World City Syndrome

World City Syndrome
Author: David Alexander McDonald
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2008
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0415958571

This book examines the significance of Cape Town's claim to being a "world city." McDonald argues that Cape Town must be seen as a neoliberal city, situating it against the broader political and economic reforms of South Africa's re-entry into a global market economy.

World City Syndrome

World City Syndrome
Author: David A. McDonald
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2012-08-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1135903360

The literature on ‘world cities’ has had an enormous influence on urban theory and planning alike. From Manila to London, academics and policy makers have attempted to understand, and to some extent strive for, world city status. This book is a study of Cape Town’s standing in this network of urban centres, and an investigation of the conceptual appropriateness of this world city hypothesis. Drawing on more than a dozen years of fieldwork in Cape Town, McDonald provides an historical overview of institutional and structural reforms, examining fiscal imbalances, political marginalization, (de)racialization, privatization and other neoliberal changes. By examining and analyzes these reforms and changes, McDonald contributes the first radical critique of the world city literature from a developing country perspective.

International Handbook of Globalization and World Cities

International Handbook of Globalization and World Cities
Author: Ben Derudder
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 582
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1781001014

This Handbook offers an unrivalled overview of current research into how globalization is affecting the external relations and internal structures of major cities in the world. By treating cities at a global scale, it focuses on the 'stretching' of urban functions beyond specific place locations, without losing sight of the multiple divisions in contemporary world cities. The book firmly bases city networks in their historical context, critically discusses contemporary concepts and key empirical measures, and analyses major issues relating to world city infrastructures, economies, governance and divisions. The variety of urban outcomes in contemporary globalization is explored through detailed case studies. Edited by leading scholars of the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Research Network and written by over 60 experts in the field, the Handbook is a unique resource for students, researchers and academics in urban and globalization studies as well as for city professionals in planning and policy.

World City Network

World City Network
Author: Peter J. Taylor
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2015-08-17
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1317550536

With the advent of multinational corporations, the traditional urban service function has 'gone global'. In order to provide services to globalizing corporate clients, the offices of major financial and business service firms across the world have generated networks of work. It is the myriad of flows between office towers in different metropolitan centres that has produced a world city network. Taylor and Derudder's unique and illuminating book provides both an update and a substantial revision of the first edition that was published in 2004. It provides a comprehensive and systematic description and analysis of the world city network as the 'skeleton' upon which contemporary globalization has been built. Through an analysis of the intra-company flows of 175 leading global service firms across 526 cities in 2012, this book assesses cities in terms of their overall network connectivity, the regional configurations they form, and their changing position in the period 2000-12. Results are used to reflect on cities and city/state relations in the context of the global ecological and economic crisis. Written by two of the foremost authorities on the subject, this book provides a much-needed mapping of the connecting relationships between world cities, and will be a valuable resource for students of urban studies, geography, sociology and planning.

Routledge Handbook of the History of Sustainability

Routledge Handbook of the History of Sustainability
Author: Jeremy L. Caradonna
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 624
Release: 2017-10-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1134866550

The Routledge Handbook of the History of Sustainability is a far-reaching survey of the deep and contemporary history of sustainability. This innovative resource will help to define the history of sustainability as an identifiable field. It provides a unique resource for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars, and delivers essential context for understanding the current state and future path of the sustainability movement. The history of sustainability is an increasingly important domain within the discipline of history, which draws on an interdisciplinary set of fields, ranging from energy studies, transportation, and urbanism to environmental history, economics, and philosophy. Key sections in this handbook cover the historiography of sustainability, resilience and collapse in historical societies, the deep roots of sustainability (seventeenth century to nineteenth century), the recent history of sustainability (twentieth century to present), and core issues and key debates in sustainability. This handbook is an invaluable research and teaching tool for those interested in the history and development of sustainability and an essential resource for the many sustainability studies programs that now exist in the world's universities.

Locating Right to the City in the Global South

Locating Right to the City in the Global South
Author: Tony Roshan Samara
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2013-01-04
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1136201858

Despite the fact that virtually all urban growth is occurring, and will continue to occur, in the cities of the Global South, the conceptual tools used to study cities are distilled disproportionately from research on the highly developed cities of the Global North. With urban inequality widely recognized as central to many of the most pressing challenges facing the world, there is a need for a deeper understanding of cities of the South on their own terms. Locating Right to the City in the Global South marks an innovative and far reaching effort to document and make sense of urban transformations across a range of cities, as well as the conflicts and struggles for social justice these are generating. The volume contains empirically rich, theoretically informed case studies focused on the social, spatial, and political dimensions of urban inequality in the Global South. Drawing from scholars with extensive fieldwork experience, this volume covers sixteen cities in fourteen countries across a belt stretching from Latin America, to Africa and the Middle East, and into Asia. Central to what binds these cities are deeply rooted, complex, and dynamic processes of social and spatial division that are being actively reproduced. These cities are not so much fracturing as they are being divided by governance practices informed by local histories and political contestation, and refracted through or infused by market based approaches to urban development. Through a close examination of these practices and resistance to them, this volume provides perspectives on neoliberalism and right to the city that advance our understanding of urbanism in the Global South. In mapping the relationships between space, politics and populations, the volume draws attention to variations shaped by local circumstances, while simultaneously elaborating a distinctive transnational Southern urbanism. It provides indepth research on a range of practical and policy oriented issues, from housing and slum redevelopment to building democratic cities that include participation by lower income and other marginal groups. It will be of interest to students and practitioners alike studying Urban Studies, Globalization, and Development.

