Foreword

Abstract

Foreword Matthew D. Kaczmarek, Lauren S. Witlin, and Elizabeth Allen The United Nations, in its 2007 revision of World Urbanization Prospects, reported that by the end of 2008, a majority of the world’s population would live in urban centers. At their core, cities are fundamentally local organisms, where local interests compete for attention from local policymakers, who can, in turn, host, influence, and help drive national policy priorities. In recent decades, however, scholars began to explore the larger role that cities also play in international relations. The interconnectedness of global cities creates channels for physical and human capital, while the common challenges facing megacities attract policy attention from international organizations ranging from the World Bank and UN Development Program to a variety of urban-focused NGOs. In the thematic tradition of the SAIS Review, this edition began with an interest in exploring the implications for international relations posed by the development of these common geographic nodes in countries around the world. Our authors provide a range of analytical frameworks, representing both the diversity of the academic fields actively engaged in the study of cities today, as well as the variety of analytic approaches used in each field. To begin this issue, Saskia Sassen provides an introduction to the complexity of comparing and analyzing cities, challenging the reader to shed his or her own biases regarding the purpose of cities, and suggesting a plethora of opportunities for the analytical comparison of cities across national borders. Alan Gilbert then identifies a single component—slums—commonly associated with cities in the developing world, and offers a critique of those who oversimplify the problems and solutions that surround this phenomenon. Jamie Peck, Nik Theodore, and Neil Brenner offer a more abstract analysis of the role of cities as laboratories for global development policy consensus, and important centers of resistance to such consensus. In the second section, individual cities are engaged to identify specific factors useful in the analysis of broader themes within international relations. Hinting of larger overarching challenges associated with an anticipated reunification of the Korean peninsula, Harry Richardson and Chang-Hee Christine Bae offer insight into the very practical policy decision of selecting a capital city. Kent Calder and Mariko de Freytas suggest a class of ‘global political cities’ are underappreciated actors in the politics of international relations, and use SAIS’ own host city, Washington, D.C., as their case study. Finally, Allison Garland and Lauren Herzer offer the crisis in Zimbabwe and the lack of very basic services available in the extreme example of today’s Harare as a warning of the very real danger posed by national-level political and economic failure. [End Page 1] In the third section, our authors review emerging analyses on two of the most popular topics of current urbanization research. Carla Freeman evaluates two new volumes, one by Deborah Davis and Wang Feng and the other by Thomas Campanella, on urbanization and social change in China, while Peter Lewis reviews Rem Koolhaas’s innovative multimedia project analyzing Lagos, Nigeria. Finally, we include three reviews on current topics in international relations: Richard Gowan reviews Karen Mingst and Margaret Karns, Raymond Gilpin reviews Paul Collier, and Lisa Curtis reviews Ramachandra Guha. The SAIS Review is pleased to congratulate the winners of the SAIS Review Prize: Patrick Douglass for Essay, Benjamin Krause for Photo Essay, and Audrey Villinger for Book Review. We are thoroughly indebted to our advisory board for sharing their wisdom and guidance throughout 2008 and into 2009. Finally, our strongest gratitude goes to our entire staff of associate and assistant editors for their hard work and dedication in the production of this edition. The SAIS Review is committed to advancing prominent and emerging scholarship in international relations, and the topic of urbanization offers a seemingly endless variety of approaches and cases that touch every field of the SAIS curriculum. The policy challenges facing cities of every size are the same transnational macro-policy challenges: health, energy, and environment. The rule of law, systems of democratic participation, and economic prospects of a city are at the least representative of the country as a whole, while in some cases represent the limit of a state’s...