r bal cities of the South rging perspectives on and inequality - U-M Personal World...

Global cities of the South:Emerging perspectives on growthand inequalityGavin Shatkin *

U rban and Regional P lanning Program, U niversity of M ichigan, 2000 B onisteel B oulevard,A nn A rbor, M I 48109, U nited States

Received 15 December 2005; received in revised form 26 September 2006; accepted for publication 7 October 2006Available online 23 January 2007

This paper attempts to reframe debates on the equity implications of spatial, socioeconomic,and political change in global cities in developing countries through a review of recent literatureon this topic. It begins by critiquing the view that global cities in developing countries are con-verging around a model of development similar to that of the prototypical global cities of theUnited States, Europe, and Japan. It argues that three emerging perspectives hold the key to ananalysis that better accounts for local agency and divergent outcomes in such cities: a focus onthe diversity of cities’ experience with globalization; recognition of the inherently negotiatednature of global impacts on urban outcomes; and a focus on actor-centered perspectives inurban analysis. The combined influence of these ideas amounts to a shift from a focus on globalcity ‘models’ to an examination of the interaction between global and local actors and institu-tions in a particular setting. Building on this literature review, the paper suggests an alternateframework for analyzing the link between global city development and inequality that focuseson three processes of change: the formation of public–private partnerships in urban governance,the spatial implications of the privatization of planning, and the flexiblization of labor. It arguesthat a focus on these processes has important implications for both theory and practice, as itallows us to understand similarity and difference in urban development, and more importantly,to understand the actors, institutions and interests that are driving change. 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

K eywords: Global cities, developing countries, equity

IntroductionThe literature on global and world cities asserts thatthe spatial, social, and political development of cer-tain cities is profoundly shaped by their function as‘command and control’ centers in the global econ-omy. Very large cities in developing countries haveincreasingly been analyzed under this rubric, andsome have argued that we are seeing a convergenceof global/world cities around a model of urbaniza-tion that originates in the West, and particularly inthe United States (Cohen, 1996; Dick and Rimmer,

1998; Cowherd and Heikkila, 2002; Leichenckoand Solecki, 2005). This assertion has proven contro-versial, however, and a growing chorus has arguedthat the global/world city concept overstates thepower of actors and institutions operating at a globallevel, and underestimates local agency and contin-gency (Robinson, 2002; Flusty, 2004; Hill, 2004;Roy, 2005). The question at the center of this debateis: How do we understand change in global cities,and how do we account for local contingency andagency in our analysis? Given the pace of urbaniza-tion in developing countries, the unprecedentedscale of emerging urban regions, and their economicand political importance for their countries, address-ing this question would appear to be a central task ofcontemporary urban theory.

*Tel.: +1-734-763-2075; fax: +1-734-763-2322; e-mail: [email protected].

C ities, Vol. 24, No. 1, p. 1–15, 2007 2006 Elsevier Ltd.All rights reserved.

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doi:10.1016/j.cities.2006.10.002

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In this paper, I add to critiques of the idea ofconvergence, and, through a review of recent stud-ies, identify alternative models for analyzing globalcity development in developing countries that I be-lieve better account for local agency and variationin outcomes.1 The problem with prevailing perspec-tives on convergence, I argue, is that they are tooquick to zoom in on observed similarities in urbantrends, and gloss over important sources of differ-ence rooted in cultural, geography, and institutionaldynamics. In other words, many studies begin withoutcomes in a few paradigmatic cases such as NewYork, London, and Los Angeles, and then look tosee whether this global city ‘shoe’ fits in places likeShanghai, Mexico City, or Buenos Aires. In thefirst section of the paper, I provide a brief reviewof critiques of the perspective of convergence,and then identify three emerging trends in theoriz-ing global cities that hold the key to analysis thatbetter accounts for local agency: a growing focuson the diversity of cities’ experience with globali-zation; recognition of the inherently negotiatednature of global impacts on urban outcomes; anda focus on actor-centered perspectives in urbananalysis. The combined influence of these ideasamounts to a shift from a focus on global/world city‘models’ to a more grounded examination of theinteraction between global and local actors andinstitutions in a particular setting. This is an impor-tant development for theory as it allows for a muchmore precise understanding of urban development,and also for policy and planning, because it moreaccurately identifies the actors who shape and legit-imize urban change, and strategies they employ indoing so.

In the final section, the paper draws on these alter-native perspectives to reassess one of the centralhypotheses of the global cities literature—that cer-tain social inequalities are inherent to the processof global city development. Three specific manifesta-tions of inequality have been a focus of attention:

The first is social inequality, which emerges associal classes in the global city become polarizedbetween a wealthy professional class and animpoverished low-wage service sector class (Mol-lenkopf and Castells, 1991; Friedmann, 1995; Sas-sen, 1998).

The second is uneven development, which occursas social polarization becomes embedded in thespatial form of the city in the form of socioeco-nomic segregation and unequal access to livablespace. This is manifest in the American context inthe suburbanization of the wealthy, the phenome-

non of gated communities, and the formation ofcentral city ‘ghettoes’ of the poor (Marcuse, 1997;Marcuse and van Kempen, 2000a).

Finally, political inequality refers to the process bywhich urban politics comes to be dominated byinterest groups who favor growth-oriented policiesover the interests of neighborhoods (Logan andMolotch, 1987).

Several recent studies have argued that these out-comes are also apparent in cities like Jakarta, Shang-hai, Istanbul, and Mexico City. While certainsimilarities do indeed exist, I argue that focusing onthese similarities distracts us from an examinationof important differences, and also from asking ques-tions about what is causing change. Drawing on theliterature review presented in the first half of the pa-per, I endeavor to reframe the global city-inequalityhypothesis by employing an actor-centered, histori-cally informed, and contextually grounded approach.I propose alternative conceptualizations of spatial,political and socioeconomic inequality in global cit-ies that avoid the assumption that such cities indeveloping countries will inevitably follow the trajec-tory of the global cities of the advanced economies.

Refocusing the global/world cities lensRobinson (2002, p. 531) has argued that one of thecentral contradictions in contemporary urban the-ory is that cities throughout the world are consis-tently analyzed with reference to ‘‘the (usuallyunstated) experiences of a relatively small groupof (mostly western) cities.’’ This observation is par-ticularly relevant to the literature on ‘global’ and‘world’ cities, which has brought attention to theemerging function of certain cities as commandpoints in the world economy and as locations forspecialized business firms (Sassen, 2001). A numberof empirical studies, notably those of the Globaliza-tion and World Cities group (GAWC), have catego-rized many large developing country cities asglobal/world cities based on their economic functionand the presence of global headquarters and pro-ducer service firms. One oft-cited study found that18 of the 25 largest cities outside of Europe, theUnited States and Japan ranked somewhere onthe roster of world cities (Beaverstock et al.,1999—see T able 1 for a detailed breakdown). Thesecities tend to achieve global/world city status due totheir role in coordinating the integration of theirnational economies into the global economy, andoften lie at the center of large ‘global city-regions’(Scott et al., 2001). For example, Metro Manila,Bangkok and Jakarta have emerged as ‘gamma’world cities as they have become the center fornational headquarters of transnational corporationsand producer service firms that coordinate manufac-turing production, and increasingly export-orientedservices, in their extended metropolitan regions.

