Cities and Globalization

The Cities and Globalization Network has been created to provide an interdisciplinary forum from which to examine how contemporary changes at the global scale have affected city life. Changes in the restructuring of the economy aided by technological advances have affected the manner in which people constitute their identities and interact among each other as well as the manner in which people and urban landscapes are produced and organized. While broad in scope, the Cities and Globalization Network aims at establishing a platform where connections, trends, similarities and differences between localities and people could be analyzed within the context of a global optic that addresses socio-physical changes. We would like to consider globalization as an urban condition and from an interdisciplinary perspective address a broad range of issues that might include but is not limited to:

people and environment relationships; the constructions of identity and movement / migration, diasporas, hybridity; comparative/ transnational studies between cities; building/ rebuilding/ revitalization/ redevelopment/business improvement districts/empowerment zones; social and cultural movements; new technologies and their impact in the urban context; media/writing/televizing/filming/digitalizing the city/geographies of the media; environmental history; sustainability; urban visions; research methodologies.

How Architecture Transformed a Violent City

In: Utne

By: Danielle Maestretti

Over the past ten or so years, the city of Medellín, Colombia, has undergone a high-profile transformation, shedding its reputation as one of the world’s most violent cities. In an interview with architect Giancarlo Mazzanti in the art magazine "Bomb," former Medellín mayor Sergio Fajardo discusses the vital role of architecture and design in the city’s renewal, which he explains was driven by the concept of “the most beautiful for the most humble”—a departure, or “rupture,” he says, from the notion “that anything you give to the poor is a plus.”

As we reported in November, during Fajardo’s term as mayor (from 2004 through 2007), any reduction in violence was immediately supplemented with a “concrete community improvement.” So as Medellín’s murder rate plunged, many of the city’s poorest neighborhoods became home to sparkling new schools, housing, community spaces, and “library parks...”

Network Chairs

Julia Nevarez
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