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This book illustrates the importance of global cities for world politics and highlights the diplomatic connections between cities and global governance. While there is a growing body of literature concerned with explaining the transformations of the international order, little theorisation has taken into account the key metropolises of our time as elements of these revolutions. The volume seeks to fill this gap by demonstrating how global cities have a pervasive agency in contemporary global governance. The book argues that looking at global cities can bring about three.

Global city-thinking has, in the past years, had a very real pull on society. Global cities seem an unavoidable fact of everyday world affairs. This volume gathers a forum that integrates the extensive set of disciplinary dimensions to which the interdisciplinary concept of the global city can help to tackle the policy challenges of today's metropolises. Its chapters are drawn from viewpoints including the cultural, economic, historical, postcolonial, virtual, architectural, literary, security and political dimensions of global cities. Tasked with providing a rejoinder to the global city scholarship from each of these perspectives, the authors illustrate what twin analytical and practical challenges emerge from juxtaposing these stances to the concept of the 'global city'. They rely not solely on theory but also on sample case studies either drawn from long-lived global cities such as New York, Shanghai and London, or emerging metropolises like Dubai, Cape Town and Sydney.

Introduction: Empowering Cities; Simon Curtis/ 1. - 1. The Meaning of Global Cities: Rethinking the Relationship between Cities, States and International Order; Simon Curtis/ 16 . - 2. The Common Sense of Global City 'Actorness' in Contemporary World Politics; Kristin Ljungkvist/ 32 . - 3. A Networked Urban World: Empowering Cities to Tackle Environmental Challenges; Sofie Bouteligier/ 57 . - 4. An Urban Affair: How Mayors Shape Cities for World Politics; Michele Acuto/ 69 . - 5. Globalization, Governance and the Production of Urban Socio-Ecological Space; Nik Janos and Corina Mckendry/ 89 . - 6. The International Activities of Canadian Cities: Are Canadian Cities Challenging the Gate-Keeper Position of the Federal Executive in International Affairs?; Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly/ 107 . - 7. Municipal Bonds and Global Power; Mark Amen/ 132 . - 8. Johannesburg: Financial 'Gateway' to Africa; Elizabeth Cobbett/ 151