From the outset global cities have been primarily seen as outcomes of changes in global economic capitalism. This has led to critical responses arguing for the need to consider more centrally the role of politics in global city formation, and in particular the need to critically analyse city-state relations in varying geographical contexts. Three dominant strands of critique have emerged: a literature on state rescaling (primarily based on experiences of North American and Western European cities), a literature on developmental states (on East Asian cities) and a literature on postcolonial urban theory (primarily on cities in the Global South). Although these approaches all argue for a re-focusing on the role of the political in global city formation, they do not easily fit other geographical and geopolitical contexts. This thesis aims to contribute to the debate by focusing on the case of Istanbul as Turkey s emerging global city. Based on semi-structured interviews, this research challenges some key assumptions of global cities research, state rescaling approach, developmental approach and postcolonial urban theory through the case of Istanbul. It also provides a critical conceptual understanding of Istanbul s globalisation, argues the role of actors in global city making and will demonstrate that contrary to what is generally claimed in the literature, the relationship between Istanbul (city) and Turkey (state) could be assessed as more harmonious rather than tension-filled. Furthermore, the research goes beyond revealing the points where Istanbul conforms or does not conform to the existing approaches, and addresses the very recent academic debates between those who believe that we need new theories to understand the dynamics and impacts of the actual global urbanisation and those who suggest that instead of calling for new theories there is a need to examine and improve the existing approaches. To do that, my research develops an alternative conceptualisation -- the in-between city - that might cover the cities located in the region spreading from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. The argument behind this concept is that owing to their intersectional positions between East and West, and the continual links between their imperial and global periods, cities such as Istanbul, Vienna, Budapest, St. Petersburg or Moscow, present more hybrid characteristics in comparison to the cities categorised by the existing approaches.

No description available.

There have been recent contributions to the world city literature and the new economic geography literature that have focused on city connectivity and practicebased research, through concepts such as city actor-networks, relational geographies and project-led enquiries. As this literature is developing, this thesis aims to analyse and contribute to it by providing an empirical focus in two main themes that have so far been marginalised in these literatures – the city of Sydney, and the cultural industries. An alternative conceptualisation of world cities, namely ‘new urbanism’, which employs Actor-Network Theory, will be utilised in this thesis to ask the question, what are the actants of Sydney’s cultural industries (specifically the film and TV production industry), and how are they enrolled to create the spacing and timing of Sydney’s actor-networks? By answering this question, this thesis will contribute to the knowledge in three ways: theoretically, by adding weight to the alternative concepts of new urbanism and relational economic geographies; empirically, by studying two themes that have been hitherto underdeveloped in the existing literature; and methodologically, through new developing empirical agendas that cover the quantification of Sydney’s world city network and ANT-inspired ethnographic, ‘project-based’ enquiry.

abstract: Beijing, in its Twelfth Five-Year Plan for the National Economic and Social Development of Beijing (2011 – 2015), affirmed its intention to become a leading “World City with Chinese characteristics.” This research is based on an assessment of the proposed strategies contained within the 12th Five-Year plan that are grounded in the set of indicators (variables) closely associated with world city status. Indicator selection (e.g., percentage of foreign born population) is based on review of shared characteristics of world cities (e.g., Tokyo, New York, Singapore) constrained by availability of Beijing data; plus the significant academic literature on the topic from leading scholars such as Peter Hall. Using these indicators, Beijing’s baseline conditions and associated trends are established for assessment in a Status-Quo Scenario. Thereafter, interventions proposed by the Beijing Municipality to achieve world city status are evaluated. The results of this assessment will inform Beijing’s policy-makers regarding potential obstacles, pitfalls, or potential disruptions on the road to premier ‘World City’ status, and emphasize the need to undertake peremptory interventions and/or prepare contingency responses, as well as, inform stakeholders and decision-makers of critical and non-critical interventions recommended to achieve World City status by the year 2030. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Urban and Environmental Planning 2016

