SYLLABUS
Course Requirements | Required Reading | Topics

The course will examine the impact of globalization on cities and its policy implications

Globalization -- a controversial term requiring definition -- has affected the form and function of cities everywhere. New types of spaces have been created, historical forms have been obliterated, and there have been widely different effects on different groups, apparently increasing horizontal homogeneity while accentuating vertical division. Elements of the complex process have produced an apparent similarity of physical, social, and cultural patterns in cities around the world, yet individual cities retain unique characteristics. The course will examine concretely what characteristics of globalization affect cities, by what mechanisms they operate, and what results they produce. The course will explore how those results may be evaluated: what benefits or harms they produce, and for whom. It will conclude by looking at how those in the design professions and in the policy arena can influence these results.

Readings reflect a wide variety of viewpoints, from historical to modern to post-modern.

The class will be run as a seminar, with a combination of lectures, class discussion, and student presentations. Time will be allocated in the final sessions for student presentations of specific case studies.

Note
The course is open to students in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, and the School of International and Public Affairs, and to others with the permission of the instructor, which may be requested at the first class or by e-mail.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

There will be three course requirements:

1. A term paper, combining two elements:



• A theoretical discussion, based on one of the topics discussed in the course. Basic readings are listed in the Syllabus (a supplementary bibliography is available from the instructor), and the paper should push the discussion forward, in the direction of the student's own interests.
• A case study testing some part of the theoretical discussion, using New York City material (or another city, with the instructor's permission; I may be of less help to you elsewhere).



2. Presentations of the case studies in class



3. Preparation of brief synopses of listed and supplementary readings, to be handed in writing for the benefit of all seminar members and presented for brief discussion where appropriate.

REQUIRED READING

Marcuse, Peter, and Ronald van Kempen, eds.
Globalizing Cities: Is There a New Spatial Order?
Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.
See Review (H-Urban: August 2001) by Mark D. Bjelland, Gustavus Adolphus College.

A reader for the course will be available at cost after the first session.

TOPICS
(not necessarily one week each)

I. Definitions: What is Globalization?

Globalization has become a catchword with so many meanings it may be losing its explanatory value. What exactly does "'globalization"' mean? What forms has it taken/can it take? What are its essential components, and what merely side effects? How does it differ from the historical process of increasing internationalization of commerce, technology, and culture? Is it something new, and if so, what is new about it? Is it inevitable? Are alternate forms of globalization conceivable? What would a working definition of "globalization" be, as the term is conventionally used?

Readings
Marcuse, Peter, and Ronald van Kempen, eds. 1999. Globalizing Cities: Is There a New Spatial Order? Oxford: Blackwell. Introduction.

Marcuse, Peter. 1995. Is Australia Different? Globalization and the New Urban Poverty. Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Melbourne, Occasional Paper #3. December. (excerpts).

Tabb, William K. 1997. "Globalization is an Issue, the Power of Capital is the Issue." Monthly Review 49 (June): 20-34.

Supplementary
Sassen, Saskia. 1991. Global Cities. Princeton University Press.

Sites, William. 1998-9. "Primitive Globalization? State and Locale in Neoliberal Global Engagement." Sociological Theory .

Fainstein, Susan S., and Norman I. Fainstein. 1989. "Technology, the New International Division of Labor, and Location: Continuities and Disjunctures," in Robert A. Beauregard, ed., "Economic Restructuring and Political Response," Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, vol. 34.

II. Framework: How might globalization be expected to influence the spaces of cities?

Major changes have taken place in the world since the early 1970s, in technology, in communications, in the organization of business activities, in the function of cities. Globalization represents one aspect, perhaps the central one, of these changes. One might expect major changes in the internal organization and functions of cities to parallel these broader changes because of the key role cities play in the process of globalization. Exactly what would one expect to find?

Readings
Friedmann, J. and G. Wolff. 1982. "World City Formation: An Agenda for Research and Action." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 6:325.

Sassen, Saskia. 1989. "New Trends in the Sociospatial Organization of the New York City Economy," in Robert A. Beauregard, ed., "Economic Restructuring and Political Response," Urban Affairs Annual Reviews, vol. 34. In Robert A. Beauregard, ed.. Economic Restructuring and Political Response. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage.

Supplementary
Knox, Paul L. and Peter J. Taylor. 1995. World Cities in a World-System. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Sassen, Saskia. 1994. Cities in a World Economy. Thousand Oaks, California: Pine Forge Press (Sage Publications).