1 The focus throughout the paper will primarily be on cities in Asia,although examples will be drawn from other regions. This reflectsboth my own background and the greater prevalence of studies onAsian cities.

G lobal cities of the South: E merging perspectives on growth and inequality: G Shatk in

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Focus on these cities’ role as ‘command and con-trol’ sites has led to questions about the implicationsof this function for their development. A growing setof studies has attempted to apply frameworks devel-oped primarily in the United States, examining so-cial polarization, the development of urbanregimes, and emergent consumer landscapes in awide range of contexts (Dick and Rimmer, 1998; Fir-man, 1998; Pirez, 2002; Graizborg et al., 2003; Chiuand Lui, 2004; Firman, 2004; Salcedo and Torres,2004; Wu and Webber, 2004; Keyder, 2005; Lei-chencko and Solecki, 2005). Many of these studieshave argued for a convergence of urban form andpolitics, although there is considerable variation inthe degree to which the causes of convergence aretheorized and potential sources of difference areexplored.

While the methodology of quantitative studiesmeasuring global/world city functions undertakenby the GAWC and others can and should be ques-tioned, this paper does not deny that cities playsuch command and control functions, and that thishas a profound impact on their spatial, social andpolitical development. Rather, it argues that manystudies have privileged similarity with the experi-ence of cities in the West, notably New York andLondon, and their analysis is consequently skewed.I hypothesize that global/world cities in fact havequite diverse experiences with global integrationand may be diverging along some parameters in

their functions in the global economy, and in theirdevelopment. This study is not the first to arguethat the search for a specific and universal set ofoutcomes may be fruitless. In a seminal compara-tive study, for example, Marcuse and van Kempen(2000a) propose abandoning the term ‘global city’altogether, instead adopting the more general term‘globalizing cities’. Inasmuch as all cities in today’sworld could be said to be ‘globalizing’ in some wayor another, however, this alternative concedesimportant observations about the role of certaincities as points of coordination of global productionand in the process of production. I argue for keep-ing the terms global and world city, but thinkingmore carefully about the implications of these rolesfor a city’s development.

The strength and appeal of the global/world citiesliterature is that it provides a coherent and theoret-ically grounded account of the dramatic processes ofchange that many cities have undergone in the pasthalf century. In this account, the restructuring ofthe global economy has created a need for new typesof cities that coordinate decentralized forms of pro-duction by playing host to highly centralized coordi-nating functions such as corporate headquarters,legal and financial services, and research and devel-opment (Friedmann, 1995; Sassen, 2001). The modi-fication of cities to these new roles has a profoundeffect on social and cultural change, leading specifi-cally to the emergence of a new class of highly

Table 1 The world city status of the 25 largest cities in developing countries according to Beaverstock et al.’s ‘Roster of World Cities’

City Population (thousands) Beaverstock et al. rankinga

Mexico City, Mexico 19,013 BetaMumbai (Bombay), India 18,336 EvidenceSao Paulo, Brazil 18,333 BetaDelhi, India 15,334 EvidenceCalcutta, India 14,299 N/ABuenos Aires, Argentina 13,349 GammaJakarta, Indonesia 13,194 GammaShanghai, China 12,665 GammaDhaka, Bangladesh 12,560 N/ARio de Janeiro, Brazil 11,469 EvidenceCairo, Egypt 11,146 EvidenceLagos, Nigeria 11,135 N/ABeijing, China 10,849 GammaMetro Manila, Philippines 10,677 GammaKarachi, Pakistan 10,032 N/AIstanbul, Turkey 9760 GammaSeoul, South Korea 9592 BetaTianjin, China 9346 N/ALima, Peru 8180 EvidenceBogota, Colombia 7594 EvidenceTehran, Iran 7352 EvidenceHong Kong, China 7182 AlphaChennai (Madras), India 6915 N/ABangkok, Thailand 6604 GammaBangalore, India 6532 N/A

Source: Derived from Beaverstock et al. (1999) and UN Habitat (2005).a ‘Alpha’ city status means that a city is a ‘prime’ center for producer service firms, while ‘beta’ and ‘gamma’ refer, respectively, to ‘major’and ‘minor’ centers for such firms. ‘Evidence’ means that there is evidence of world city formation. These rankings are based on anempirical evaluation of the office locations of multinational accounting, advertising, banking and law firms.


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skilled professionals, and the marginalization of theold industrial working class and immigrants, who arerelegated to low-wage jobs in the service economy(Mollenkopf and Castells, 1991; Friedmann, 1995;Sassen, 1998). These economic functions also createan impetus for the retrofitting of the built environ-ment of cities, as developers create new types ofoffice, residential and commercial space to meetthe demands of business and the new elite (Marcuse,1997; Marcuse and van Kempen, 2000a). Simulta-neously, the politics of redevelopment requirea new type of governance, one that is able to identifythe shifting demands of capital in an unstable andrapidly changing economic climate and bringcapital to the table in pushing a redevelopmentagenda (Logan and Molotch, 1987; Fainstein, 1995).The result is increasingly ‘entrepreneurial’ localgovernments.

This narrative has largely been formulated withreference to a select number of cities in advancedindustrial economies. Yet it is arguably a ratherblunt instrument for understanding change, as ittends gloss over obvious sources of diversity rootedin history, culture, institutions, and geography(Abu-Lughod, 1999). Three specific critiques of theapplication of the global city model are notable.The first questions the narrowness of the focus on‘‘certain stylish sectors of the global economy,’’notably producer and business services and hightechnology industries, as the dominant sectors shap-ing contemporary urban development (Robinson,2002, p. 532). It questions the dualistic portrayal inthe urban studies literature between places that arebeing transformed by these sectors and others whichare presumed to be shaped by exclusion and margin-alization. The implicit critique is that, given the var-ied ways in which cities articulate with global flowsof money, goods, people, and ideas, the meaningof globalization is not adequately captured by a fo-cus on the location decision of a small number ofmultinational producer service firms.

