Glurbanization theory: an analysis of global cities

Abstract

This article analyzes glurbanization theory. The theory rests on the premise that major urban transformations and reconfigurations through interscalar strategies and rescaling processes are a good method of increasing the capacity and status of cities (and their regions) to develop global competitive advantages. This urban model stems from the fact that cities are increasingly exposed to global competition. An important tenet of glurbanization is that large cities worldwide, called ‘global cities’, come to share the same essential attributes (i.e., cityscapes, skyscrapers, financial markets, cultural centers, etc.). Another important tenet of glurbanization is that it collapses the global and the local: urban spaces are restructured so that globalization does not become just a top-down hierarchical design whereby the nation-state dictates how things work; rather, globalization is made to happen both from ‘below’ and from ‘above’.