The Global City: Past and Present

Widely regarded as a central concept to understanding the contemporary urban form, the idea of the global city is certainly here to stay. The aim of this research network is to investigate how digging deeper into the history of the phenomenon can improve our understanding of its present-day manifestations. Global city scholars identify their subjects by their character as economic giants, international gateways, political and cultural hubs, and sites of great wealth inequalities. Yet, many scholars who research the colonial city in the first age of European expansion would also draw on such categories to describe their subjects of investigation. How does exploring these shared characteristics enrich our understanding of the global urban process over time? How much of this apparent similarity can be sustained after closer investigation? How might it impact the thinking of policy-makers and social scientists when we realize that the problems of today's global cities were also the problems of the first globalized metropolises 250 years ago? These are just some of the questions that this research network seeks to answer by bringing historians into the conversation about the global city.

Since the late twentieth century, the idea of the global city has become central to the way in which social scientists and policy-makers approach our contemporary cities and their role in the process of globalization. Urban scholars have contributed to this focus by identifying important ways in which global forces and the city have come together to shape both the modern urban condition and the nature of globalization itself. Thus, whether one considers patterns of financial investment, the emergence of new urban hierarchies, shifts in the urban spatial form, or transformations in the sociopolitical make-up of cities, it has become well-understood that these local realities and broader global exchanges are intricately connected. Historians of the urban past, however, have remained absent from this discussion. While their work has approached the city as a focal point from which to explore global exchanges in the medieval, early modern, and nineteenth century world, it often remains tied to the specificities of a location, shying away from discussions of the broader phenomenon of globalization. Understanding cities of the past as global cities, with a core role in the long history of globalization, nevertheless has the potential to enrich current discussions of the character and implications of globalization. Thus, the chief goal of this network is to stimulate discussion amongst historians, and between historians and other social scientists, to reach a better understanding of the global city across time as well as space.

Historians have embraced the concept of globalization with recent inquiries into the networks of people, knowledge, trade, and culture that circulated the world from the medieval era onwards. Yet, urban scholars at work on such themes mostly fail to make connections beyond the limits of their chosen empire or region. This research network will also begin the task of putting "urban" back into the global process before the modern era by running four workshops on the pre-modern city in global context. The first three meetings will focus on the main areas of inquiry commonly pursued by urban studies specialists. These workshops will concentrate on space, the economic and political structures of urban life, and the character of the urban population. The meetings will encourage debate about how the main characteristics of the global city might be applied in specific historical contexts but they will also seek to identify broader trends and patterns across early modern empires. The final workshop will then be focused on identifying how historicizing the global city influences our understanding of its form, function, and problems in a contemporary context.

The project is designed to reach groups of people outside of the academy, specifically those involved in public policy and the general public.

Public Lecture: The third workshop will be accompanied by a public lecture. Taking place in central London, the talk will be aimed at a general audience and will include a question and answer session. Focusing on London in comparative context the lecture will address how the idea of the global city can help us to understand a city's past, present and future. Introducing a broader audience to intersections between cities and globalization, the talk will convey the key aims of the network to the general public. The event will be publicized through a variety of channels that reach beyond the academic community and the network participants, including the Institute for Historical Research, the Museum of London, and the Centre for Metropolitan History

Policymakers: The workshops will include sociologists, urban planners, and geographers with policy-making experience and ongoing links with central government. These participants will be critical to the process of knowledge exchange between historians and policy-makers. A number of individuals who will contribute to the workshops are also part of larger research clusters involved with policy. These groups have a strong web presence (Global and World Cities (GAWC) hosted by Loughborough University, for example) and working papers posted on these sites will broadcast the activities and findings of this network beyond its immediate participants.

Blog and Website: The PI will maintain a blog of the network's activities and discussions, also using the site to publicize events and post calls for papers for the individual workshops. Linking the blog to other websites focusing on urban history and policy - GAWC, the Centre for Urban History at Leicester University, the Centre for Metropolitan History at the Institute of Historical Research, the Museum of the City at Portland State University, H-Urban - will raise its profile beyond the limits of the directly involved academic community. Furthermore, the blog will provide an accessible commentary on the project and will be fully linked to social media such as the St Andrews History blog and Facebook page. The blog will be edited with a broad audience in mind, so as to appeal not just to historians but also to interested policy-makers and the general public.