The second critique argues that the global citiesliterature as a whole is tinged with ethnocentrismas it assumes that all such cities will follow the tra-jectory of New York and London, when in fact thesecities are uniquely shaped by a liberal economic ide-ology, a consumerist culture, and a polarized socialstructure (White, 1998; Hill and Kim, 2000; Hill,2004). In societies where the state is more inclinedto intervene in social issues, the hypothesized out-comes for socioeconomic, political, and spatialpolarization in cities are not nearly as pro-nounced—Paris, Tokyo, and Seoul have been usedas examples to illustrate this. As White (1998, p.464) puts it, ‘‘states can allow or disallow a city toglobalize and dualize.’’

A third critique argues that much of the globalcity literature is ahistorical. Davis (2005a) points toa long tradition of studying cities in developingcountries in ways that link urban change to integra-

tion into the world economy, most notably depen-dency theory. She questions the recent rediscoveryof such links during the current era of market trium-phalism, and argues that the global cities literaturehas started down the slippery slope of past theoriesof development, and particularly modernization the-ory, which view the advanced economies as an endstate that developing countries are inexorablyadvancing towards.

At the core of each of these critiques is the con-tention that the global city models have failed to ex-plain social change, or to prescribe appropriatepaths towards desired change, because they havefailed to understand both the contingency of localchange on dynamics rooted in history and culture,and the shifting nature of the world economy (Davis,2005a). In response, proponents have defended theglobal/world cities concept by arguing that ‘‘thegains [of generalizing about global/world cities] havefar outweighed the losses’’ (Taylor et al., 2002, p.231). While this may be true, there is certainly scopefor a more fine-grained analysis. As Yeoh (1999, p.613) argues, even as we might accept the core pre-mises of the global cities concept:

. . .the need exists for theorizations of the global citywhich weave together historical, economic, cultural,sociopolitical and discursive dimensions. This is anurgent task, if both the ‘global’ and the ‘urban’ arenot simply to be reduced to articles of faith. The factthat the term ‘global city’ is increasingly accepted ascommon currency does not necessarily imply theoret-ical rigour; instead, the metaphorical hubris, withwhich the term is often invested, signals the need toknuckle down to making real sense of what has beenfrequently called the ‘new sensibility’ informingurban futures.

One important step in this direction is an effort tofind ways to generalize about the experience of glo-bal cities that do not depend on myopia with respectto difference and contingency. The next section re-views some of the growing number of studies thathave undertaken this task. It identifies three centralthemes that emerge from these studies: recognitionof the diversity of cities’ experience with global eco-nomic integration; adoption of a perspective thatviews urban change as a negotiated rather than atop-down process; and a focus on actors in analyzingthe global-urban interface.

Recogni z ing diversity in forms of integration intothe global economyRobinson’s (2002, p. 535) important critique of theglobal city model argues that the exclusive focuson command and control functions of cities resultsin a perspective in which ‘‘millions of people andhundreds of cities are dropped off the map. . .to ser-vice one particular and very restricted view of thesignificance or (ir)relevance to certain sections ofthe global economy.’’ There are three main reasons


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that the focus on finance and producer services isinadequate to explain the diversity of outcomes forcities in developing countries. First, because theyfunction as ‘command and control centers’ of amuch lower order than New York or London, multi-national corporate headquarters and producer ser-vice firms shape their development to a far lesserdegree. Roberts (2005), for example, finds that pro-ducer services aimed at organizing production forglobal markets simply do not constitute as significanta factor in the urban economies of Latin Americancities as is predicted by the global cities literature.Second, as Chakravorty (2000) argues, globalizationhas accompanied the industrialization of many citiesin developing countries, and they are consequentlyunlikely to exhibit the same spatial and social char-acteristics of ‘post-Fordist’ cities, such as the decayof old central city industrial districts. Finally, whilethe global cities literature focuses on cities’ role incoordinating manufacturing production for the glo-bal market, cities in fact export an increasingly di-verse array of products and services, each of whichhas their own spatial logic. Some examples are listedbelow:

Labor has become an increasingly importantexport commodity ‘produced’ by global/world cit-ies, and remittances to developing countries fromoverseas workers totaled an estimated $125 billionin 2004 (Maimbo and Ratha, 2005). In manycountries this has far outstripped other sourcesof foreign investment—in the Philippines, forexample, remittances amounted to seven timesthe amount of foreign direct investment in recentyears (Maimbo and Ratha, 2005). Popular percep-tions aside, in many countries migrants are dispro-portionately urban and educated, and the laborexport industry is often highly concentrated inlarge cities (Tyner, 2000). Researchers have onlyrecently begun to examine the implications of thisphenomenon for urban development, but in MetroManila, for example, ‘overseas contract workers’and their families have supported a boom in resi-dential and commercial real estate at a time wheneconomic growth in other areas has stagnated(Burgess and Haksar, 2005).

Tourism is the second largest export sector in theworld, and the construction of tourism enclaves isoften an important impetus for urban redevelop-ment (Fainstein and Judd, 1999). This is certainlytrue in most large Asian cities, which have experi-enced dramatic increases in tourist arrivals, andwhich tend to view the promotion of urban tourismas part of a larger agenda of place-marketing. Intheir e orts to construct a positive image and fostertourist consumption, public and private sectoractors may create enclaves that exacerbate socio-

economic segregation. However, urban tourismalso provides broad-based economic opportunityas the tourism economy may support a large num-ber of small enterprises such as guest houses, shops,restaurants and craft production (Mullins, 1999).

The growth of business process outsourcing (BPO)is having a profound impact on urban develop-ment and real estate markets in a growing numberof cities, with some of the more notable examplesbeing Bangalore, Guadalajara, and the plannedhigh-tech city of Cyberjaya outside of Kuala Lum-pur (Bunnell, 2002; Audirac, 2003). This form ofdevelopment has significant implications for urbandevelopment, as it fosters the creation of a newclass of highly educated worker, and also createsa powerful imperative for new forms of real estatedevelopment and infrastructure.

The development of cities may be shaped by otherglobal forces, including integration into markets fornatural resource extraction, through the global crim-inal economy, through foreign aid, and throughinternational institutions and non-governmentalorganizations (Simon, 1995; Shatkin, 1998; Robin-son, 2002; Taylor, 2005).

The recognition of this diversity has severalimplications for our understanding of equity issuesin global cities. While the distribution of the costsand benefits of these different forms of integrationvaries, each has created economic opportunity fora large segment of urban populations. Nonetheless,these various forms of integration all carry withthem the instability and intense competition forinvestment that characterize economic develop-ment in a globalizing world, and each subsequentlybrings with it the potential for new forms of eco-nomic insecurity. Hence the equity implicationsof these new economic activities are not immedi-ately apparent, and are contingent on the eco-nomic activity in question, and the context of thesociety.

