Volume 12, Issue 1 - Editors' Forum: The De-Globalized City? Guest-edited by Michele Acuto and Ian Klaus.

A number of economists, historians, and political scientists have begun to examine what happens when globalization unravels. From an urban point of view, this question seems at odds with current trends: the reaction to globalization has come about at a time where, paradoxically, international discussions around the future of cities and their contribution to global sustainability have galvanized international cooperation amongst multilateral, regional, private and local actors. Does this mean that we should rethink these trends? Taking this cue, we ask what happens when globalization unravels in a more focused urban way: what happens to the global city when the economic and political relationships behind the postwar international order, and in particular the post-1970 version of that order, begin to fray or come completely undone? What happens then if the globalization of the global city unravels when its core material and infrastructural conditions are now necessarily globalized? This special issue of New Global Studies seeks to open an interdisciplinary and critical debate about the real possibilities of de-globalization and the challenges, and the dangers, of an unraveling globalization in a more and more urbanized world.

Gentrification is integral to the functioning of global cities: international developers raze old housing and renovate industrial lofts for elite service workers seeking central-city accommodations. In the process, local real estate markets heat up and working-class residents find themselves priced out, displaced more often than not to peripheral sites of the global metropolis. In Californian communities in downtown and the east side of Los Angeles, the Mission in San Francisco, and Barrio Logan in San Diego, however, residents rejected this process of involuntary movement, instead arguing for the value of historically rich, rooted communities. In what appeared to be a wave of anti-global activism beginning in the 1980s, residents worked to regain control over their local communities through a variety of strategies including the deliberate deployment of local culture and arts, and the increasingly savvy use of media and public relations. With these tools, anti-gentrifiers asserted ownership without property titles, housing rights without mortgages, and community buy-in without cash deposits. Anti-gentrification movements thus constituted a direct challenge to the workings of the global city while also feeding into a global movement to restore political power to the grassroots.

Research and development on smart cities has been growing rapidly. Smart cities promise a new era of living efficiently, sustainably, and safely. The tools and technologies deployed aim to drive better public decision-making on everything from where we live to how we work. While the world is rapidly urbanizing, a substantial percentage of the population still lives in smaller and rural communities. Smart city solutions as they are defined here are process driven and not constrained by population or geographic metrics; they are the application of technology and data to improve the quality of life. Smaller communities can also be smart, and excluding or ignoring them widens inequality, limits use cases, and restrains innovation. Using South Bend, Indiana as an example, the authors examine the power and potential of smaller smart cities. They then transfer this thinking to Georgia and Georgia Tech’s initiative working with local governments across the state on smart community development. This article is one of the first of its kinds in examining smaller smart communities as models for smart living.

This article examines the forces, public and private, that have exerted political power over the longue durée of the modern city since 1848. The article identifies three major turning points that contextualize the modern moment: the rise of democratic movements of 1848 and their gradual targeting of city governments; the rise of an expert-managed, urban reform state beginning in 1870; and the birth of neoliberal state, from 1974 to the present. The article positions the knowledge of urban history within the rise of democratic, participatory movements concerned with opening, replicating, and publicly analyzing governmental data.

Public procurement in cities is one of the most exciting and under-studied governmental processes, offering an interesting angle into the real state of globalization in cities, the political and bureaucratic battle for the identity of government in connected markets and provides an indication of the intention of city governments to work in a globalized or de-globalizing world. 557,000 city and municipal governments procure an estimated 10% of world GDP in goods and services annually to serve their communities. In a perfectly globalized world, we would expect a single market to develop around these needs with competitors differentiating on cost, effectiveness and strategic value. Yet, after decades of globalizing trends and announcements by Mayors to collaborate on global challenges, we have few indications that this has happened. Instead of rational, standardized transactions to deploy what works best, each procurement carried out by city and municipal governments is a complex battleground of vested local interests, strategic goals and public messaging. In place of policymaking and adopting proven practices, cities appear simply to muddle through, one transaction at a time. Despite more open governments and transparency, there is a universal lack of data as to how these battles are fought.

The global city has been both a product and driver of contemporary globalization. But today the global city is under threat from at least two directions. Firstly, despite their astonishing economic growth over the last four decades, they have become deeply divided and polarized in ways that threaten the integrity of the urban fabric. The second source of threat comes from the weakening of liberal world order. This article argues that global cities are at a point of crisis, because they embody an unstable form of global market society. In order to survive in a ‘global’ form, they will need to evolve by repurposing some of the political, economic and governance capacities that they have been developing over the last four decades. The article asks: what capacities and capabilities have global cities generated, and how might they be reoriented in the creation of alternative global city futures?

The city of the future will have to come to terms with astronomical population growth comprised of individuals and communities that differ on matters of fundamental beliefs living in increasingly close proximity. The test will be whether religious diversity increasingly leads to clashing parochialisms or unlocks possibilities for human flourishing. With 7.5 billion people urbanized by 2050, cities simply must include attention to religious diversity, and the science of social capital and interfaith cooperation can inform the discourse of resiliency as humanity prepares. Ample sociological research supports the conclusion that societies thrive where and when they are able to build trusting relationships across lines of deep difference. The inverse failure to do so is a direct danger to civil peace. This article charts a path forward to building and sustaining those relationships in an urban setting.

Thomas Wide visits a recent exhibition on the history of New York City