World city

Abstract

Cities around the world are striving to be ‘global’. This book tells the story of one of them, and in so doing raises questions about all such cities. These questions concern identity, place, and political responsibility in the changing geographies of our times. The books also tells the story of the rise of a new class, of deepening inequality, and of the geographical imaginations that are mobilised to legitimate the increasing dominance of these powerful metropoles. In so doing, it sets the global city in its broader geographical and political context.
World City focuses its account on London, one of the greatest of these global cities. London is a city of delight and of creativity. It also presides over a country increasingly divided between North and South and over a neo-liberal form of globalization – the deregulation, financialization and commercialization of all aspects of life – that is resulting in an evermore unequal world.
World City explores how we can understand this complex narrative and asks the question that should be asked of any city: what does this place stand for?