emphasis on the formation of cross-border dynamics through which these cities and the growing number of other global cities begin to form strategic transnational networks. All the core data in this new edition have been updated, while the preface and epilogue discuss the relevant trends in globalization since the book originally came out in 1991.

Peter Taylor's compelling insights challenge us to view cities as part of a global network, divorced from the constraints of national or even regional boundaries.

Take a tour of Toronto, look around Lisbon or hot-foot it to Helsinki with this global adventure in a book! 30 best-loved cities from around the world are brought to life with illustrations by Martin Haake, which show in fabulous detail key landmarks, famous people, iconic buildings and cultural icons for all the family to enjoy. A search-and-find game on every page helps young readers to explore every city and spot the hundreds of details that makes each place unique.

The definitive biography of the iconic skyscrapers and the ambitions that shaped them--from their dizzying rise to their unforgettable fall More than a year after the nation began mourning the lives lost in the attacks on the World Trade Center, it became clear that something else was being mourned: the towers themselves. They were the biggest and brashest icons that New York, and possibly America, has ever produced--magnificent giants that became intimately familiar around the globe. Their builders were possessed of a singular determination to create wonders of capitalism as well as engineering, refusing to admit defeat before natural forces, economics, or politics. No one knows the history of the towers better than New York Times reporters James Glanz and Eric Lipton. In a vivid, brilliantly researched narrative, the authors re-create David Rockefeller's ambition to rebuild lower Manhattan, the spirited opposition of local storeowners and powerful politicians, the bold structural innovations that later determined who lived and died, master builder Guy Tozzoli's last desperate view of the towers on September 11, and the charged and chaotic recovery that could have unraveled the secrets of the buildings' collapse but instead has left some enduring mysteries. City in the Sky is a riveting story of New York City itself, of architectural daring, human frailty, and a lost American icon.

The World’s Cities offers instructors and students in higher education an accessible introduction to the three major perspectives influencing city-regions worldwide: City-Regions in a World System; Nested City-Regions; and The City-Region as the Engine of Economic Activity/Growth. The book provides students with helpful essays on each perspective, case studies to illustrate each major viewpoint, and discussion questions following each reading. The World’s Cities concludes with an original essay by the editor that helps students understand how an analysis incorporating a combination of theoretical perspectives and factors can provide a richer appreciation of the world’s city dynamics.

Global City Makers provides an in-depth account of the role of powerful economic actors in making and un-making global cities. Engaging critically and constructively with global urban studies from a relational economic geography perspective, the book outlines a renewed agenda for global cities research. Focusing on financial services, management consultancy, real estate, commodity trading and maritime industries, the detailed studies in this volume are located across the globe to incorporate major world cities such as London, New York and Tokyo as well as globalizing cities including Mexico City, Hamburg and Mumbai.

This book identifies and accounts for the characteristics of the contemporary city and of urban society. It analyzes the distribution and growth of settlements and explores the social and behavioral characteristics of urban living. The latest theoretical and empirical developments and insights are synthesized and presented in an accessible and engaging way. This second edition has been extensively updated and referenced. Each chapter includes sets of learning objectives, annotated readings and topics for discussion. Well-illustrated throughout, it will be essential reading for students of geography, sociology and development studies and all who seek an understanding of how the urban world has evolved and how it will change in the twenty-first century.