The Global City 2.0: From Strategic Site to Global Actor (Cities and Global Governance) - Softcover

Ljungkvist, Kristin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0815370318 ISBN 13: 9780815370314

Publisher: Routledge, 2017

Synopsis

Global cities all over the world are taking on new roles as they increasingly participate directly and independently in international affairs and global politics. So far, surprisingly few studies have analyzed the role of the Global City beyond its already well explicated role in the globalized economy. How is it that local governments of Global Cities claim international political authority and develop what appears to be their own independent foreign and security policies despite the fact that such policy areas have traditionally been considered to be the core function of nation-states and central governments? What does it mean to be and to govern the contemporary Global City?

In this book Kristin Ljungkvist claims that we can better understand why local governments find it to be in their Global City’s interest to claim international political authority by exploring how the city’s role in the globalized world is constructed and narrated locally. A core claim is that Global City-hood as a specific type of collective identity can play a constitutive part in such interest formation.  Combining insights from International Relations and Urban Studies scholarship, and with the help of a case study on New York City, Ljungkvist develops a new analytical framework for studying the Global City as an international political actor.

The Global City 2.0 shows that even as the Global City engages in various global issues such as global environmental governance or counterterrorism, such pursuit will be framed and rationalized in terms of the city’s economic growth. The quest for growth and global competitiveness are not necessarily the only available meanings attached to the being and governing of the contemporary Global City. However, there seems to be a remarkable persistency and attraction in economistic ideas and an economistic conception of the Global City.

About this title

About the Author:

Kristin Ljungkvist is a junior lecturer at the Department of Government and Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her current research interests include global cities and urban politics, security governance, globalization, gender and International Relations, European security and Critical Infrastructure Protection.

Review:

"This book is a major and original contribution to global city analysis. It is the best and most exhaustive treatment of global cities as political actors in a space that goes well beyond the national."―Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, author of Expulsions

"A path-breaking study. Ljungkvist powerfully rethinks conceptions and implications of 'the global city'."―Jan Aart Scholte, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0815370318
• ISBN 13: 9780815370314
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 232