Michele Acuto

The new climate leaders

Little interest has thus far been paid to the role of cities in world politics. Yet, several are the examples of city-based engagements suggesting an emerging urban presence in international relations. The Climate Leadership Group, despite its recent lineage, is perhaps the most significant case of metropolitan intersection with global governance. To illustrate this I rely on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to develop a qualitative network analysis of the evolution of the C40 in the past seven years from a limited gathering of municipal leaders to a transnational organisation partnering with the World Bank. Pinpointed on the unfolding of a twin diplomacy/planning approach, the evolution of the C40 can demonstrate the key role of global cities as actors in global environmental politics. These cities have a pivotal part in charting new geographies of climate governance, prompting the rise of subpolitical policymaking arrangements pinpointed on innovative and hybrid connections. Yet, there remains some important rational continuity, in particular with neoliberalism, which ultimately limits the revolutionary potential these cities might have for international relations.

Global cities, governance and diplomacy: The urban link

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 bookargues that looking at global cities can bring about three fundamental advantages on traditional IR paradigms. First, it facilitates an eclectic turn towards more nuanced analyses of world politics. Second, it widens the horizon of the discipline through a multiscalar image of global governance. Third, it underscores how global cities have a strategic diplomatic positioning when it comes to core contemporary challenges such as climate change. This book will be of much interest to students of urban studies, global governance, diplomacy and international relations in general.

City networks: breaking gridlocks or forging (new) lock-ins?

There is today a global recognition that we live in an ‘urban age’ of near-planetary urbanization where cities are at the forefront of all sorts of agendas. Yet little attention is offered to the active role of cities as political drivers of the urban age. There might today be more than two hundred ‘city networks’ globally, with thousands of para-diplomatic connections actively defining relations between cities, international organization and corporate actors. This actively networked texture of the urban age shapes all areas of policy and, not least, international relations, and holds much promise as to possible urban solutions to global challenges. Based on an overview of a representative subset of this mass of city-to-city cooperation (n=170), this article illustrates the landscape of city networking, its issue areas and institutional shapes, and its critical features. As we argue, city networks today are faced by a crucial challenge: while trying to overcome state-centric ‘gridlocks’ cities are, at the same time, building both political–economic as well as very material ‘lock-ins’. We need to pay serious attention to this impact of city diplomacy in international affairs, developing a greater appreciation of the path dependencies and responsibilities this diplomatic activity purports.

Finding the Global City: An Analytical Journey through the 'Invisible College'

Saskia Sassen’s concept of the ‘global city’ has evolved in a complex relation with other urban, economic and social students that deal with these strategic sites of the contemporary global urban architecture. This multidisciplinary set of authors could be metaphorically grouped within what John Friedmann described as the ‘invisible college’ of world city researchers. In light of this tradition, the global city is described here in its various theoretical guises, in a chronological account from the early 1900s roots to present-day formulations, in order to establish an eclectic understanding that can speak beyond the college, opening the dialogue on globalisation and cities beyond urban studies. In this sense, the essay describes the ‘global city’ as the status of connectedness to the global attained by some world cities, which rests upon an urban entrepreneurial spirit that situates these metropolises as the strategic hinges of globalisation.

Building a global urban science

The study of cities needs to become more than the sum of its parts. An international Expert Panel investigates why, and how.

