Beyond the Global City Concept and the Myth of ‘Command and Control’

The article argues that the lack of convincing empirical evidence for the global economy as being subject to ‘command and control’ results from that contention being a neo‐Marxist myth. First, imagining the global economy as being subject to ‘highly concentrated command’ through the function of some major cities as ‘strategic sites’ for the production of ‘command and control’ is traced back through several neo‐Marxist authors to narrate its genesis, and to argue that the lack of evidence for that proposition is a consequence of those antecedents envisioning capitalism as a totalizing structure, thus making the assumption that it is subject to control and coordination from a distance. Second, Taylor's interlocking world city network model is forensically examined to explain that it is fallacious because it is a structuralism that, bedevilled by a sorites paradox, contains the further problem of containing no credible evidence for the existence of ‘command centres’. Finally, the article moves beyond neo‐Marxism's key concepts by juxtaposing their assumptions with ethnographic results from social studies of finance, a manoeuvre which forges an understanding of cities as socio‐technical assemblages and eventful multiplicities, beyond, inter alia, the baseless assumption that the global economy is subject to ‘command and control’.     

Dubai in the ‘Middle’

In the early 2000s, Dubai seemed the apotheosis of the global city model. Lauded as an embodiment of globalist ideals, or harshly criticized as a representation of the dangers of contemporary urbanism, it was clearly under the spotlight. Then, like the concept of the ‘global city’ itself, it disappeared from the headlines, to be subject only to sporadic and cynical attention. Today some are heralding a ‘return’ of Dubai from the anonymity of the middle ground of global city hierarchies and rankings. What is often forgotten, however, is that urbanism in Dubai did not stop. On the contrary, Dubai's continuous ‘worlding’ offers a productive opportunity for the encounter of ‘global’ and ‘ordinary’ modes of urban analysis. By unpacking the construction of a global Dubai, this article advocates greater sensitivity to the multiscalar politics that shape its continuity. Stepping beyond rumours of crisis and decline, it aims to connect the global fortunes and everyday processes that jointly characterize the development of global cities. ‘Global’ and ‘ordinary’ urbanism, it argues, are but two registers of how we could, in Warren Magnusson's words, ‘see like a city’.     

Campus,City, Networks and Nation: Student‐Migrant Activism as Socio‐spatial Experience in Melbourne,Australia

‘Education–migration nexus’ policies in Australia between 1998 and 2010 linked international education with different forms of temporary and permanent migration. This resulted in a blurring of boundaries around student, worker, consumer, migrant and ethnic identities. While the exploitation, marginalization and vulnerability of international students in Australia has gained a great deal of media and scholarly attention, less consideration has been given to the varied forms of subsequent protest undertaken by student migrants in Australian cities. This article analyses three case studies of protests involving student migrants in Melbourne: a protest against unfair assessment; a fight for a campus prayer room; and labour protests within the retail service and taxi industries. It draws on theoretical work on new social movements and social transformation in urban spaces to find ways to conceptualize this activism in relation to the scales of campus, city and nation. In doing so, it argues primarily that these sites of protest are socio‐spatial experiences that encompass shifting and socially produced spatial scales, as well as complex networks of association across different communities, which in turn reflect different student‐migrant identities.     

城市沟通策略的SHARP模型及运用

城市沟通是提高城市知名度和美誉度的一个有效的城市营销策略.城市沟通策略的SHARP模型,即销售促进策略、重大事件策略、广告沟通策略、公关沟通策略与人员沟通策略,应该在城市沟通中得到综合利用.     

建设紧凑型城市设立城市土地预警制

紧凑型城市可以节约土地,节约投资,节约能源,增加人气,是我国城市发展的优选方向.建设紧凑型城市要尽可能地提高土地利用的集约化程度,对城市土地采取严格的统一管理,城市用地要采取"上天、入地、进山、下海、拓荒"的方针和综合开发、综合利用的方针.     

Making ‘Global Sydney’: Spatial Imaginaries,Worlding and Strategic Plans

This article critically examines the expression of global spatial imaginaries in urban policy and planning. Following recent calls to understand how the global is ‘made up' in and through cities, we argue for the usefulness of Roy and Ong's concept of ‘worlding’. By analysing how strategic spatial plans envisage ‘Global Sydney’, the article reveals a constitutive spatial imaginary informed by the articulation of three interrelated elements: global city standards, comparative techniques and extra‐local policy models. Unpacking how cities are selectively worlded through spatial imaginaries, the article advances an approach to urban globality as actively cultivated and differentially produced.     

企业品牌与城市品牌的异同及互动

城市品牌和企业品牌内涵不同,但是联系密切.在深入分析了城市品牌和企业品牌的互动关系,即企业品牌对城市品牌的支撑作用以及城市品牌建设对企业品牌发展的促进作用的基础上,得到了关于促进城市品牌和企业品牌和谐发展的几点启示.     

城市问题及城市范式变迁

城市问题伴随城市的产生而出现,随着城市问题的产生--解决--新问题的出现,用于解决城市问题、指导城市建设的城市科学,也在不断地经历一次又一次的科学革命与范式的变迁.本文主要从世界观、城市问题、城市科学方法论的角度出发,探讨城市科学范式的变迁过程,在对旧范式进行批判的同时,对新的城市科学范式--生态城市范式的成就与问题进行了分析.     

省区"城市化水平"的简易求算

提出了一种省区"城市化水平"计算方式,该方法简便易算,计算结果与各省区实际城市化水平基本相符,是城市及城市化问题研究的一种新的测算方法.     

Writing Across Contexts: Urban Informality and the State in Tallinn,Bafatá and Berlin

Urban research has long related informality to a lack of state capacity or a failure of institutions. This assumption not only fails to account for the heterogeneous institutional relations in which informality is embedded, but has also created a dividing line between states. Whereas some states are understood to manage urban development through functioning institutions, others, in this view, fail to regulate. To deconstruct such understandings, this article explores informal practices through a multi‐sited individualizing comparison between three case studies of water governance, parking regulation and dwelling regimes in Bafatá (Guinea‐Bissau), Tallinn (Estonia) and Berlin (Germany), respectively. Our approach to understanding informality starts from the negotiation and contestation of order between differently positioned actors in the continuous making of states. From this point of view, informality is inherent in the architecture of states––emerging through legal systems, embedded in negotiations between and within institutions, and based on conflicts between state regulations and prevailing norms. Tracing how order takes shape though negotiation, improvisation, co‐production and translation not only highlights how informality constitutes a modus operandi in the everyday workings of the state in all three cases, but also provides a way to talk across these cases, i.e. to bring them together in one frame of analysis and overcome their presumed incommensurability.     

事件与城市特色

分析了全球化背景下事件和城市特色的含义及其重要作用,以及事件对城市特色的塑造作用,并从城市特色系统的角度探讨了借助事件塑造城市特色的策略,最后提出应借助事件塑造城市品牌,促进城市营销.     

发展循环经济,经营生态城市

经营生态城市是城市客观发展的需要,体现了经营城市的目标是提高城市经济社会生活质量、增强城市竞争力、实现城市可持续发展。在作为城市经营目标的城市经济、社会和环境的协调发展中,三者之间存在着一种互相促进、相互制约的辨证关系。发展循环经济是经营生态城市、实现城市可持续发展的必要途径。本文介绍了经营城市、生态城市及循环经济的内涵,并提出了发展循环经济、经营生态城市的对策。