International Political Economy of World Cities (E232)

Course Organization

Time & Location:

Thursday, 14:15-16:00, Rigot

Professor:

David Sylvan
Office: Rigot 28
Office hours: Thursday 16:30-17:30 and by appointment
Telephone: 022 908 59 42
Email: sylvan@hei.unige.ch

Assistant:

Rachelle Cloutier
Office: Rigot 26
Office hours: Tuesday 10:00-12:00
Telephone: 022 908 59 41
Email: cloutie3@hei.unige.ch

Course Description

This is a course on an important phenomenon in the contemporary world: the existence of cities which in various ways represent poles of attraction across the world. To analyze that phenomenon, we will survey various aspects, ranging from migration to the notion of urban culture, attempting to place them within a common framework and thereby contributing to a satisfactory definition of the phenomenon. After this survey, I will then ask you to make a presentation about one of four world cities (London, New York, Tokyo, and Los Angeles) in the contemporary world; this presentation will serve as a basis for your grade in the course, along with either a paper based on that presentation or an oral examination based on the presentation (this may be a matter of choice, but it depends in part on the number of people taking the course for credit).

This is not a course in urban studies, which is an entire academic field and at most universities comprises a department or a “center” offering multiple courses. My aim is to approach the phenomenon of world cities from an international political economy perspective, and so in that respect, I will both give a somewhat different selection of texts and approach them, so to speak, orthogonally (not just transversely) from what an urban studies specialist would do.

I am aware that the subject of world cities is not a conventional one in international relations, but arguably world cities play a much greater role in many international transactions than do some of the phenomena with which we are more familiar, such as various regimes and institutions; for that matter, international influence may well have more to do with cities' attractiveness (or lack thereof) than with conventional bases of power such as armies or cash.

A word on history. I had thought once upon a time that it would make sense to begin the course with a historical overview of various world cities, i.e., cities in past historical worlds. But there is a specificity to our era (say, since the late 18th or early 19th century), which militates against such universalism, and which can be summed up in this overly lapidary phrase: because there was no capitalism, there were no capital flows in Sumer (or Athens, or Rome, or Constantinople, etc.). For this reason, the course is fairly present-ist, though you will see that I have tried to wink at this by citing (and on occasion assigning) books and/or articles from the early twentieth century (or before).

I had also thought, more seriously, about assigning works which serve as representations of the world city. There are many of these, especially novels and films, but also television series like The Wire . But analysis of these is a craft in its own right and so I decided – at least for now – not to have us read Bleak House or Neuromancer , or to see Night and the City or Blade Runner . Alas; but do see the Forman book on May 3, for a related genre...

For those of you who do not have much background in the academic literature on cities, here are several texts you can look at. All of them are available via various on-line book ordering service; many are also available in the HEI library. A good “crib,” to give you an instant (well, almost) overview of a variety of academic literatures on certain aspects of cities, can be found in Edward W. Soja, Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2000). I also recommend a nice collection of snippets, i.e., portions of different texts, on the city: Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson, eds., The Blackwell City Reader (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002). See also, for more snippets, Malcolm Miles, Tim Hall, and Iain Borden, eds., The City Cultures Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2000). Edited collections with slightly more focused articles (I'll be assigning some of them in the syllabus proper) are Allen J. Scott, ed., Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); and Malcolm Miles and Tim Hall, eds., Urban Futures: Critical Commentaries on Shaping the City (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). Finally, a rather heterogeneous collection of pieces in the Benjamin tradition (see below) is Steve Pile and Nigel Thrift, City A-Z (London and New York: Routledge, 2000).

On the other hand, it is not necessary to have much background in the literature on international political economy in general. Most of the propositions and findings in that literature bear only tangentially, if at all, on world cities, due in no small part to a presumption (wrong, but still very powerful) that the only real units that count in IPE are states, firms, and international organizations. Thus, rather than give you citations to IPE literature in general, I would refer you to historical studies of the growth of particular sectors or regions, such as can be found in the Cambridge Economic History volumes. If you need a brush-up on how capital flows work, you might want to look at basic texts in corporate and municipal finance. For an overview of the subject, see my chapter (for the course's first week).

