Globalizing Cities

This exciting collection of original essays provides students and professionals with an international and comparative examination of changes in global cities, revealing a growing pattern of social and spatial division or polarization.

This exciting collection of essays provides an international and comparative examination of changes in the spaces and forms of cities, revealing a growing pattern of spatial division and polarization.

The book begins with the editors' hypothesis that there is a new spatial order within cities as the result of the process of globalization. Current issues are examined including the effects of the intersection of global issues - such as economic restructuring and migration - with national and local influences, such as race, politics and culture. The international contributors to the volume use a series of case studies of cities ranging from New York to Calcutta, Frankfurt to Tokyo, Rio to Singapore, Brussels to Sydney, to discuss actual contemporary urban spatial change. In the concluding chapter, the editors summarize the contributions and present readers with a modification of the original hypothesis.

Peter Marcuse is Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University in New York City. He has also taught at the University of California at Los Angeles, as well as universities in Johannesburg, Weimar, and Sao Paulo. He has been President of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission, and a member of a Community Board in New York City. A lawyer as well as planner, he has written widely on comparative housing and planning issues.

Ronald van Kempen is Associate Professor of urban geography at the Urban Research Centre Utrecht at Utrecht University. His current research focuses on the links between spatial segregation, social exclusion and the development of cities. He has published widely on these subjects. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Housing and the Built Environment.