Global Networks, Linked Cities [Hardcover]

Saskia Sassen (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0415931622 | ISBN-13: 978-0415931625 | Edition: 1st

In her pioneering book The Global City , Saskia Sassen argued that certain cities in the post-industrial world have become central nodes in the new service economy, strategic sites for the acceleration of capital and information flows as well as spaces of increasing socio-economic polarization. One effect has been that such cities have gained in importance and power relative to nation-states. In this new collection of essays, Sassen and a distinguished group of contributors expand on the author's earlier work in a number of important ways, focusing on two key issues. First, they look at how information flows have bound global cities together in networks, creating a global city web whose constituent cities become 'global' through the networks they participate in. Second, they investigate emerging global cities in the developing world-Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mexico City, Beirut, the Dubai-Iran corridor, and Buenos Aires. They show how these globalizing zones are not only replicating many features of the top tier of global cities, but are also generating new socio-economic patterns as well. These new patterns of development promise to lead to significant changes in the structure of the global economy, as more and more cities worldwide are integrated into globalization's circuitry. Includes contributions from: Linda Garcia, Patrice Riemens, Geert Lovink, Peter Taylor, David Smith, Michael Timberlake, Stephen Graham, Sueli Schiffer Ramos, Christoff Parnreiter, Felicity Gu, David Meyer, Pablo Ciccolella, Iliana Mignaqui, Eric Huybrechts, Ali Parsa

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Reimagining cities as nodes of an immense network of commercial and political transactions, sociologist Saskia Sassen has transformed Information Age geography. Global Networks, Linked Cities collects research, theory, and case studies examining cities in this context by Sassen and 19 other social scientists, focusing particularly on the recent explosive growth in areas formerly--now inaccurately--called the Third World.

The jargon in Global Networks, Linked Cities can be fairly dense and the style arid, but the essays reward patient readers with insight into the interlinked worlds of finance, geography, communications, and geopolitics. Most of the pieces look closely at individual urban regions: Shanghai, Buenos Aires, and, interestingly, Beirut. All have much to tell us about the organic urban development coevolving with globalized commerce and communications, says editor Sassen. As barriers to free information flow erode, we see mergers between political, business, and academic entities.Global Networks, Linked Cities shows us how this is happening and how to think about what's coming next. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

Saskia Sassen's collection is a unique contribution to the emerging literature on global cities and networks: first, because it assembles state-of-the-art presentations by leading researchers in the field, and second, because it gives due attention to key cities in the developing world, which perform vital roles in the new global networks but have hitherto been neglected. No one interested in this central topic of hte new urban geography can afford to miss this book. -- Sir Peter Hall, Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London, Director of hte Institute of Community Development, and author of Cities in Civilization
In Global Networks, Linked Cities, Saskia Sassen extends her path-breaking work on the first tier global cities to focus on the architecture of the networks in which they are embedded. Networking among major cities is generally taken as a key indicator of involvement in globalization, yet few studies examine what those networks actually consist of. This volume plunges into that examination, and the result is a provocative and rewarding foray into the real content of several central concepts in the contemporary discussion of globalization and urban development. -- Peter Marcuse, Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University and co-editor of Globalizing Cities: A New Urban Spatial Order? and Of States and Cities: The Partitioning of Urban Space
In Global Networks, Linked Cities, Saskia Sassen extends her path-breaking work on the first tier global cities to focus on the architecture of hte networks in which they are embedded. Networking among major cities is generally taken as a key indicator of involvement in globalization, yet few studies examine what those networks actually consist of. This volume plunges into that examination, and the result is a provocative and rewarding foray into the real content of several central concepts in the contemporary discussion of globalization and urban development. -- Peter Marcuse, Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University and co-editor of Globalizing Cities: A New Urban Spatial Order? and Of States and Cities: The Partitioning of Urban Space
Saskia Sassen's collection is a unique contribution to the emerging literature on global cities and networks: first, because it assembles state-of-the-art presentations by leading researchers in the field, and second, because it gives due attention to key cities in the developing world, which perform vital roles in the new global networks but have hitherto been neglected. No one interested in the central topic of the new urban geography can afford to miss this book. -- Sir Peter Hall, Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London, Director of the Institute of Community Development, and author of Cities in Civilization
This edited volume contains United Nations U/Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU/IAS) research projects on contemporary global forces underpinnning urban development. The individual essays study the empirical and theoretical specifications on the organizational architecture of an increasing number of transnational cities, particularly cities of the global South that are mid-range on the global hierarchy... Issues specific to Mexico, the Hormuz Corridor, Sao Paulo, Beirut, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Buenos Aires, and Amsterdam are discussed in the twelve chapters. -- Social Change and Economic Development
...explores the key issue of telematics infrastructure and hints at the important policy question of whether infrastructure must lead clustering of coordination functions or vice versa. -- American Journal of Sociology
This collection is an important contribution to the literature on global cities... And yet the roles these cities play in the global economy are sufficently varied to show that historical development and local cultures also shape the impact of globalization. While this may not have been the intended message of these essays, for those interested... it is a welcome message indeed. -- H-Net
Overall this volume provides a wealth of detail on the various interconnections within and between cities in the global hierarchy.
. -- Journal of Planning Education and Research --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1st edition (March 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415931622
• ISBN-13: 978-0415931625
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,142,832 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Almost on the Mark, October 15, 2010

