Global Cities

Abstract

The last two decades of the last millennium have seen the rise of the ‘post-modernist critique’ and a vigorous debate as to whether the modern industrial world has now transformed itself into the post-industrial world. At the heart of this debate is one about the nature of the economic and social forces shaping both collective and individual life. Giddens, in his recent analysis of the Third Way (1998), identifies three major revolutions taking place during this period. They are globalisation, the transformation in personal life affecting relations between individuals and communities, and in our relationship to nature. Here, the growth of the debate about genetic engineering and the environment has refocused our attention on the links between nature and science and nature and society. The central question is whether the dominant paradigm through which we view this relationship is still to be one around the notion of universal progress and scientific advancement in order to reshape the natural world, or is there to be a shift towards a more reciprocal relationship as is incorporated in the debate about ‘sustainability’? All these transformations have influenced urban life. The city looks very different at the beginning of the new millennium.