H istorici z ing analysis and understanding urbanchange as a negotiated processStudies rooted in a variety of disciplinary back-grounds have called for a grounding of global andworld city studies in an understanding of local his-tory, and a view of urban change not as imposedfrom above but rather as an inherently negotiatedprocess (Abu-Lughod, 1999; AlSayyad, 2001a; Kusno,2000; Nasr and Volait, 2003b; Hill, 2004). They haveemployed a range of theoretical frameworks to doso, including: one that examines structures of globalpolitical and economic power as a ‘nested hierarchy’in which ‘‘parts and wholes are not subordinated toone another,’’ and cities therefore ‘‘both facilitatethe globalization process and follow their own rela-tively autonomous trajectories’’ (Hill, 2004, p. 374);


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examination of the role of ‘planning culture’ in shap-ing planning outcomes (Sanyaled, 2005); and anexamination of cultural hybridity and the develop-ment of a ‘third space’ between the local and theglobal as people in localities reshape cities accordingto local social, cultural and political imperatives(Kusno, 2000; AlSayyad, 2001a). The commonthread in these frameworks is an effort to restoreagency to urban analysis, and refute perspectivesthat depict local residents as ‘‘impotent, passiveand guileless. . ..spectators observing physical andspatial [as well as social and political] changes thatthey neither control nor understand’’ (Nasr andVolait, 2003b).

This emphasis on negotiation between the localand the global has been applied most prominentlyto studies of the built environment (AlSayyad,2001a; Nasr and Volait, 2003a; King, 2004). In onerecent example, Kusno (2000) demonstrates howthe Suharto regime in Indonesia sought to rearticu-late both local and colonial/global references inarchitecture and urban design in Jakarta to createa national memory that suited its own agenda of ex-port-oriented growth and authoritarian politics. Inthe realm of urban politics, studies have contestedthe tendency to deny local agency both in criticalstudies, and in a prescriptive literature emergingfrom the World Bank and other organizations,which argues that the demands of globalization mer-it the empowerment of private sector interests and amodest and deferential role for local government(World Bank, 2000). In Asia specifically, studieshave argued that ‘developmental’ states are capableof creating growth and moderating socioeconomicinequity where there is political accountability, andthat such accountability emerges where there existwidely held cultural norms concerning state–societyrelations and close ties between the state and civilsociety (Douglass, 1994; Douglass, 1995; Hill andKim, 2000). Two notable examples are Hong Kongand Singapore, which Castells et al. (1990, p. 331) ar-gue have managed to achieve steady economicgrowth in part by building social cohesion throughinterventions in the realm of collective consumption,most importantly through the development of publichousing. They attribute their ability to do so to his-torical conditions that led to the emergence ofstrong states in these two city-states.

Two observations emerge from these perspectives.First, it is apparent that ‘models’ of urban form andpolitics that are transmitted by actors operating at aglobal level inevitably go through a process of adap-tation and reinterpretation, and sometimes rejec-tion, as they meet local cultures, institutionaldynamics, and social formations. Second, these mod-els may go through a process of transformation overtime as local actors gradually reshape them to theirown needs. History provides many examples of suchtransformation. For example, Clarence Perry’sneighborhood unit concept has profoundly influ-

enced urban planning in many parts of the world,including India. Yet, in the Indian context, extra-le-gal modifications of neighborhood layouts over timehave led to such a dramatic physical transformationthat the influence of this model is no longer apparentin most cities today (Vidyarthi, 2005).2 Similarly,although political institutions in many postcolonialsocieties are often modeled on those of the metro-pole, and have been influenced in many contextsby the diffusion of international ‘models’, outcomesfor the distribution of power in society can varyquite dramatically. It is necessary therefore to avoidpremature conclusions about the convergence of ur-ban form or politics, and shift our focus to these pro-cesses of adaptation, if we are to understand theimpacts of globalization.

G rounding our understanding of globali z ation inactors and actionsClosely related to the emerging perspective ofhybridity is the employment of actor-centeredframeworks of urban analysis, which, it has been ar-gued, provide a more concrete understanding of howglobal forces shape and are shaped by local forces,and how local contingency and agency play a rolein urban development (Yeoh, 1999; Olds, 2001;Markusen, 2004). An actor-centered perspective fo-cuses on the social power actors employ and theinterests and ideologies they pursue. It views localactors as active participants both responding to pres-sures in their external environment and trying toshape them to their own ends. This is therefore aview in which ‘‘(s)tructure and agency are not con-trasted, but complexified and integrated’’ (Nasrand Volait, 2003b). It is also one that stresses a needfor deep historical analysis as a basis for understand-ing the interests of actors and their basis of power ininstitutions, social networks, and cultural beliefs.

In general, attention has focused on how actorsoperating at a global level have shaped urban devel-opment, including corporate actors (Beaverstocket al., 1999; Grant and Nijman, 2002), principals atinternational architectural firms (Olds, 2001; Mar-shall, 2003; Sklair, 2005), and representatives of inter-national aid and lending organizations (Burgess et al.,1997). However, local actors, or actors whose inter-ests straddle geographic scales, play a key role inshaping outcomes as well. These include local devel-opers and realtors (Dick and Rimmer, 1998; Haila,2000; Sajor, 2003; Sajor, 2005), and an emerging con-sumer classes (Davis ed, 2000). Perhaps most impor-tantly, local and national governments play a keyrole in providing the legal, policy and regulatoryframework in which development occurs (Firman,1997; Kelly, 2001). There is also a growing realizationthat the interests and preferences of these actors can-not be understood with reference to the transmission

2 I am indebted to Sanjeev Vidyarthi for this observation.


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Table 2 Reinterpreting the global/world city-social inequality link

Socioeconomic inequality Political inequality Uneven development

Diversity in theglobal city experience

Labor relations and economic opportunity vary bythe degree of global economic integration a city isexperiencing and the types of products it produces.Yet global economic integration creates commonpressures to develop flexible and competitive laborregimes, creating an inherent tension between growthand equity.

While governments in market economies face acommon context of incentives to engage newactors in city-building, who these actors areand the political strategies they pursue are inpart a function of the mode of insertion intothe global economy (e.g. throughmanufacturing, business services, tourism, orother export products).

Different modes of incorporation into the globaleconomy have different spatial implications, e.g.different degree of centralization anddecentralization, and different impacts on realestate markets.

Historical perspectiveand hybridity

Efforts to make cities competitive in the globaleconomy play out in the forging of capital-laborrelations and local and national state interventions inthese relations that reflect historically specific state–society relations.

