2 This approach runs the risk of implying that the city is a psychological construct and cultural process as purely discursive space rather than lived experience, as Henri Lefebvre warns: «this mental space then becomes the locus a «theoretical practice» which is separated from social practice and which sets itself up as the axis, pivot or central reference point of knowledge».

If even the basic notion of the city requires a strategy to contain its diversity and create a «textual» illusion of integrity, what of the global city surely an even vaster construct? Donald proceeds to draw a comparison between Benedict Anderson’s notion of the nation as an imagined community and the way we conceive of a construct an abstract notion of the city as imagined environment. The issue recalls James Donald’s observation that «by calling this diversity «the city», we ascribe to it a coherence or integrity». If there is a problem of definition, the potential ways in which the «global» city might be represented and discussed are as equally plural. Donald Nicholson-Smith, Oxford UK and Cambridge US (.)ģSuch questions are of course as open ended as the phenomenon to which they respond.

3 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans.

2 James Donald, «Metropolis: The City as Text», in R.

What have been and will be the consequences of such global economic and technological inequalities?

1 How will this impact on how we imagine the city and issues of migration, diaspora, and existing geopolitical inequalities – not all global cities are equal in these terms. Most of this growth will take place in developing countries, where some 4 billion people (over half of the total) could be living in cities by 2025, compared with 1.5 billion (37%) in the early 1990s». How do the global cities of the twentieth century resemble or differ in form and function those of the past and, based on present trends, the future? In the 21st century more people than even will be living in urban environments: «Over the next thirty years, the world's urban population could double from 2.6 billion in 1995 to 5.2 billion in 2025.

1 Michel Andrieu, «The City in the Global Village», OECD Observer, no 217-218 Summer 1999.ĢWhat is the essence of the 'global' city and how has it been represented? Is it a modern phenomenon or an ancient practice? How do we define global – is globalism a consequence of mass urbanisation or does globalisation create the conditions for the emergence of the global city.

Global city definition indonesia