Global Cities and Urban Theory provides an innovative set of approaches to understanding some of the world′s major cities, working with concepts such as smart cities, volumetric urbanism, and critical accounting to illustrate the everyday agents and practices that place cities in the world.
Donald McNeill draws on detailed discussions of major cities such as London, San Francisco, Paris and Singapore to provide a deep understanding of how urban theory can be grounded in the cultural economies of urban development. The book:
Donald McNeill has written a creative, innovative and authoritative analysis of the contemporary global city. It provides an impressive critical understanding of what we call the global and the city by focusing on the key material objects and social processes involved in constituting the relations between them. Global Cities provides an analysis of the key engineered sites of the cathedral of St. Peters, the airport and hotel, air conditioning and smart cities - amongst others - helping us to understand why some cities have been more influential than others in shaping global practices.
--Professor Simon MarvinWe may indeed have arrived at an 'urban age' but there is precious little critical insight about this important human development. Global Cities and Urban Theory is therefore a very important arrival and should be widely read and discussed. The book distills and advances Donald McNeill's considerable ground breaking analyses of the global urban system, especially of the corporate and professional elites that seek to shape, indeed control, their destiny. McNeill deploys a highly original and timely critique to challenge the assumptions and assertions of urban power.
--Brendan GleesonAs Donald McNeill notes early in this book, scholarship on global cities "has been widespread and varied". McNeill weaves paths through theory and cities via architects, airports, factories, hotels, cathedrals, taxis, ports and myriad other sites of money, movement, power and marginality. It is a journey worth taking - and McNeill proves a splendid guide.
--James D. Sidaway