III. History: How have patterns of space developed over time?

If these are the spatial patterns of cities today, how have they changed from the past? Are the divisions revealed in cities today new? There have always been divisions of one sort or another in cities from the first urban settlements on. How have these divisions evolved, and is there a pattern to be found in their development?

Readings
Kostof, Spiro. 1992. The City Assembled: The Elements of Urban Form Through History. Boston, Little Brown.

Marcuse, Peter, and Ronald van Kempen. 2000. The Divided City in History. Typescript.

Supplementary
Benevolo, Leonardo. 1975 [reprinted 1980]. The History of the City. Trans. by Geoffrey Culverwell. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

H. Johnston, ed. The Geography of Housing. London: Aldine.

Mumford, Lewis. 1961. The City in History: Its Origins, its Transformations, and Its Prospects. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.

Weber, Max. 1921 [reprinted 1958]. The City, with an introduction by Don Martindale and Gertrud Neuwirth. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press.

IV. The actual situation: What is the spatial organization of New York City?

Do we find changes that parallel expectations derived from examination of the processes of globalization? How do major cities in the world economy in fact look today? Have new forms of spatial development emerged,  or old ones died out? Have all major cities developed in similar fashion?

Readings
Marcuse, Peter. 1997. "The Ghetto of Exclusion and the Fortified Enclave: New Patterns in the United States." American Behavioral Scientist special issue, "The New Spatial Order of Cities" 41(3): 311-326.

Marcuse, Peter, and Ronald van Kempen, eds. 1999. Globalizing Cities: Is There a New Spatial Order? Oxford: Blackwell. Conclusion.

Supplementary
Savitch, H. V. 1988. Post-Industrial Cities: Politics and Planning in New York, Paris, and London. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Kresl, Peter Karl, and Gary Gappert, eds. 1995. North American Cities and the Global Economy: Challenges and Opportunities. Beverly Hills: Sage.

O'Loughlin, John, and Jürgen Friedrichs. 1996. Social Polarization in Post-Industrial Metropolises. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.

V. The actual situation: What is the spatial organization of other major cities internationally?

Is New York City the exception? Is there a consistent pattern limited to "global" cities? To cities in the industrially developed world? In the Third World? In the former state socialist countries? In sub-equatorial Africa?

Readings
Marcuse, Peter, and Ronald van Kempen, eds. 1999. Globalizing Cities: Is There a New Spatial Order? Oxford: Blackwell. Case study chapters.

VI. Explanations: What models have been developed to explain contemporary city forms?

At least since the beginning of sociology as a discipline, and much earlier in comments in works of philosophers, political scientists, and architects, there have been attempts to explain the spatial patterns of cities. What explanations have been offered? Are particular explanations linked to particular historical circumstances? How satisfactory are they in explaining contemporary patterns?

Readings
Van Kempen, Ronald. Historical Explanations of Spatial Stratification. Typescript.

Wirth, Louis. 1928 [reprinted 1956]. The Ghetto. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Grava, Sigurd. 1998. "The Old Downtown: It Ain't What It Used To Be." Metropolitics (Spring): 17-20.

Supplementary
Marcus, Stephen. 1974. Engels, Manchester and the Working Class. New York: Random House.

Johnston, H., ed. The Geography of Housing. London: Aldine.

Relph, Edward C. 1987. The Modern Urban Landscape: 1880 to the Present. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Vance, James E., Jr. 1990. The Continuing City: Urban Morphology in Western Civilization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Muth, Richard.

VII. The social effects of globalization: Has it changed social structures?

"Polarization" is a term often used to describe the effects of globalization on the residents of cities, with stronger effects the more global the city. What does "polarization mean"? What are its economic, cultural, social aspects? To what extent has it taken place? How has it changed relationships from what they were in the past?

Readings
Hamnett-Sassen debate.

Mollenkopf, John H., and Manuel Castells, ed. 1991. Dual City: Restructuring New York. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Marcuse, Peter. 1989. "'Dual City': A Muddy Metaphor for a Quartered City." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research  13(4): 697-708.

Hirst, Paul, and Grahame Thompson. 1996. Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.

Supplementary
Fainstein, Susan S., Ian Gordon, and Michael Harloe, eds. 1992. Divided Cities: New York and London in the Contemporary World. Oxford: Blackwell.

Goldsmith, William W., and Edward J. Blakely. 1992. Separate Societies: Poverty and Inequality in U.S. Cities. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Massey, D., and N. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, Masschusetts: Harvard University Press.

Blakely, E., and M. Snyder. 1995. Fortress America: Gated and Walled Communities in the United States. Cambridge, Masschusetts: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Fainstein, N. 1993. "Race, Class, and Segregation: Discourses about African Americans." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17(3): 384-403.