How to read and think. I have listed quite a large number of readings for each week. I do not in fact expect you to read all of these, but I would very much like you to read at least one of them very carefully and as analytically as possible. At the end of class each week, I will indicate which is the “focus” reading for the next week. As to thinking: one of the purposes of the course is to learn how to bounce back and forth between theory and particular contemporary or historical instances of world city phenomena. So when you do read something putatively theoretical, be both schematic and rude: try and diagram the argument, then ask impertinent questions of its applicability to particular cases. You can be both intellectually respectful and aggressive.

Mechanics. My office is Rigot 28, office hours Thurs. 16.30 to 17.30 and by appointment, phone 022-908-5942, email sylvan@hei.unige.ch . The assistant for the course (whom you should consult for issues with availability of readings, the library, the course web site, and so forth) is Rachelle Cloutier, Rigot 26, office hours Tues. 10.00 to 12.00, phone 022-908-5941, email cloutie3@hei.unige.ch . The book-chapter-required course readings will be available for purchase in a photocopy packet. The journal-article readings are available through the library's AtoZ search engine for e-journals. The optional-book-chapter readings are available in a photocopy packet at the library or from Rachelle (at cost).

Course Outline and Readings

1. March 15
Introduction

• David Sylvan, “A Meso-Scopic View of International Political Economy: World Cities,” in Harvey Starr, ed., Approaches, Levels, and Methods of Analysis in International Politics: Crossing Boundaries (Palgrave Macmillan 2006).
• M. Mark Amen, Kevin Archer, and M. Martin Bosman, “Thinking Through Global Cities,” in idem, eds., Relocating Global Cities: From the Center to the Margins (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). 

2. March 22
Back to basics, 1: Migration

• Ernest W. Burgess, “The Growth of the City: An Introduction to a Research Project,” in Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, The City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925), ch. 2. (A classic. Buy it if you can.)
• Peter Marcuse and Ronald van Kempen, eds., Globalizing Cities: A New Spatial Order? (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), chs. 1 (Introduction) and 4 (by Sanjoy Chakravorty, on Calcutta).
• Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (London: Verso, 2006), chs. 1-2.
• Optional. Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1938), ch. 3
• Optional. John Friedmann, “Transnational Migration: Spaces of Incorporation,” in The Prospect of Cities (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), ch. 3.
• Optional: Marco d'Eramo, The Pig and the Skyscraper: Chicago: A History of Our Future , trans. Graeme Thomson (London and New York: Verso, 2002), chs. 2-3, PLUS pp. 255-68, PLUS ch. 19.
• Optional: Robert Bruegmann, Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), chs. 2-5. (I have not required this, but try to take a look, including at the pictures.)
• Optional: Costis Hadjimichalis, “The End of Third Italy As We Know It?” Antipode 38,1 (2006): 82-106.

3. March 29
Back to basics, 2: Capital flows

• David Harvey, The Urban Experience (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989 [abridgement of original 2-volume monograph, 1985]), chs. 1-3 (note: these chapters are dense, so give yourself time and try to discuss them in groups before the class).
• David Harvey, Paris: Capital of Modernity (New York: Routledge, 2003), chs. 3-11. (This is much more approachable.)

