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Global cities and urban theory / Donald McNeill.

LIBRA HT151 M389 2017
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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
McNeill, Donald, 1969- author.
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
Cities and towns.
Globalization--Political aspects.
Globalization.
Globalization--Economic aspects.
Urbanization--Political aspects.
Urbanization.
Urbanization--Economic aspects.
Physical Description:
x, 182 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Place of Publication:
London : SAGE, 2017.
Summary:
What do we mean by 'global'? What constitutes a 'city'? And what objects and practices are involved in putting the two together? Global Cities and Urban Theory explores these key modern questions by examining the nature of practices as diverse as container logistics air-conditioning, cathedral design, corporate accountancy, hotel management, city ranking office work, and 'smart city' technologies in the making of contemporary global cities. McNeill place the key 'representational' debates about the nature of the global city alongside materialist epistemologies of how cities are distributed, calculated embodied and organized. Book jacket.
Contents:
Bright lights, global cities 1
Cultural and political economies 6
Material turns 7
The organization of the book 11
1 Centrality 14
Caput Mundi: capital of the world 15
The 'original globalizer'? Cities and territorialized religion 16
The cathedral and the global city 18
Theological centrality 21
Popemobile: universality and visibility 22
Creative globalization? Pilgrimage practices 24
The Bible and the global South 27
2 Flat Cities 32
Actor-networks and political economies 32
A Paris journey; or, the problem of the 'zoom' 34
How big is the city? 39
World's Fairs 41
Centre of calculation 42
The objects that hold Paris together 44
Small Paris: recomposition 46
A rumour of cities 48
3 Global Urban Order(Ing) 52
Metageographies 52
Global rankings 55
The 'ordinary' city' debates 57
Ontologies of big cities 61
Standard cities 65
Global standards I: hotels 66
Global standards II: air conditioning 70
4 Logistical Territories 76
Circumferential and surface geographies 76
Logistical territories 79
Port ontologies 82
A ship-centric ontology of the urban? 86
Airport territories 88
The production of Hong Kong International Airport 92
5 Centres of Calculation 97
CBD: the central business district as a 'centre of calculation' 99
Office geographies 103
Bodies and work 105
Saskia Sassen's financial centres 108
Metrologies of centrality: critical accounting 110
Calculable city space 114
Global cities and the 'super-rich' 116
Moral geographies 117
Forensic urban geography 120
6 WORLD-MAKING 124
Models, experts and consultants 124
Actualization 126
The selling of the Silicon Valley model 130
Management consultancy as worlding practice 132
Co-presence and business travel 134
Gurus and urbanologists 137
San Francisco and the global expansion of Uber 141
Testbeds and experimentation 143
Urban laboratories: New Songdo and Masdar City 144
Conclusions 149
Distance and panorama 150
Global cities are miscellaneous concentrations of firms 152
Calculated territories 153
Power and cities 154
Ethnographic sensitivities 155.
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 157-177) and index.
ISBN:
9781446267066
1446267067
9781446267073
1446267075
OCLC:
969680882

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