Writing the ‘architexture’ of the global cityGlobalization and the birth of modern London

Abstract

In this paper Philip Dowdall explores some of the ways in which the discourse of globalization has made itself apparent in the material and cultural fabric of London, and the psyches of the city's inhabitants. The author follows earlier attempts in this journal to describe and analyse the effects of contemporary processes of globalization on the city, and the consequences for those who occupy it (on London, see Michael Edwards and Doreen Massey, in CITY 5(1), for example). Drawing on literary and architectural representations of London from the 17th to the 19th‐centuries, Dowdall points out some surprising but clear parallels between recent discourses on the city's global identity, championed by current Mayor Ken Livingstones attempts to redefine metropolitan identity, and earlier efforts to position London as a gateway to the world. The author sees the city as the focus of continuous self‐conscious re‐invention (340) and writes that ‘Britain had to learn how to build globalization into the very foundations of [its] thinking some 300 years before Livingstone believed it to be a necessary means of survival in a competitive global economy’; arguing that the underlying essence of the discourse of globalization has changed little in the meantime.