The Blackwell Companion to Globalization

Chapter 12

Cities and Globalization¹

MICHAEL TIMBERLAKE AND XIULIAN MA

INTRODUCTION

From nearly the beginning of scholarly and popular discourse on globalization, writers on the subject have featured the world’s large cities. There are at least three reasons for this. First, the great cities in the world are cosmopolitan places. They embody notions of globalization in the way visitors experience them. Usually various cultures from around the world are represented on the city streets, in the dress and ethnicity of the residents, in the array of cuisines available in restaurants and from street vendors, in the languages one hears spoken at cafes and in the wide array of consumer goods available in shops. Second, scholars who study cities and urbanization processes have long recognized that large cities command considerable influence over the regions surrounding them, constituting ‘central places’ in the immediate region. Such cities are frequently the sites of relatively greater economic opportunity than the surrounding region and, thus, attract migrants from rural areas and smaller towns. Large cities frequently exert considerable cultural and political sway as well as economic weight. Cities have such influence because they are administrative centres for organizations such as corporations, government bureaucracies and non-profit organizations whose dealings extend well beyond the city limits. In fact, these city-based organizations are usually part of larger networks of organizations ...