International Studies Compendium Project

Extract

Comment on this article   Patterns of urbanization, urban structure, and growth changed fundamentally in the twentieth century. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the majority of human beings dwelled in urban expanses on six continents. This distribution of population is a radical shift from prior centuries when the majority of people lived in rural areas. Another result of twentieth century economic growth is the evolution of the world city. World cities are a product of the globalization of economic activity that has characterized post-World War II capitalism. Globalization, as a process of economic transformation, has been defined by Tilly (1995) and similarly by Giddens (1990 :64) as “an increase in the geographical range of locally consequential social interactions, especially when the increase stretches a significant proportion of all interactions across international or intercontinental limits.” These processes involve the movement of capital, goods, labor, information, and services across country borders usually by transnational or multinational corporations ( Dicken 2003 :198). But it is also a social process that transforms current social conditions into one where international interconnections of economy, production, capital flows, and perspective are commonplace ( Steger 2003 :7–8). The mechanism of globalization also produces geographical effects that can ... log in or subscribe to read full text