The political forms that emerge—the form ofpublic–private partnership and the relativestrength of the public and private actorsinvolved—is shaped by the historical state-community relations and cultural norms.

Spatial development also reflects the preferencesof urban residents, which are shaped in part byglobal influences, but also importantly byhistorical spatial patterns, household relations,ethnic, class and other differences, and othersocial and cultural variables.

Actor-centeredperspective

The relative inclusion and exclusion of actors fromthe benefits of globalization’s economic impacts is inpart a function of social group relations based oncaste, race, ethnicity, property ownership, and othervariables.

Fundamental to understanding urban politicsis an understanding of who the actors involvedin global city-building are and what their basisof social power is.

Spatial change in part reflects demands for newtypes of space by both firms and households,which in turn reflects changes in social relations insociety at large. On the supply side, it also reflectsnew powers and imperatives to foster ‘global city’development among developers and government.

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of ideas from the West alone, but rather reflect deeprooted cultural norms and social patterns. Yet localactors also confront incentives and imperatives inthe context of global economic and political change.It is through the interaction of these actors and inter-ests that contemporary ‘hybridity’ is constituted.

T owards a more flexible frameworkWhat emerges from these perspectives is a view ofglobal city development that rejects a uniform mod-el of change and instead focuses on the unique nat-ure of the interaction between global and localactors and institutions in a particular setting. Actorsin cities throughout the world are presented withcertain opportunities and threats with globaliza-tion—opportunities to realize material enrichmentand new forms of cultural and political expressionthrough new forms of production and consumption,and threats to existing economic arrangements,political institutions, and ways of life from bothexternal and internal actors who have an interestin global change. The preferences of actors in shap-ing urban development are informed by their attrac-tion to or repulsion from these new ideas, images,and institutions. The power that they bring to the ta-ble in influencing urban development is shaped byhistorically formed social relationships, institutionalframeworks, cultural paradigms, and spatial pat-terns. The nature of the opportunities and threatsposed by globalization also shift with changes inthe global economy (for example the recent shift to-wards the offshoring of services), and these shifts arereflected in changes in urban development.

T able 2 brings this discussion back to the ques-tion of the link between global city developmentand inequity by sketching out the implications ofthese three emerging perspectives for the threecentral hypotheses of global city-social inequalitytheory discussed earlier. It is worth noting thatthe framework that emerges from this table is fruit-ful for examining variation in the experience ofglobal cities in both developed and developingcountries. Hence, while the specific focus of thispaper is to question the common view of conver-gence of developing countries with the Westernexperience, this paper also finds common groundwith those who question more generally the useful-ness of broad generalizations about the equityoutcomes of global city development. In the nextsection, I will build on critiques of the idea of con-vergence and the alternative frameworks presentedabove by attempting to reframe the link betweenglobal city development and inequality in globalcities of developing countries.

Understanding change and inequality in theglobal cities of developing countriesIn some respects, cross-national similarities in pat-terns of urban development are quite apparent. Pub-

lic and private sector actors seek to build the tallestbuilding, the sleekest rail system, or the mostimpressive airport, in an effort to draw attention totheir global linkages. Wealthy elites in many non-Western countries seek housing that is explicitlymodeled on what are perceived as European andAmerican styles. Cities throughout the world haveexperienced trends towards political and fiscaldecentralization that have given them new powers.Such surface similarities, however, mask importantdifferences. This section attempts to reframe discus-sions of the link between global city developmentand inequality in a manner that recognizes urbanchange as a negotiated process, allows for the possi-bility of divergence in urban outcomes, and exploresthe role of both global and local actors in shapingequity outcomes. I argue that there is a need tomove beyond frameworks developed with referenceto the West—specifically, the hypothesized trendstowards political inequality/growth regime politics,socioeconomic inequality/polarization, and unevendevelopment/segregation and spatial mismatch—toadopt frameworks that are more adaptable to di-verse circumstances. Based on a review of recentstudies, I propose three alternative ways of concep-tualizing political, spatial and social developmentthat are intended as a first step towards a broadlycomparative framework for explaining inequity inglobal cities. These are: the formation of public–pri-vate partnerships in urban politics and planning; thespatial implications of the privatization of planning;and the flexiblization of labor.

T he formation of public–private partnerships inurban politics and planningOne process of change that is perhaps universal tothe experience of global cities is the increasingrole of for-profit private sector actors in urban pol-itics, and the growing tendency for local govern-ments to seek partnership with these actors inpursuing development goals. This is evident inthe formation of public–private partnerships in ur-ban infrastructure provision, the growing role ofthe private sector in building and managing urbanenvironments, and increased participation by theprivate sector in urban policy and planning deci-sions. This section will explore the applicabilityof concepts in vogue in the United States and Eur-ope that attempt to explain this phenomenon,notably regime theory and growth regime politics,to cities of developing countries. It argues thatthese frameworks hold a great deal of promise,but that profound variation in the relationship be-tween the state, the for-profit private sector, andcivil society belies any simplistic depiction of theconvergence of urban politics.

Fainstein (1995, p. 35) argues that the questionof the influence of social power and the ‘‘issueof whether urban politics can affect distributional


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outcomes’’ lies at the core of any discussion of ur-ban planning and policy. The literature on plan-ning in developing countries, however, retains astrong focus on the planning process, largely disre-garding the role of politics and power. A largeprescriptive literature on urban politics, such asthat coming out of the World Bank, assumes apluralist conception which posits that all socialgroups have sources of power that they can useto achieve their ends. The predominant paradigmis the ‘enablement model’, which posits that adecentralized, democratic, and market orientedform of governance will not only provide for eco-nomic efficiency and global competitiveness, butwill also provide venues for popular influence ongovernment through non-governmental and com-munity organizations (World Bank, 2000). Criticalstudies of global/world cities in developing coun-tries also often assume little agency for local gov-ernment in the face of economic and politicalpressures from global economic actors, local elites,and national governments bent on growth.

Recently, however, a handful of studies haveendeavored to apply regime theory, the dominantframework for analyzing urban politics in the Uni-ted States, to a variety of developing country con-texts (Zhang, 2002; Xu and Yeh, 2005). Regimetheory starts with the assumption that, in citiesmarked by competition to capture footloose capi-tal, ‘‘leaders must develop policies in concert withthose who have access to that capital’’ (Fainstein,1995). An urban regime has been defined by Stone(1989, p. 6) as ‘‘the informal arrangements bywhich public bodies and private interests functiontogether in order to be able to make and carryout governing decisions.’’ Yet regime theoryavoids economic determinism by emphasizing thatgovernment does enjoy some autonomy from cor-porate interests through the space created by dem-ocratic politics, and that urban politics is thereforedefined by:

. . .the creation of preferences and the translation ofthose choices into policy. There is a sophisticated rec-ognition that policy is not simply the imposition ofpreferences by an economic elite but rather the shap-ing of public opinion by upper class groups. Thus,ideology or public values become crucial to an under-standing of what government of the third sector canor should do (Fainstein, 1995, p. 36).