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This review is from: Global Networks, Linked Cities (Paperback)

This book, edited by urban sociologist Saskia Sassen, takes a unique look at the phenomenon of globalization in terms of inter-connected cities held together by commercial ties, telecommunications, and commonality of interests. The book provides some important insights about the role of cities in globalization. Sassen and her colleagues appear to view globalization as creating a networked type of organization with cities serving as nodes and international telecommunication systems serving as connectors. This is a remarkable concept.

Yet the book is seriously flawed by the use of improper or imprecise terminology by its contributors. Terms like `networks', `nodes', and `architecture' are thrown about without much regard for what those terms actually represent. Their constant misuse in this book makes for very confusing reading and obscures the very valid points that the book strives to make.

Although the book was published in 2002 none of its contributors apparently have ever heard of the misnamed Global Telecommunications Network. This is the generic title for a compilation of independently owned and operated international telecommunication (carrier) networks. These networks incorporate domestic and international carriers each of which consists of transmission lines (largely fiber optic cable and satellite) coupled with relays, switching centers and various sub-stations. Nor do any of the authors understand the content carried by these networks is provided by various public and private service providers such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and SWIFT (a private banking service provider). Since the inter-connectivity between cities (and nations) pretty much depends on access to the Global Network, as does international commerce, this is a serious error of omission.

Also there are far too many statements in this book that simply make no sense in terms of telecommunications infrastructures. For example, Stephan Graham informs the reader that "the public, national telecommunication regimes that were ostensibly about throwing electronic networks universally across national space economies are being materially and institutionally splintered" and being replaced by "global strategies." One can only guess that Graham is trying to say that national telecommunication networks are being absorbed into the Global Network. The seeming inability to use precise terminology leaves the reader confused.

To its credit the book becomes stronger when it moves from the theoretical to concrete examples in Part II (Cross Border Regions) and Part III (Network Nodes) with studies of specific cities. Yet here too one runs into puzzling use of terminology such as in the Beirut study by Huybrechts which he sub-titled "Building Regional Circuits." `Circuits' in this context is meaningless when what he is referring to is re-establishing Beirut's import-export role as the principal international port in the regional economy.

In the end Sassen appears to have developed a valid way to describe globalization, but failed to establish either a standardized terminology or a valid model of a networked type of organization. As a result this book makes an unnecessarily weak case for globalization as best represented as a networked type of structural organization.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Outsourcing, in a broader context, May 9, 2004

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W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Global Networks, Linked Cities (Paperback)

With the ever decreasing fall in the cost of communication, both digital and analog, this book speculates that a new global phenomenon may be emerging. A few years ago, during the height of the dot com boom, others suggested that the Web might give rise to the disaggregation of cities or cultural hubs, because cheap communications might let creative individuals work from virtually anywhere with a fast bandwidth connection to the Internet.

But as many major cities in developing countries achieve this thick connection, another possibility emerges, as suggested by this book. It is now possible for some of these cities to parlay this connection and a well educated workforce into a globally prominent role. In part by assuming some of the functionality hitherto almost exclusively taken by first world cities. Think for example on how Silicon Valley is outsourcing some of its work to Mumbai or Bangalore.

The book's suggestions of future global cities is intriguing. Though when they suggest this of Hong Kong, one might argue that it is already a global city by any reasonable measure of how plugged in it is into the global economy.