Professor of Sociology
University of Chicago

The global economy needs to be implemented, serviced, coordinated. A cross-border network of 30 to 40 cities is one of the key scaffoldings for the management, coordination and servicing of the global economy. In this regard global cities are strategic sites for the valorization of new forms of global corporate capital. But these cities are also strategic sites for the disadvantaged people who, while powerless, gain presence and hence the possibility of a new kind of politics. Insofar as immigrants and people of color generally are part of the disadvantaged, we can see that the global city is in part also a site for post-colonial history, a history no longer confined to the former colonial territories but now also enacted daily in the metropolitan center. Global cities emerge as a new frontier.