The Rise and Fall of the Sociology of the Global City

Abstract

In the 1980s and 1990s, a series of publications, including Saskia Sassen’s landmark book The Global City, triggered a new current of research aiming to link a cycle of globalized financial and tech capitalism to a new type of city, analogous to what the industrial city had been in the past. This article first reviews this literature in relation to the history and sociology of the world city. It then reviews criticism and sociological questions advanced by the global city literature and, in particular, research by Saskia Sassen and Manuel Castells. It argues that claims about the uniqueness of the global city were not validated empirically. Nonetheless, the issues this literature raised became central to research on globalizing cities, in particular in relation to the role of finance and financial capitals. Finally, this article argues that different forms of globalization give rise to different types of globalizing cities. A new cycle of research is now underway in relation to the climate crisis and pandemics, as the climate crisis becomes the most important global phenomenon.