Jencks, Christopher, and P. E. Petersen. 1991. The Urban Underclass. Washington, D. C.: Brookings Institution.

Judd, Dennis R. 1995. "The New Walled Cities," in H. Liggett and D. C. Perry, eds., Spatial Practices: Critical Explorations in Social/Spatial Theory. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.

Vergara, C. 1995. The New American Ghetto. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

VIII. The reflection of social structure in urban space: What are the new spaces of cities?

If a new (or at least modified) array of social, economic, political, cultural groupings have emerged under the influence of the process of globalization, what spatial changes have paralleled their development? Are there now spaces assigned to, or captured by, separate groups for their own use? Are the sought-after divisions ones involving residential space, or also work space, recreation, education? Are they positive for their residents, or negative?

Readings
Logan, John. 2000. "Still a Global City: The Racial and Ethnic Segmentation of New York," in Marcuse and van Kempen, Globalizing Cities, pp. 158-185.

King, Anthony D., ed. 1980 [reprinted 1984]. Buildings and Society: Essays on the Social Development of the Built Environment. London : Routledge & Kegan Paul.

King, Anthony D. 1991. Urbanism, Colonialism, and the World-Economy: Cultural and Spatial Foundations of the World Urban System. New York: Routledge.

King, Anthony D. 1984. The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Waldinger, R. 1993. "The Ethnic Enclave Debate Revisited." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17(3): 444-452.

Supplementary
Marcuse, Peter. 1993. "What's New About Divided Cities?" International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17(3): 355-365.

IX. Citadels and ghettos: The new character of old forms.

Citadels, at the top end, and ghettoes, at the bottom end, are the extreme spatial manifestations of the new divisions of the city; each reinforces the pattern that has produced them: actions modify spaces, spaces modify actions. There has always been a space assigned to the bottom of the social hierarchy, and a space reserved for itself by the top. Are those spaces structured differently today than in earlier times? Has their function changed? Their extent? Their governance?

Readings
Friedmann, J. and G. Wolff. 1982. "World City Formation: An Agenda for Research and Action." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 6: 325.

Marcuse, Peter. 1997. "The Enclave, the Citadel, and the Ghetto: What Has Changed in the Post-Fordist U.S. City." Urban Affairs Review 33(2): 228-264 (focus on citadels, ghettos).

Olds on mega-structures.

Caldiera, Teresa P. R. 1996. "Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation." Public Culture 8(2): 303-328.

Marcuse, Peter. 1998. "Space over Time: The Changing Position of the Black Ghetto in the United States." Netherlands Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 13(1).

Supplementary
Blakely, E. and M. Snyder. 1995. Fortress America: Gated and Walled Communities in the United States. Cambridge, Mass.: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Fainstein, N. 1993. "Race, Class, and Segregation: Discourses about African Americans." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17(3): 384-403.

McKenzie, Evan. 1994. Privatopia: Homeowners Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government. New Haven: Yale University Press.

X. Walls, edges, boundaries: What happens where the parts intersect?

The spaces of the city are differentiated by class, ethnicity, gender, race, culture. What happens where these parts intersect or overlap? Is time as well as space a factor, so that patterns at one time differ from patterns at another? Do some forms of boundary bring together, while others separate? Are all walls walls of exclusion, or are there also walls of inclusion, of solidarity?

Readings
Ellin, Nan, ed. 1997. Architecture of Fear. Princeton: University Press.

Supplementary
Davis, Mike. 1990. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. London: Verso.

XI. The role of government and public policy: What can be/should be done at the international, national, and/or local levels?

Is globalization an inescapable tide sweeping over all nations and cities, to which the only policy response can be the best form of adaptation? If countervailing measures are possible, would they necessarily be at the inter-state level? The national level? Can local action have any effect? What forces might work for and what against change in the outcomes described?

Readings
Hirst, Paul, and Grahame Thompson. 1996. Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.

Brecher, Jeremy, and Tim Costello. 1994. Global Village or Global Pillage. Boston: South End Press.

Marcuse, Herbert. "The End of Utopia."

Katz, Wallace. 2000. "Don't Mourn: Globalize!" New Labor Forum (Spring/Summer): 7-22.

Supplementary
Sassen, Saskia. 1996. Losing Control: Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization. New York: Columbia University Press.

Anderson, Sarah, and John Cavanagh with Thea Lee and the Institute for Policy Studies. 2000. Field Guide to the Global Economy. New York: The New Press.

Williamson, Thad. 1997. What Comes Next? Proposals for a Different Society. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives.