Introduction - Global Cities/Local Sites

The essays in this collection selectively examine the material, imaginative and historical configurations of urban locations across four continents. Using a case-study approach, each essay opens up an understanding of how global and local forces intersect in the production of the spaces—or occasionally, non-spatial locations—of urban life. The extent to which spaces become places and then, in a sometimes unpredictable narrative, revert to the more anonymised spaces of global cities is a concern that runs through the collection as a whole. [Taken from the introduction]