Les services avancés à la production (APS) dans les domaines de la comptabilité, de la publicité, de la finance, des services juridiques et du conseil en gestion, ainsi que de l'informatique aident leurs clients à développer des stratégies d'accumulation financière et assurent la coordination et la gouvernance des réseaux de production mondiaux. Néanmoins, alors que les réseaux mondiaux ont été richement documentés par la recherche sur les villes mondiales, cette thèse tente de comprendre les processus moins étudiés qui structurent la géographie des APS dans la ville mondiale de Bruxelles. Pour ce faire, je réexamine deux hypothèses qui restent peu étudiées et implicites. D'une part, il est supposé que les firmes APS s'agglomèrent et constituent des réseaux de collaboration de firmes APS au sein des villes, un complexe APS. D'autre part, alors que les réseaux mondiaux de firmes APS ont été minutieusement documentés, le rôle de commandement et de contrôle attribué aux villes mondiales reste souvent supposé découler directement de ces réseaux. Pour explorer ces hypothèses, j'ai développé trois types d'analyses appliqués au cas de Bruxelles, une ville dont l'internationalisation est basée sur sa fonction politique et sa forte insertion dans les réseaux APS :une analyse géographique des processus d’agglomération des APS, une enquête auprès des professionnels APS pour caractériser les interactions au sein et entre les secteurs APS et une étude de cas sur les collaborations concrètes entre les entreprises APS dans le cas de processus de restructurations bancaires. Les résultats conjoints des trois analyses m'amènent à soutenir que la notion de complexe APS doit être nuancée avec l'idée que la finance fonctionne comme l'élément central dans les relations entre les APS avec des secteurs auxiliaires autour de la finance. Comme cette explication n'éclaire pas complètement la notion de contrôle et de commandement de l'économie, je recommande de prendre en compte la recherche constante de la rentabilité qui fait pression sur l'organisation des entreprises. Je plaide donc pour une meilleure articulation entre les réseaux mondiaux des APS et le capitalisme financiarisé. Pour conclure, je montre que Bruxelles occupe une position intermédiaire dans la division internationale du travail et que ce rôle se limite de plus en plus à la seule coordination du marché national. / Option Géographie du Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among the individuals, groups, and institutions that comprise Moscow's contemporary restaurant industry, this dissertation explores the production and consumption of Moscow's postsocialist culinary culture and landscape. Approaching cuisine as both a social product and a cultural process, I examine the agents and avenues of the local globalization of culinary culture. In my analysis, these "agents" include restaurateurs, chefs, cooks, professional associations, and educators and educational institutions, among others. I attend to the various meanings, practices, and contexts of their work, as well as to the political, aesthetic, and performative dimensions of cooking, cuisine and restaurants. I also examine how Russian consumers engage with and make sense of Moscow's emerging culinary culture and restaurant scene. I see these producers of cuisine and restaurants as authors of the capital's postsocialist consumer landscape and intermediaries between the local and the global. Articulating global culinary culture into local contexts, these cultural producers redeploy contemporary and historical culinary practices, aesthetics, and forms as representations of culture on both local and global stages. I call these practices culinary strategies and argue that they are vehicles through which new social actors struggle over the meanings and values at stake in the marketization of Russian society. Cuisine and restaurants are thus contested sites for the construction of Moscow as a world-class city and the production, dissemination, and negotiation of community, nation, identity, and class. I suggest that cuisine and restaurants play important roles in processes of globalization, serving as sites for reproduction and contestation of global hegemonies of form. Drawing on and expanding work in the anthropologies of food, visual communication, postsocialism, and globalization, my project suggests how ethnography and micro-analysis of the visual, sensual, performative, and structural dimensions of cultural production can open critical understandings of the complex and shifting interactions between local, national, and global contexts. / Anthropology

More than 1.2 million students have left China to study abroad during the past three decades of economic reform in China. In 2007 alone, China sent around 144,000 students abroad, 167 times of the number of students in 1978. This large scale of student migration has often raised debate on brain drain , because many of these student migrants do not return to China upon graduation. However, there has been a reverse trend in the past decade as China witnessed a growing wave of return migration. More and more Chinese students are coming back to China after their studies and work abroad due to the strong economic situation and promising career opportunities at home. These returnees are given the nick-name Haigui or, in English, sea-turtles. This doctoral research is therefore an academic inquiry to this emerging social phenomenon. While international migration is mainly researched on the national level, this innovative doctoral research seeks to understand the relationship between migration and global city formation. To do so, it analyses inter-city migration flow by applying a relational case study of circular student migration between Shanghai and Paris and examines the rationale behind return migration and the role of management/business student returnees from French business schools on Shanghai s pathway to become China s premier global city. This research reveals that global cities have become the strategic points for Chinese talents (students and skilled professionals) acting the role as sending, transiting and receiving sites, which are interconnected in the dynamic process of knowledge accumulation, contact making and network creation. Chinese student returnees contribute to the development of Shanghai by actively engaging in transnational activities including developing and maintaining cross-border organisation/corporate ties and personal networks, knowledge transfer, acting as global-local business and cultural interface, as well as enriching cosmopolitan and multicultural business and cultural spaces in Shanghai.

My explorations around the world are intertwined with my excavation of the layers of art history. My discoveries about the traditions of the printmaking medium are fused with the heritage I inherit as an artist. This is what is put into my current body of work. With this supporting manuscript, I hope to inform about the technical aspects of my unique aesthetic and to entertain with the ideas behind my current body of work by making connections between my personal visions and experiences and the significance of the artists and craftsman who inspire me.

This dissertation is a quantitative study of the spatial business strategies of 130 late medieval and 16th-century European commercial and banking firms, the business networks of which have been put together for a structural analysis of the European city network between ca. 1300 and ca. 1600. Concretely this investigation has been carried out through the application of an interlocking network model – specifically developed for the study of the present-day global city network produced by the office networks of business service firms – to this historical case study, in order to challenge predominantly hierarchical conceptualisations of city networks which are often influenced by central place theory. After a methodological section, in which solutions are designed for reconciling the geographical model with the particularities of historical research, a first part of the analysis focuses on agency within the network, identifying and reconstructing the multiple spatial strategies used by the different agents. In a second part the overall structure and dynamics in the network are investigated, revealing the operation of Christaller's traffic principle, as well as a cyclical variation in emphasis on continental and maritime nodes within the European city network. More generally, this study demonstrates that the functioning of dynamic transnational networks based upon complementarity and cooperation rather than competition is not limited to our contemporary globalised world, but can also be found in particular historical societies.

No description available.