Abstract
The first chapters in this volume provide exhaustive evidence, as well as arguments, illustrating the profound restructuring that New York City has been undergoing — at various scales — over the past two decades. They also point to the agencies involved and the conflicts arising from this process. Yet at the same time, their exclusive focus on New York gives the impression that ‘the city’ in general is in fact New York City. In assessing the relevance of such analyses of New York for the understanding of other cities in the world, I am interested in addressing two questions. How representative is New York of cities in the so-called postcolonial periphery? And, in regard to the first four chapters on New York, what is the relationship between the urban processes discussed, the agencies involved, and transformations in the city as a whole?
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
J. Friedmann, ‘The World City Hypothesis’, Development and Change, 17: 1 (1986), pp. 69–83.
Mareena Azeez, ‘Early Muslim Settlements’, in M. M. M. Mahroof et al. (eds), An Ethnological Survey of Muslims of Sri Lanka: From Earliest Times to Independence (Sir Razik Fareed Foundation, Colombo, 1986), pp. 17–42.
Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘Cities in Socialist Theory and Capitalist Praxis’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 8 (March 1984), pp. 64–72.
Richard Sennett, The Conscience of the Eye (Knopf, New York, 1992), p. 53.
Ronald J. Horvath, ‘In Search of a Theory of Urbanization: Notes on the Colonial City’, East Lakes Geographer, 5 (December 1969), pp. 69–82.
W. Urwick, Indian Pictures (The Religious Tract Society, London, c. 1888), p. 19.
H. A. J. Hulugalle, Centenary Volume of the Colombo Municipal Council 1865–1965 (Colombo Municipal Council, Colombo, 1965), p. 167.
R. K. Home, ‘Town Planning and Garden Cities in the British Colonial Empire 1910–1940’, Planning Perspectives, 5 (1990), p. 4.
Seymour Mandelbaum, ‘Thinking about Cities as Systems: Reflections on the History of an Idea’, Journal of Urban History, 11: 2 (February 1985), pp. 139–50.
R. B. Cohen, ‘The New International Division of Labor, Multinational Corporations and Urban Hierarchy’, in Michael Dear and Allan J. Scott (eds), Urbanization and Urban Planning in Capitalist Society (Methuen, London, 1981), pp. 287–315.
Anthony D. King Global Cities: Post-Imperialism and the Internationalization of London (Routledge, London and New York, 1990).
Mary Karasch, ‘Rio de Janeiro: From Colonial Port Town to Imperial Capital’, in Robert J. Ross and Gerard J. Telkamp (eds), Colonial Cities, (Martinus Nijhoff, Dordrecht, 1985), pp. 123–54.
Nigel Harris, The End of the Third World: The Newly Industrializing Countries and the Decline of an Ideology (Pelican, London, 1986).
United Nations, Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 1992 Part I: Recent Economic and Social Developments (United Nations, New York, 1993). See in particular I:61. Also ‘USA Becomes Sri Lanka’s Major Market’, Economic Review, 6 (April 1980), p. 22.
David J. Keeling, ‘Transport and the World City Paradigm: An Agenda for Research’, in Peter Taylor and Paul Knox (eds), World Cities in a World System (Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Taipei’s Offshore Empire’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 18 March 1993, pp. 44–5.
J. Friedmann, ‘Ten Years of the World City Hypothesis’, in Peter Taylor and Paul Knox (eds), World Cities in a World System (Cambridge University Press, 1995). See also note 1.
Norman I. Fainstein and Susan Fainstein, ‘Regime Strategies, Communal Resistance, and Ethnic Forces’, in Norman Fainstein et al. (eds), Restructuring the City (Longman, New York, 1983), pp. 245–67.
Michael Roberts, ‘The Two Facets of the Port City: Colombo in Modern Times’, in Frank Broeze (ed.) Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the 16th Century to the 20th Century (Hawaii University Press, 1989), pp. 173–87.
Michael Davenport and Sheila Page, Europe: 1992 and the Developing World (Overseas Development Institute, London, 1991), p. 95.
Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘Cities in Socialist Theory and Capitalist Praxis’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 8 (March 1984) pp. 64–72.
Hugh Tinker, Race in the Third World City (Ford Foundation, New York, 1971).
T. G. McGee, The South-East Asian City: A Social Geography of the Primate Cities of South-East Asia, (Praeger, New York, 1967).
Anthony D. King, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London and Boston, 1976).
Senake Bandaranayake, ‘Form and Technique in Traditional Rural Housing in Sri Lanka’, ASA 1: 1 (1978) pp. 9–13.
Mary Anne Weaver, ‘The Gods and the Stars–A Reporter at Large’, New Yorker, 21 March 1988, pp. 40–58.
Rhodes Murphy, ‘Colonial Port Cities and the Reshaping of Asia: Colombo as Prototype’, in Dilip K. Basu (ed.), The Rise and Growth of the Colonial Port Cities in Asia (University Press of America, Lanham, MD, 1985), pp. 19–21.
Warwick Armstrong and Terence McGee, Theatres of Accumulation. Studies in Asian and Latin American Urbanization (Methuen, London, 1985).
Henry W. Cave, The Book of Ceylon: Being a Guide to its Railway System and an Account of its Varied Attractions for the Visitor and Tourist (Cassell, London, 1908).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1996 Nihal Perera
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Perera, N. (1996). Exploring Colombo: The Relevance of a Knowledge of New York. In: King, A.D. (eds) Re-Presenting the City. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24439-3_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24439-3_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-60192-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-24439-3