The fire this time

Abstract

When London awoke on the morning of 14 June 2017, Grenfell Tower had already been burning for several hours. This chapter argues that the neglect of race in discussions about Grenfell is indicative of a wider set of racial erasures in the scholarly literature on global cities and neoliberal urbanism. It draws on the literature on racial capitalism to subject the racial logics of the global city to theoretical inquiry and critique. The chapter argues that today’s neoliberal urbanisation is intimately linked to yesteryear’s ‘urbanisation of empire’. Global cities should be conceptualised as part of a historical as well as ongoing imperial terrain. It introduces the literature on global cities and neoliberal urbanism, as well as its uptake in IR. The chapter argues that a focus on the racial ordering of the global city also requires an engagement with colonial and imperial histories.