We live in the ‘urban century’. Cities all over the world – in both developing and developed countries – display complex evolutionary patterns. Urban Empires charts the backgrounds, mechanisms, drivers, and consequences of these radical changes in our contemporary systems from a global perspective and analyses the dominant position of modern cities in the ‘New Urban World’.

This volume views the drastic change cities have undergone internationally through a broad perspective and considers their emerging roles in our global network society. Chapters from renowned scholars provide advanced analytical contributions, scaling applied and theoretical perspectives on the competitive profile of urban agglomerations in a globalizing world. Together, the volume traces and investigates the economic and political drivers of network cities in a global context and explores the challenges over governance that are presented by mega-cities. It also identifies and maps out the new geography of the emergent ‘urban century’.

With contributions from well-known and influential scholars from around the world, Urban Empires serves as a touchstone for students and researchers keen to explore the scientific and policy needs of cities as they become our age’s global power centers.

Edward Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. He regularly teaches microeconomics theory, and occasionally urban and public economics. He has served as Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and Director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston.

Karima Kourtit is at the Open University, Heerlen, The Netherlands. Her main scientific research is in the field of creative industries, urban vitality and development, ethnic business, citizen involvement, cultural heritage, tourism, digital technology, and strategic key performance indicators (KPIs) for cities. In this context, she also became involved in research on urban dashboards, social media (‘big data’) research and resilience analysis.

Peter Nijkamp is Emeritus Professor in regional and urban economics and in economic geography at the VU University, and associated with the Open University (OU), Heerlen (The Netherlands). He is member of editorial/advisory boards of more than 30 journals and a fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. In 1996, he was awarded the most prestigious scientific prize in the Netherlands, the Spinoza award. He is also Vice-President of The Regional Science Academy (TRSA).