Cities and globalization: a theoretical approach

Abstract

This article proposes a relational understanding of globalization and suggests an analytical approach for studying this process from an urban perspective. Rather than considering cities directly linked to the global economy in a similar, homogeneous way, the article strongly suggests that the mediation of regional and national domains of social action ought to be considered in order to provide a framework for including difference and variation in the treatment of cities in the world-system. The author proposes an approach of «levels of analysis» which helps to undermine the duality local-global. Unlike most analyses of globalization, which propose the end of the nation-state, it is here suggested that states and regions strongly influence the path to globalization of individual cities. Therefore, globalization cannot be explained as an economic or financial process exclusively, but as one in which politics and history matter in very significant ways.