Regime theory thus disavows a view of urbanplanners and policy-makers as disinterested techno-crats, instead seeing them as political actors who caneither promote or contest the dominance of capitalby shaping the discourses that surround the imple-mentation growth-oriented politics.

Is regime theory applicable to the context of glo-bal cities in developing countries? Stone (1993, p.2) argues that there are two conditions that regimetheory takes as given:

One is a set of government institutions controlled toan important degree by popularly elected officialschosen in open and competitive contests and operat-ing within a larger context of the free expression ofcompeting ideas and claims. Second, the economyof a liberal order is guided mainly but not exclusively,by privately controlled investment decisions. Aregime, whether national or local, is a set of arrange-ments by which this division of labor is bridged.

These conditions exist to some degree in the con-text of most developing countries, where the vestigesof authoritarian regimes are gradually being cast offin favor of electoral political systems and market-oriented political orders. The emergence of theexport-oriented industrialization model of develop-ment has coincided with the development in manyparts of the world of decentralized, democratic gov-ernance frameworks. In Asia, for example, Jakarta,Taipei, Bangkok, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, and MetroManila all have elected local leaders, are engagedin intense competition for global investment, havevarying degrees of freedom of the press, and haveincreasingly embraced the orthodoxy of the public–private partnership. Each has a contingent of non-governmental organizations representing diverseinterests. Many cities have experienced recent re-forms for decentralization that are premised at leastin part on a belief that local government will be ableto bring a broader set of resources and interests intothe urban development process, thus encouraginggrowth (Burki et al., 1999).

Yet regimes elsewhere will not necessarily lookanything like the quintessential American urban re-gime. Regime theory as it has developed in the Uni-ted States reflects a distinct context of racial politics,post-Fordist urban development, liberalism, andlocalism. Countries also vary in the degree to whichelectoral contests actually matter. Severe restrictionson political mobilization outside of the ruling partyexist in some contexts (such as Singapore, Malaysia,and China), while vote-buying and patronage poli-tics influences outcomes in others (such as Thailandand the Philippines). There is also variation in thedegree of freedom of expression in the press andother forums. Nonetheless, the time seems ripe inmany cities to raise the questions that are centralto the regime theory framework, while remainingalert to contextual differences (Zhang, 2002).

Two particularly important differences warrantspecial attention. The first is the historical and con-temporary relationship between the central and lo-cal state. In many countries this relationship hasbeen a significant source of tension, as colonial andpost-colonial states have attempted to extend theircontrol over peripheral regions in efforts at nation-building. Centralization further intensified in manycountries during the cold war as a consequence ofanti-insurgency efforts. Contemporary trends towardsdecentralization have reflected intense struggle over


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local power by a variety of actors, including en-trenched national bureaucracies, local elites, socialmovements, and others. The outcomes of thesestruggles, and the extent of control gained by theseactors, have varied widely between different coun-tries and cities. The second source of variation isthe relative power and legitimacy of government,which has also been profoundly shaped both bypost-colonial experiences with nation-building andcentral rule, and experiences with global economicintegration.

Understanding these two sources of variation isnecessary to interpret change in a particular setting.For example, analysts have attributed the frag-mented nature of urban governance in Metro Manila,and the consequent capture of local government byeconomic interests, to the power of local elites andweakness of central government, both of which havedeep roots in the Philippines’ colonial and post-colonial history (Kelly, 2000). In China, by way ofcontrast, national governments have exerted a greatdeal of influence in providing incentives and auton-omy to appointed local officials to encourage themto pursue globalization-oriented urban redevelop-ment (Xu and Yeh, 2005). Here, the lack of account-ability of local governments both to capital andcommunities paradoxically leads to the potentialfor overinvestment and economic instability.

Analyses of this sort requires an understanding ofhistorical and social context that is taken for grantedin studies of urban regimes in the United States. Ifmodified to account for local context—differencesin state power and legitimacy, central-local relations,social relations based on gender, ethnicity, caste,landownership, and other variables—regime analysiscaptures better than any other conceptualization theways that local governments seek to form partner-ships for political change, and the constrains andopportunities they confront in doing so. It maytherefore help to explain the roots of contemporarypolitical inequities both in history and in contempo-rary forms of integration into the global economy,and reveal the ideological constructs that perpetuatethese inequalities. At the same time, regime analysisretains a focus on the power of the state, and its po-tential as an agent for more redistributive policy andplanning outcomes. It therefore enables us to askpolicy and planning-relevant questions about socio-economic and political change in the global era:What political and economic interests do urbandevelopment outcomes represent? What alternativesources of power exist? And, how might plannersemploy these to foster more equitable outcomes?

T he spatial implications of the privati z ation ofplanningIn globalizing cities, urban space is shaped by theinteraction between global networks and local ac-tors and institutions. Inasmuch as local cultures

and political economies differ, spatial outcomeswill differ as well. Yet recent literature has focusedon the idea of global convergence of urban form.Inherent in many such analyses are two assump-tions: that ‘Western’ urban form is directly im-posed on developing countries through thehegemony of Western planning ideas, and thatthe desires of emergent elites in developing coun-tries with respect to spatial development simplymimic those of the Western middle class. I argue,however, that cultural differences and local politi-cal and institutional dynamics render these assump-tions untenable. A more powerful mode of analysisfocuses on the shared interests of local and na-tional governments, and both local and multina-tional investors, to maximize the profitability andglobal economic competitiveness of urban spaces.This convergence of interests has resulted in somecontexts in what I refer to as the privatization ofplanning, a process that results in different spatialoutcomes in different contexts.

The idea of the privatization of planning goes be-yond the simple assertion that the private sectorinfluences urban development. Friedmann has de-fined planning as purposeful social action in theshaping of place, and privatization has been de-fined as an increase in private sector ownershipof or power over activities or assets that had previ-ously been in government hands (Friedmann, 1987;Savas, 2000). Hence I define the privatization ofplanning as the transfer of responsibility for andpower over the visioning of urban futures and theexercise of social action for urban change frompublic to private sector actors. This shift has beenpredicated on a view that the for-profit private sec-tor is more qualified and better equipped torestructure urban space in order to realize the goalof economic advancement through global economicintegration. This stems in part from a perceptionthat the public sector has failed to achieve thesegoals due to its proclivity for corruption, ineffi-ciency and authoritarianism, and in part from a be-lief that the corporate sector is better attuned tothe imperatives of economic growth and the desiresof multinational corporations and an emerging con-sumer classes.