Locating Right to the City in the Global South

Locating Right to the City in the Global South
Author: Tony Roshan Samara
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2013
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0415635640

Drawing from scholars with extensive fieldwork experience, this volume covers sixteen cities in fourteen countries across a belt stretching from Latin America, to Africa and the Middle East, and into Asia. Central to what binds these cities are deeply rooted, complex, and dynamic processes of social and spatial division that are being actively reproduced. These cities are not so much fracturing as they are being divided by governance practices informed by local histories and political contestation, and refracted through or infused by market based approaches to urban development. Through a close examination of these practices and resistance to them, this volume provides perspectives on neoliberalism and right to the city that advance our understanding of urbanism in the Global South.

Managing Global Risks in the Urban Age

Managing Global Risks in the Urban Age
Author: Yee-Kuang Heng
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 131
Release: 2016-03-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317101642

The first full-length exposition of what it terms a global city-global risks nexus, this volume crosses disciplinary boundaries to draw upon research from Security Studies; Geography; Sociology; and Urban Studies. Innovative in its approach integrating theories about Global Cities with those positing a Global Risk Society, Yee-Kuang Heng positions this research in the midst of two concurrent global trends that will gain more significance in coming years. The world is experiencing the consequences of not only rapid globalisation, but also urbanization. In 2008, the UN declared that more than half the world’s population was now urban. At the same time, highly connected global cities like New York, London, Tokyo and Singapore also face rapidly spreading global risks such as pandemics and financial crises. Unique in developing a typology of global risks that threaten a global city like Singapore, beyond its Asian focus, the book also draws out thematic and policy lessons pertinent to other global cities. ’Global cities’ do not simply materialize. They are dependent on a range of stakeholders at various levels that produce and re-produce its command and control capabilities, in the face of global risks. Singapore’s experiences managing global risks in the financial; aviation; and maritime domains are common concerns shared by many countries and cities that have, or aspire to develop, similar critical infrastructure.

World City

World City
Author: Doreen Massey
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2013-04-23
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0745654827

Cities around the world are striving to be 'global'. This book tells the story of one of them, and in so doing raises questions of identity, place and political responsibility that are essential for all cities. World City focuses its account on London, one of the greatest of these global cities. London is a city of delight and of creativity. It also presides over a country increasingly divided between North and South and over a neo-liberal form of globalisation - the deregulation, financialisation and commercialisation of all aspects of life - that is resulting in an evermore unequal world. World City explores how we can understand this complex narrative and asks a question that should be asked of any city: what does this place stand for? Following the implosion within the financial sector, such issues are even more vital. In a new Preface, Doreen Massey addresses these changed times. She argues that, whatever happens, the evidence of this book is that we must not go back to 'business as usual', and she asks whether the financial crisis might open up a space for a deeper rethinking of both our economy and our society.

Cities of the Global South Reader

Cities of the Global South Reader
Author: Faranak Miraftab
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2014-10-10
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317636791

The Cities of the Global South Reader adopts a fresh and critical approach to the fi eld of urbanization in the developing world. The Reader incorporates both early and emerging debates about the diverse trajectories of urbanization processes in the context of the restructured global alignments in the last three decades. Emphasizing the historical legacies of colonialism, the Reader recognizes the entanglement of conditions and concepts often understood in binary relations: first/third worlds, wealth/poverty, development/underdevelopment, and inclusion/exclusion. By asking: “whose city? whose development?” the Reader rigorously highlights the fractures along lines of class, race, gender, and other socially and spatially constructed hierarchies in global South cities. The Reader’s thematic structure, where editorial introductions accompany selected texts, examines the issues and concerns that urban dwellers, planners, and policy makers face in the contemporary world. These include the urban economy, housing, basic services, infrastructure, the role of non-state civil society-based actors, planned interventions and contestations, the role of diaspora capital, the looming problem of adapting to climate change, and the increasing spectre of violence in a post 9/11 transnational world. The Cities of the Global South Reader pulls together a diverse set of readings from scholars across the world, some of which have been written specially for the volume, to provide an essential resource for a broad interdisciplinary readership at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in urban geography, urban sociology, and urban planning as well as disciplines related to international and development studies. Editorial commentaries that introduce the central issues for each theme summarize the state of the field and outline an associated bibliography. They will be of particular value for lecturers, students, and researchers, making the Cities of the Global South Reader a key text for those interested in understanding contemporary urbanization processes.