Global City-regions Research Articles

Global city‐regions: trends, theory, policy

Global city‐regions: trends, theory, policy

The geographical foundations of local state initiatives: globalizing Tianjin, China

While a large body of literature has dealt with the process of globalization and the formation of global cities, recent scholarly efforts have begun to examine global city regions, emerging global cities, and globalizing cities. In this paper, through a case study of Tianjin, a traditional industrial city near Beijing, we will unfold the process of reforms and globalization in Chinese cities, the efforts of governments in liberalization and globalization, and the challenges facing globalizing cities in China. We attempt to contribute to the understanding of the process and mechanisms of globalizing cities in developing countries, and thereby add an important dimension to the global city canon. We will show in this paper that despite liberalization and globalization, the Chinese local state is still taking an active role in initiating policies to accelerate urban growth and globalization, and remains an important agent of urban and regional change. Moreover, Tianjin’s globalization efforts face numerous constraints. While acknowledging the role of the state, we argue that local governments do not act in a vacuum, but have to rely on forces operating at global, national, and local scales. In other words, there are strong geographical foundations for the formation and successful implementation of local development initiatives.

Book Review: Global city regions: Their emerging forms

Book Review: Global city regions: Their emerging forms

Book Review: Global city-regions. Trends, theory, policy

Book Review: Global city-regions. Trends, theory, policy

Geography as Interdisciplinary Pivot

Books reviewed in this article:Ronan Paddison (ed.), Handbook of urban studiesGary Bridge and Sophie Watson (eds.), A companion to the cityMichael Dutton, Streetlife ChinaAllen J. Scott (ed.), Global city–regions. Trends, theory, policy

Review: Global City Regions: Their Emerging Forms, Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy, the American Planning Tradition: Culture and Policy

Review: Global City Regions: Their Emerging Forms, Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy, the American Planning Tradition: Culture and Policy

Inequality in Global City-Regions

Within the developed countries, business and governmental leaders of large cities typically aspire to reach global-city status. Yet no convincing evidence shows that the inhabitants of global cities and their surrounding regions fare better than the residents of lesser places. Indeed “the globalcity hypothesis” argues that these metropolises are especially prone to extremes of inequality (Friedmann 1986). Despite being, in aggregate, the wealthiest areas of their respective nations, global-city regions tend to have large, dense groups of very poor people, often living in close juxtaposition with concentrations of the extraordinarily wealthy. According to Sassen (1991), the particular industrial and occupational structure of global cities produces a bifurcated earnings structure that in turn creates the outcome of the “disappearing middle”. This paper shows that global-city regions in wealthy countries do display high levels of income inequality (although not necessarily of class polarization), but that the explanation given by global-city theorists in terms of earnings is not wholly satisfactory. It further indicates that the five wealthy global-city regions of New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, and the Randstad (Netherlands) vary in terms of the extent of inequality. It concludes by examining the reasons for inequality in such regions and the effects of public policy on it.

Global Political Geography beyond Geopolitics

Resisting the Bomb. A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954–1970. Vol. 2 of The Struggle Against the Bomb, Lawrence S. Wittner (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997). 641 pp., cloth (ISBN: 0-8047-2918-2), $65.00; paper (ISBN: 0-8047-3169-1), $24.95. Domestic Society and International Cooperation: The Impact of Protest on U.S. Arms Control Policy, Jeffrey W. Knopf (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 287 pp., cloth (ISBN: 0-5216-2240-9), $59.95; paper (ISBN: 0-5216-2691-9), $19.95. Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940, Stephen I. Schwartz, ed. (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1998). 680 pp., cloth (ISBN: 0-8157-7774-4), $59.95; paper (ISBN: 0-8157-7773-6), $24.95. Global political geography is undergoing a revival of scholarly interest after years of relative neglect. The three books under review provide a good cross-section of recent thinking, addressing three of its primary concerns: the role of geographical scale (local, regional, national, global, etc.) in establishing political identities; geopolitical practice as a form of power/knowledge; and shifts in the “mix” of geographical scales at which the world economy and, increasingly, world politics are organized. Herb and Kaplan claim that political identities can no longer be equated with fixed or stable national ones. AŇ Tuathail argues that geopolitical content is implicit in the very practice of foreign policy. Scott suggests that the world is in a period of transition from a political geography based primarily on a mosaic of state territories to one organized with reference to an emerging network of global city-regions. Each book offers an approach to contemporary international studies that scholars largely ignorant of the revival of political geography may find interesting and useful. Books reviewed in this article: Herb, Guntram H. and Kaplan, David H. (eds.) Nested Identities: Nationalism, Territory, and Scale Tuathail, Gearoid O. Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space Scott, Allen J. Regions and the World Economy: The Coming Shape of Global Production, Competition, and Political Order