The privatization of planning is a function of sev-eral common constraints and incentives that govern-ments face in the global era:

The development of an export-oriented economyhas given rise to powerful new political actors,most notably foreign and domestic corporateinterests and a consumer class, who demand newtypes of consumer, residential, o ce and industrialspace that are more economically e cient and con-sumer-oriented. In Asia in particular, the devalua-tion of the Japanese Yen following the PlazaAccords resulted in a wave of Japanese o shoring


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from the mid-1980s on that set in motion funda-mental changes in the political economy of urbandevelopment (Bello, 2004).

At the same time, governments in many parts ofthe world find themselves hemmed in by pressuresfor fiscal austerity and therefore incapable ofresponding to imperative to retrofit cities to theneeds of capital and consumers. Governments inmany parts of the world also face crises of legiti-macy stemming from legacies of authoritarianism.

In this context, privatization has become part ofnew models of governance advocated by interna-tional aid and lending organizations, whichemphasize scaled back government, local controland public–private partnership (Burgess et al.,1997; Miraftab, 2004a).

These changes have accompanied the emergence ofa number of multinational architectural and plan-ning consulting firms, and growth in domestic realestate development industries. The latter has beenmost notable in Asia. In Southeast Asia in partic-ular, developers, often of Chinese heritage, havetapped into abundant sources of equity from inter-national capital markets and networks of overseasChinese (Haila, 2000; Olds, 2001; Sajor, 2003). It isalso evident, however, in cities in Latin Americaand elsewhere (Pirez, 2002).

In Asia, this process of privatization has beenmanifest most clearly in the development in manycities of private sector built integrated megaprojectsincluding residential, commercial and industrialspace. Notable examples include Lippo Karawacinear Jakarta, Muang Thong Thani near Bangkok,and Fort Bonifacio Global City in Metro Manila,which when initiated had projected populationsupon completion of between 250,000 and one mil-lion (Dick and Rimmer, 1998; Hogan and Houston,2002; Marshall, 2003).3 These megaprojects arelinked up by premium transportation infrastructure,including light rail lines and toll roads, that is alsousually developed by the private sector, and some-times by the developers of the megaprojects them-selves (World Bank, 2004). Facilitated bygovernment assistance in land acquisition, subsidiesfor transportation infrastructure, and political sup-port, these projects represent efforts to transferresponsibility for the visioning of urban futuresand the definition of social goals to the private sec-tor. In some cities a few large developers have begunto develop ‘portfolios’ of geographically diversifiedmegaprojects that are reshaping urban landscapes.

A perspective of the privatization of planninghelps to explain some cross-national similarities in

changes to urban form while revealing the limita-tions of comparisons with the racially polarizedlandscapes of many American cities, defined as theyare by blighted inner cities surrounded by anti-urbansprawl. It is apparent that, even as urban regions arebeing reshaped by new types of residential develop-ment and spatial expansion, the rejection of urbanityitself that characterizes urban development in manyAmerican cities has yet to fully take hold in mostother parts of the world, and may never do so. Inmany megacities, central city housing markets con-tinue to be strong, and integrated megaprojects areoften quite dense and urban in character. Indeed,some have argued that the reliance of the wealthyin many societies on services provided by a relativelyimmobile urban poor precludes the type of spatialpolarization seen in the United States (Chakravorty,2000). One study in Chile finds that the developmentof gated communities has actually decreased spatialseparation of the wealthy and the poor as it allowedthe wealthy to live close to poor communities whilestill feeling secure, and that this proximity has had apositive impact on interclass relations (Salcedo andTorres, 2004). Regardless of whether this dynamiccan be found elsewhere, the point to be made is thatlocal context and agency are critical to an under-standing of spatial change.

Importantly, the perspective of the privatization ofplanning shifts the focus from a supposedly uniformprocess of adoption of ‘Western’ cultural and socialmores to policy-relevant questions about how thegoals of urban development should be defined, whoshould define them, and the potential roles of publicand private sector interests in bringing about desiredchange. Why has the transfer of responsibility forcity-building been shifted to the private sector, andwhat is the public rationale for doing so? What rolesdo public and private actors play in redevelopmentand infrastructure projects? What levers of influencedoes the public sector continue to employ, and towhat ends does it use this influence? Whose interestsare reflected in resulting changes to urban form,whose are disregarded, and why?

These questions point to the important observa-tion that any process of privatization must involveactive government facilitation through the restruc-turing of urban bureaucracies and relaxation of pub-lic influence over urban development. The potentialremains for the public sector to influence the direc-tion of change even as the private sector plays agrowing role by: playing a role in defining the objec-tives of privately developed plans; mandating de-sired outcomes like the development of affordablehousing or public participation; and shaping the pub-lic discourse around private development projects.Government can also exercise control over regionaldevelopment through land use regulation and otherforms of intervention in land markets, and throughtransportation planning. There is considerable varia-tion in the degree to which they do so.

3 It should be noted, however, that current populations are muchsmaller.


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In sum, the idea of the privatization of planningdeparts from a focus on convergence in that it leavesthe door open to government and community-basedagency. It leads to practical and important questionsabout the exercise of urban governance for equityobjectives.

T he flexibli z ation of laborFinally, this paper suggests the concept of the flexib-lization of labor as an alternative to the perspectivesof socioeconomic dualization and polarization.There are at least two reasons that the perspectiveon dualization and social polarization does not ade-quately capture the social outcomes of globalizationin all contexts. First, asChakravorty (2000) notes, thedeindustrialization that has bred the decline of themiddle class in the United States and other post-For-dist societies implies its opposite in developing coun-tries, many of which have seen a growth inmanufacturing production. The benefits of thisdeconcentration of industrial production have spreadunevenly, with Latin America and Africa experienc-ing severe economic dislocation and less benefit thanAsia, but a simple focus on polarization denies thesignificant amount of economic opportunity that thisprocess has afforded. Second, the idea of polariza-tion, if defined based on material living conditionsalone, does not capture the complex relationship be-tween economic well being and social status that hasemerged with the globalization of many urban econ-omies. It is apparent that the rhetoric surroundingglobal city development has shaped popular percep-tions of social class in important ways (Machimura,1998; Kelly, 2000). An excellent example of this isAuyero’s (1999) poignant description of the paradox-ical situation of residents of one Argentine slum, whohave experienced gradual improvement in materialliving conditions even as their employment prospectshave become increasingly tenuous and they haveexperienced intense discrimination due to public per-ceptions of their community as economically redun-dant and socially dysfunctional.

