Global Cities in Analog: Modernism and Intercity Relations, 1900-1940

Abstract

This article reflects on modernism from 1900 to 1940 on globalist terms. The turn of the twentieth century was a period of rapid urbanization, pronounced intellectual foment, labor politics, and severe colonial relations. Its upheavals formed the context for modernist approaches to city building. It was also a period of unprecedented interconnectedness where modernisms coalesced under a series of transnational movements. The Werkbund, Bauhaus, and Congrés Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) gained international recognition, influencing the creation of whole cities. Global cities studies, the research program most responsible for conceptualizing urban networks, have oddly little to say about the modernist period that prefigured the global city. This article breaks this arbitrary barrier in global cities studies, which equate global cities with the advent of digital linkages. By doing so, it recognizes the international city as its immediate precursor, fostering remarkable political, economic, and social changes under the heading of modernism. The twenty-first century neoliberal city archetype looks politically limited by comparison, its ossified institutions in need of reinvigoration.