The nature and effects of globalization are coming under critical scrutiny across all continents. This book focuses on one aspect, the globalization of cities. It examines the claim that the state is powerless to influence events, and that history, geography, and culture have become irrelevant in the worldwide trend towards a uniform urban model; a model which features increased segregation, decline of the central city, and social polarization. The international team of contributors is well placed to put these claims in perspective. Drawing on their experiences of cities as diverse as New York and Warsaw, Istanbul and Sao Paulo, they demonstrate that states and cities have adopted widely varying approaches to the advent of globalization; and that its impact has been constrained by each city's history, physical layout, location, environment, role in the international economy, and demographic composition. The diversity of urban development and political response revealed is enormous, and provides ample practical examples of what might be done to bring about improvements for the increasing number of people who live in cities.

There is much of value here both in some of the substantive detail and in the agenda of questions raised for further work. * Development Policy Review *
There is much fascinating material here, careful, empirical, sober, and, insofar as it is possible, open-minded. * Development Policy Review *
Marcuse's history of the creation and successive transformations of the black ghetto in the US is particuarly good, as also is the account of the change from the communist to the post-communist era in Budapest and Polish cities. * Development Policy Review *