The concept of the flexiblization of labor attemptsto capture the coexistence of opportunity and inse-curity that characterizes labor markets in the global-izing cities of developing countries. Corporationsface increasing competition even as they are ableto tap into a global labor pool, and they have reactedby seeking labor that is flexible, trainable, adaptable,and cheap. As labor markets and legal frameworkshave responded to this imperative, practices suchas outsourcing, employment of home-based workers,and contract work have become commonplace in thecorporate sector, and increasingly the public sectoras well.

An important outcome of this process has been theemployment of a range of formal and informal insti-tutions by local and national governments, and firms,to discipline labor. These include the use by firms of

contract and short-term labor, and the placement ofage and gender restrictions on employment, andthe use by local government of both formal powersand informal social relations to reduce the power ofunions and foster the development of a compliant la-bor force. Research has only begun to examine thedevelopment of what Kelly (2001) has referred toas local labor control regimes. One exception is hisstudy of labor market processes in export processingzones in the Philippines, which attempts to overcomesimplistic depictions of ‘‘straightforward exploitationof abundant, cheap, and place-bound labor by space-controlling international capital’’ (Kelly, 2001, p. 2).His analysis reveals the ways in which labor relationsare shaped by norms governing local social relationsthat are deeply rooted in the historical developmentof the locality. Specifically, it points to the role ofgender relations in Philippine households, and tothe role of local political bosses in the Philippinepolitical economy, in shaping labor markets andworking conditions.

Another aspect of this process of flexiblization isthe role of the informal economy. In order to be use-ful, the concepts of informalization and the informaleconomy must first be stripped of their ideologicalovertones. The informal economy represents neitherheroic entrepreneurship, as represented in the workof DeSoto and others, nor uniform oppression, as of-ten represented by some on the political left (Roy,2005). The informal also does not constitute a sepa-rate ‘sector’, cut off from the rest of the economyand mired in backwardness. Rather, the informaleconomy should be viewed as a set of economicactivities that are ‘‘unregulated by the institutionsof society, in a legal and social environment in whichsimilar activities are regulated,’’ and that constitutean increasingly important part of the flexible andadaptable labor markets that drive the global econ-omy (Castells and Portes, 1989: 12). The informaleconomy has persisted with globalization, and grownin many contexts, reflecting the strategies of eco-nomic actors and state institutions as they havesought new modes of economic organization thatare conducive to export-oriented production. Cas-tells and Portes (1989) refer to several specificcauses of informalization linked to globalization,including: growing anti-union sentiment both amongfirms and, to a lesser degree, elements of the work-ing class, as a reaction to economic crisis and newopportunities in the global economy; reaction byfirms and workers against state regulation of theeconomy for the same reasons; and the emergenceof a particular form of industrialization in manydeveloping countries that relies on less regulated la-bor markets.

A third aspect of flexiblization is the use of legaland illegal immigrant labor (Douglass, 2001). Whilethis has been discussed extensively in the context ofglobal/world cities in the advanced economies,immigrant labor has come to play a significant role


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in labor markets in many cities, including Bangkok,Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, and many others.

As is apparent from the preceding discussion, theconcept of the flexiblization of labor is useful in ana-lyzing change in most parts of the world, includingthe developed economies, many of which are wit-nessing increases in immigration, the rise of contractlabor, and informal economic activities. What a fo-cus on the flexiblization of labor allows us to do,however, is to focus on the distinct contexts in whichthese processes play out rather than an assumed setof socioeconomic outcomes modeled primarily onthe American experience. This framework drawsattention on the actors involved in urban economicdevelopment, including state agencies, firms, andworkers, and the social institutions and externalpressures that shape their behavior. It also incorpo-rates an understanding of the distributional impactsof changes in labor markets, which may reflect theinfluence of gender, age, race, ethnicity and othervariables on social behavior (Miraftab, 2004b). It re-veals specific issues related to labor rights, discrimi-nation based on gender and other forms ofdifference, and the lack of representation of laborand community interests in local governance, thatprovide more detail to a political agenda for equityin urban development.

ConclusionThis paper has argued that the growing focus onconvergence of political, social and spatial out-comes serves to distract us from a more carefulanalysis of globalization and urban change in devel-oping countries. It has reviewed a number ofemerging perspectives in the global/world cities lit-erature that reveal the highly divergent experiencesthat cities have had with global economic integra-tion, the ways in which the local interacts withand reshapes global influences, and the importanceof understanding actors and interests in an analysisof urban change. Finally, it has made a tentative at-tempt to reframe the hypothesized link betweenglobal city development and social, political andspatial inequality in a way that accounts for differ-ence and local agency.

While the paper has focused specifically on cri-tiquing the strong tendency of studies of global citiesin developing countries to assume that their devel-opment is following a similar trajectory to those ofthe West, it has also found common ground with cri-tiques of generalizations about global city develop-ment more generally. Indeed the frameworkdeveloped here might be useful to rethinking globalcity development in the context of developed coun-try cities as well. It would seem that much of the glo-bal cities literature is caught in a rut, repeatedlyrevisiting the core debates that emerged from theremarkable set of observations regarding the im-pacts of globalization on a select set of cities made

by Sassen and others during the 1980s and early1990s. The terms of debate appear to have hardenedsomewhat too early and with reference to too littledata. Indeed, it would seem that local responses,and the process of globalization itself, have proventoo dynamic and complex to be understood with ref-erence to a small set of ‘models’ of change (e.g. seg-regation, polarization, and American style growthregime politics).

Underlying this discussion has been a concernthat a focus on convergence provides a less de-tailed and precise analysis that causes us to misscritical issues that face global cities. Such citiesface a number of pressing challenges—intense eco-nomic competition, a global atmosphere of markettriumphalism, pressures for fiscal austerity, andcalls from international agencies for a scaled backrole for government in city-building. A critical taskof urban theory is to understand how actors in cit-ies respond to these challenges, and who benefitsfrom the outcomes. How have new economic andpolitical pressures shaped national and local gov-ernment efforts to bring other actors into policyand planning? And, what are the distributionaloutcomes of the resulting changes in governance?This paper has argued that the answers to thesequestions differ significantly in different contexts,and that there is much to be learned from thesedifferences for both theory and for the practiceof urban planning and policy. This process oflearning, however, requires that we move beyondgeneralizations based on the experience of globalcities in the West and adopt frameworks that em-brace complexity and difference, and that contrib-ute to cross-national comparison and learning.

Acknowledgment

The research for this paper was supported by Na-tional Science Foundation Grant number 0424066.

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