This exciting collection of original essays provides students and professionals with an international and comparative examination of changes in global cities, revealing a growing pattern of social and spatial division or polarization.

The force of globalization is making cities change all around the world. Short's study explores how the discourse of globalization has become a major narrative in the restructuring of cities in many parts of the world.

The newly revised Globalizing Cities Reader reflects how the geographies of theory have recently shifted away from the western vantage points from which much of the classic work in this field was developed. The expanded volume continues to make available many of the original and foundational works that underpin the research field, while expanding coverage to familiarize students with new theoretical and epistemological positions as well as emerging research foci and horizons. It contains 38 new chapters, including key writings on globalizing cities from leading thinkers such as John Friedmann, Michael Peter Smith, Saskia Sassen, Peter Taylor, Manuel Castells, Anthony King, Jennifer Robinson, Ananya Roy, and Fulong Wu. The new Reader reflects the fact that world and global city studies have evolved in exciting and wide-ranging ways, and the very notion of a distinct "global" class of cities has recently been called into question. The sections examine the foundations of the field and processes of urban restructuring and global city formation. A large number of new entries focus on the emerging urban worlds of Asia, Latin America and Africa, including Beijing, Bogota, Cairo, Cape Town, Delhi, Istanbul, Medellin, Mumbai, Phnom Penh, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Shanghai. The book also presents cases off the conventional map of global cities research, such as smaller cities and less known urban regions that are undergoing processes of globalization. The book is a key resource for students and scholars alike who seek an accessible compendium of the intellectual foundations of global urban studies as well as an overview of the emergent patterns of early 21st century urbanization and associated sociopolitical contestation around the world.

Globalization has been built upon, and maintained by, major urban centers. As the interconnections among these cities grow, more cities become involved as important global nodes, and globalization has an extremely strong influence upon the forms and functions of cities everywhere. This new textbook examines modern cities worldwide through two lenses: as the major nodes in the global economy, and as primary propagators of cultural ideas across the world. Exploring the ramifications of the continuing penetration of global forces into smaller urban areas, this book clearly distinguishes economic, cultural, and political processes to demonstrate how global attachments are shaping many of the basic features of modern cities. Specifically, the book examines the way cities accommodate huge global flows of people, including migrants, tourists, and the managers of multi-national firms, and the effects this has upon the cultural, economic, and political forces associated with globalization in cities. The main features of the book include: a balanced emphasis upon how economic, technological, and cultural forces shape both urban and global developments; a highly interdisciplinary focus, incorporating major works and ideas from urban scholars writing in sociology, geography, anthropology, and politics; detailed case studies of events and activities within specific cities and regions that illuminate major trends; end of chapter reading lists of corresponding chapters in The Globalizing Cities Reader, second edition, edited by Xuefei Ren and Roger Keil and published by Routlegde in 2018. Written in a clear and accessible style, Globalizing Cities: A Brief Introduction will appeal to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in both urban and globalization courses within sociology, geography, and urban studies.

As urbanization of the world’s population grows at an ever-increasing pace, the need to understand the effects of globalization on cities is at the forefront of urban studies. Traditional scholarship largely employs a framework of analysis based on the globalizing experience of Western cities. In Globalizing City, Richard Grant draws on ten years of empirical research in Accra, Ghana’s capital city, to show how this African metropolis is as deeply transformed by globalization as the cities of other world regions. Grant reveals the ways in which international, transnational, and local forces are operating on the urban landscape of Accra, from elite gated communities to the poorest slums. Through interviews and extensive fieldwork, he examines how foreign companies, returned expatriates, and native Ghanaians foster globalization on multiple levels. Globalizing City offers an excellent case study of the complex social and economic dynamics that have transformed Accra, providing an essential guide for studying globalizing cities in general.

A Study on Globalizing Cities is the latest masterpiece by Zhou Zhenhua, a famous Chinese economist, who closely tracks the theoretical study of global cities and is actively engaged in the strategic research of Shanghai''s development. With rich empirical data and an in-depth analysis, this book is of great theoretical and practical significance. Different from studies on global cities by renowned western scholars, this book extends its perspective to globalizing cities. It explores a unique development model for China''s globalizing cities by adopting a creative angle of observation and analytical methods. By criticizing that the traditional global city theory derives the logic relations of global cities directly from globalization, Mr Zhou puts forward the concept of globalization city, which is introduced as a new intermediate explanatory variable. More importantly, this book emphasizes that the building of global cities is not only dependent on the distribution of urban space and urban economic development but also on comprehensive construction of multiple structures and functions of cities.

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.