Putting ANTs into the mille-feuille

A sprawling interest for ‘assemblage’ has recently burgeoned in urban studies circles drawing mostly on actor-network theory (ANT) discussions and critiques thereof. Presenting a systematic take on the latter, Brenner et al. (2011) have entered the debate on the pages of City finding fault with this scholarship’s critical limits. By providing an ‘outsider’ rejoinder to this, I argue that assemblage approaches can on the contrary provide crosscutting explanatory tools to understand the linkages between contemporary metropolises and global affairs and grasp the multi-scalar reconfigurations of our time. This is particularly true when it comes to connecting urban and world politics, an often overlooked link both amongst their disciplines and practices. As such, much like McFarlane’s original article (2011), I do not seek here to discredit the critical urbanist project but add to it by demonstrating how ANT presents complementary tools that can support this response to the challenges raised by a universalising urbanisation trend. In doing so I seek to illustrate that, despite some shortcomings mostly derived from a spiralling methodological self-indulgence, ANT has in fact long been concerned with unpacking ‘the tactics and strategies of power’ (Law, 1992, p. 387) and can present urban scholars with critical analytical approaches that provide an equitable account not solely of human factors, but of the very active contexts these interact with. Precisely for this capacity to trace the articulations of society through the socio-technical texture of the city, I argue, ANT can develop an eclectic bridge between urban and international studies—a connection that could in turn also strengthen the critical urbanist project. It can allow for a multi-scalar analytics of those crosscutting ‘power-geometries’ (Massey, 1993) unravelling through, not solely in, cities by promoting a ‘nonhierarchical way of thinking about difference and the space that it constitutes as seemingly fluid, complex, and unfinished in character’ (Hetherington and Law, 2000, p. 127). In this sense, contra Brenner et al. (2011, p. 231), I contend that, ontological, empirical and methodological ‘articulations’ of ANT as a practical application of assemblage theory cannot be dissociated from each other and, rather, are most productive when considered in their analytical linkages. ANT can inspire an ontological shift towards holistic and progressive approaches to world politics that neither reduce all politics to the urban, nor conflate the latter to the extensive domain of global governance, and thus demonstrates the mutual relevance of their respective scholarships. In order to outline this critical promise, I proceed as follows: first, I consider the development and asserted limitations of ANT, and illustrate how much of the problems critics find with its framework are inclined to be based on a too strict interpretation of methodological tendencies. Then, drawing on these considerations, I describe how ANT can be applied to a multilayered ‘millefeuille’ (Brenner, 2009) understanding of world politics emerging centrally from the critical urbanist project. Hence, I argue how ‘translation’ and assemblage thinking can inspire a critical reading of spatial (and scalar in articular) dynamics, while also

Global Cities: Gorillas in Our Midst:

This article calls for greater attention to global cities in the study of world affairs so as to promote a more holistic reading of global governance as a multiscalar set of processes composed by overlapping spheres of authority. The article shows how international studies have been insufficiently sensitive to the strategic role of global cities and how they are capable of acting on the global stage by exerting network power. This sheds light on the multilayered governmentality of global governance from an urban perspective. Looking through a lens of global cities, it is argued, will enable theorists to connect macro processes to micro dynamics across a far wider spectrum of governance and political agencies.

Leave no city behind.

Close to 4 billion people live in cities. As the driver of environmental challenges, accounting for nearly 70% of the worlds carbon emissions, and as sites of critical social disparities, with 863 million dwellers now living in slums, urban settlements are at the heart of global change. This momentum is unlikely to disappear, as approximately 70 million more people will move to cities by the end of this year alone. The good news is that recent multilateral processes are now appreciating this key role of cities and are increasingly prioritizing urban concerns in policy-making. Yet, how can we ensure that these steps toward a global urban governance leave no city, town, or urban dweller behind?

Dubai in the ‘Middle’

In the early 2000s, Dubai seemed the apotheosis of the global city model. Lauded as an embodiment of globalist ideals, or harshly criticized as a representation of the dangers of contemporary urbanism, it was clearly under the spotlight. Then, like the concept of the ‘global city’ itself, it disappeared from the headlines, to be subject only to sporadic and cynical attention. Today some are heralding a ‘return’ of Dubai from the anonymity of the middle ground of global city hierarchies and rankings. What is often forgotten, however, is that urbanism in Dubai did not stop. On the contrary, Dubais continuous ‘worlding’ offers a productive opportunity for the encounter of ‘global’ and ‘ordinary’ modes of urban analysis. By unpacking the construction of a global Dubai, this article advocates greater sensitivity to the multiscalar politics that shape its continuity. Stepping beyond rumours of crisis and decline, it aims to connect the global fortunes and everyday processes that jointly characterize the development of global cities. ‘Global’ and ‘ordinary’ urbanism, it argues, are but two registers of how we could, in Warren Magnussons words, ‘see like a city’.

Give cities a seat at the top table

A N D R EW H A R N IK /A P water and environmental degradation. The source and target areas of human migration should receive particular attention. Such agreements might highlight groundwater quantity and quality in urban regions; riverside or floodplain protection; and development and irrigation in areas needed to protect water supplies for cities. Immigration policies should encourage development and growth in environmentally suitable regions. National governments must put teeth into policies mandating urban region plans. Funding for planning, implementation and measuring progress should be allocated by the different levels of government and beneficiaries. Urban region planning requires a new mix of expertise. Essential are experts in: ecosystem and landscape ecology, water quantity and quality, agricultural soil quality and productivity, economics, transportation infrastructure engineering and community development. International agencies, non-governmental organizations, academics and professionals should step forward with case studies, examples, models and new projects. Major universities should establish multisector urban region planning units to develop models and initiatives. Society must think globally, plan regionally, then act locally. ■