Global City Formation and the Rescaling of Urbanization

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the intellectual landscape of urban studies has been transformed through debates on global cities, which are widely viewed as basing points for an increasingly globalized configuration of capitalism. This chapter develops a scale-attuned, state-theoretical reinterpretation of global city formation as a major expression of recent rescalings of capitalist urbanization. Such rescalings have been powerfully mediated through national state institutions, which, in so doing, have themselves been undergoing major spatial and scalar transformations. New urban spaces are thus produced through the rescaling of state space—and vice versa. In addition to exploring the role of multiscalar state spatial strategies in the process of global city formation, this chapter also aims to destabilize the entrenched assumption that cities represent the default unit of analysis for urban studies. The scalar units of urbanization are themselves produced and rewoven through the creatively destructive forward motion of capital and the intricate mediations of the latter through state spatial strategies and sociopolitical mobilization.