ABSTRACT
The chapters that comprise this Part of the book present penetrating insights into the global contexts within which city building and urban planning occur. Cities, their cultures, planning practices and economies increasingly are enmeshed in an array of global processes that include transnational flows and multifaceted circuits of capital, people, ideas and services. With increased globalization has come a fascination not only with its contours and contradictions, but also with the situation of different cities within and outside influential networks. It was in this context, for instance, that the notions of the ‘global’ and ‘world’ city gained currency. Globalization and associated categorizations of cities are founded on the existence of a core and a marginalized periphery with cities increasingly being defined in terms of their locations vis-à-vis the global. A consequence of the fixation on global networks, status, contexts and processes is countervailing interest in the ‘other’ of the global – the local. And so it is with the chapters here, each of which in some way seeks to understand local conditions and processes not only in the context of, but frequently in opposition to, the global.