4. April 5
Back to basics, 3: Urban politics

• Judith Chubb, “The Social Bases of an Urban Political Machine: The Case of Palermo,” Political Science Q. 96,1 (1981): 107-25.
• Douglas W. Rae, City: Urbanism and Its End (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), chs. 5-6, 9-10.
• Ted Robert Gurr and Desmond S. King, The State and the City (Houndmills and London: Macmillan Education, 1987), ch. 1.
• Optional. Richard Stren, “Local Governance and Social Diversity in the Developing World: New Challenges for Globalizing City-Regions,” in Allen J. Scott, ed., Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ch. 11.
• Optional: Manuel Castells, “Immigrant Workers and Class Struggles in Advanced Capitalism: The Western European Experience,” Politics and Society 5,1 (1976): 33-66; reprinted in The Castells Reader on Cities and Social Theory , ed. Ida Susser (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), ch. 3. (Can't do without him, though infuriating.)
• Optional. Patrick Le Galès, European Cities: Social Conflicts and Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), chs. 2-3. Note: if you want a different take on the issues in the preceding two class sessions, see also Le Galès, chs. 4 (relative to the topic of migration) and 5 (on capital).
• Optional. If you want to see Harvey's take on these issues, see ch. 7 of The Urban Experience .

5. April 19
Forward, 1: Crime

• Philippe Bourgois, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), Introduction and chs. 1-3. (This book hides its insights behind anecdotes, so excavate...)
• Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), chs. 1, 4.
• Davis, Planet of Slums , ch. 5.
• Optional: Elijah Anderson, Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1999), Introduction and chs. 1-3.
• Note: all but the Davis of the above readings are relatively recent ethnographies of crime in an urban context. If you are interested in the topic, similar studies begin back in the 19th century, with Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor , 4 vols., 1861-62; see also William Foot Whyte, Street Corner Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943), chs. 4-5; and, most recently, Mitchell Duneier, Sidewalk (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), especially pp. 42-80 and 115-154 (Exceptionally, the photocopy packet includes the pages from Duneier; the Whyte is readily available; and the Mayhew can be found in a Dover reprint). All of these are lovely books and worth reading even if you have no interest in crime.
• Optional: Steve Herbert and Elizabeth Brown, “Conceptions of Space and Crime in the Punitive Neoliberal City,” Antipode 38,4 (2006): 755-77.

6. April 26
Forward, 2: Entertainment

• Walter Benjamin, “Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century” [both versions: 1935 and 1939], in The Arcades Project , trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, ed., Rolf Tiedemann (Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 3-26. This “book” (never published; a massive set of fragments) is worth browsing through; see especially section M, “The Flâneur,” pp. 416-455. For “applications,” other than Paris, see Benjamin's little pieces (the word “essay” is too grandiose in these cases), “Marseille” and “Naples,” both reprinted in Reflections , trans. Edmund Jephcott, ed. Peter Demetz (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), pp. 131-136, 163-173.
• T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), Introduction and chs. 1, 4. (Note: this is a marvelous book, and I would strongly urge you to read at least chap. 3 in it as well. And look at the pictures!)
• Steven Miles, “Resistance or Security? Young People and the ‘Appropriation' of Urban, Cultural and Consumer Space,” in Malcolm Miles and Tim Hall: Urban Futures: Critical Commentaries on Shaping the City (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), ch. 4. This should be seen as a clear response to Horkheimer and Adorno (below).
• Optional. It would be interesting to browse Benjamin's 1936 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” trans. Harry Zohn, in Illuminations , ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken books, 1969), pp. 217-251.
• Optional (I will talk about it for a little bit) but definitely not required: Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in Dialectic of Enlightenment , trans. John Cuming (New York: Continuum, 1972 [orig. publ. 1944]), pp. 120-167.
• Optional, though I will try to spend a few minutes on it. Edward O. Laumann et al., eds., The Sexual Organization of the City (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), chs. 1, 3.
• Optional: Richard Lloyd, Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City (New York: Routledge, 2006), chs. 1-3.

7. May 3
Forward, 3: Urban culture?

• Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” trans. H. H. Gerth, with C. Wright Mills, in Kurt H. Wolff, ed., The Sociology of Georg Simmel (New York: Free Press, 1950 [article orig. publ. 1903]), pp. 409-424.
• Murray Forman, ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (Wesleyan, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002), chs. 1-3, 8-9. Note: a nice collection of pieces on hip-hop in various countries around the world is Tony Mitchell, ed., Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the U.S.A. (Wesleyan, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001); with respect to cities, see in particular chs. 1 and 3, on France and the United Kingdom.
• Optional: Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), chs. 1-12. (Jacobs has some more recent and “big thinker” books, but this was written before she became famous and is focused on her neighborhood.)
• Optional. At this point, you might find it helpful to go back to Castells and see how he approaches the notion of San Francisco gay “cultural identity”: “Cultural Identity, Sexual Liberation and Urban Structure: The Gay Community in San Francisco” [orig. publ. 1982], pp. 180-231, 244-252.
• Optional: Camila Bassi, “Riding the Dialectical Waves of Gay Political Economy: A Story from Birmingham's Commercial Gay Scene,” Antipode 38,2 (2006): 213-35.

8. May 10
Cases, 1: London

• Donald McNeill, “Livingstone's London: Left Politics and the World City,” Regional Studies 36,1 (2002): 75-91.
• Justus Uitermark, “Looking Forward by Looking Back: May Day Protests in London and the Strategic Significance of the Urban,” Antipode 36,4 (2004): 706-27.
• Ian Gordon, “A Disjointed Dynamo,” 2004.
• John Curtice, “Independent Minded,” 2004.
• Anthony M. Warnes, “Older People and Ageing in London,” 2000.
• Optional. Ian R. Gordon and Philip McCann, “Industrial Clusters: Complexes, Agglomeration and/or Social Networks?” Urban Studies 37, pt. 3 (2000): 513-32.

9. May 24
Cases, 2: New York

• Neil Smith, “New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy,” Antipode 34,3 (2002): 427-50.
• John R. Logan, “Still a Global City: The Racial and Ethnic Segmentation of New York,” in Marcuse and Kempen, ch. 8.
• John Hall Mollenkopf, A Phoenix in the Ashes: The Rise and Fall of the Koch Coalition in New York City Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992, 1994), chs. 3-4.
• Optional. Thomas Bender, The Unfinished City: New York and the Metropolitan Idea (New York: New Press, 2002), chs. 3-5, 7, 10-12.

10. May 31
Cases, 3: Tokyo

• Kuniko Fujita, “Neo-industrial Tokyo: Urban Development and Globalisation in Japan's State-centred Developmental Capitalism,” Urban Studies 40,2 (2003): 249-81.
• André Sorensen, “Building World City Tokyo: Globalization and Conflict over Urban Space,” Annals of Regional Science 37,3 (2003): 519-31.
• Asato Saito and Andy Thornley, “Shifts in Tokyo's World City Status and the Urban Planning Response,” Urban Studies 40,4 (2003): 665-85.
• Sharon Hayashi and Anne McKnight, “Good-bye Kitty, Hello War: The Tactics of Spectacle and New Youth Movements in Urban Japan,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 13,1 (2005): 87-113.
• Optional. Takashi Machimura, “The Urban Restructuring Process in Tokyo in the 1980s: Transforming Tokyo into a World City,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 16,1 (1992): 114-128.
• Optional: Paul Waley, “Tokyo: Patterns of Familiarity and Partitions of Difference,” in Marcuse and Kempen, ch. 7.
• Optional. You might also be interested in browsing through a chapter of a book on a related topic: Koichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002), ch. 1.

11. June 7
Cases, 4: Los Angeles

• Edward W. Soja, Postmetropolis , chs. 5, 8-10, 12-14.
• Monica W. Varsanyi, “The Paradox of Contemporary Immigrant Political Mobilization: Organized Labor, Undocumented Migrants, and Electoral Participation in Los Angeles,” Antipode 37,4 (2005): 775-95.
• Optional. Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), ch. 4.
• Optional. Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt and Company, 1998), ch. 7.
• Optional. Allen J. Scott and Edward W. Soja, eds., The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1996), chs. 1, 14.

12. June 14
Conclusion: one concept, many realities

• Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (New York: Pantheon, 2003), chs. 8-9.

Papers due. Oral exams this week.