ABSTRACT
Much of the literature on globalization attempts to understand and analyse the increasing intensity with which capital, goods and people move across the globe (Castells 2000; Harvey 2000), and the consequences of this on the sovereignty of nation-states (Mann 2000; Strange 2000). Globalization literature on cities points to the redefinition of cities which have emerged as sites for new forms of capital accumulation, information production and the movement of goods and people. This literature illustrates how globalization has resulted in the formation of a global urban hierarchy in which cities are judged according to how well they ‘command and control’ global capital (Sassen 1991; Friedmann 1995). Some academics have argued that this discourse is exclusionary because it tends to portray cities without strong economic linkages to global capital as unimportant (Robinson 2003). The new urban hierarchy also reinforces old colonial relationships between mother countries and their colonies — the ‘core and the periphery’ — reconstructing these old relationships into seemingly new immutable ones by relegating third world cities permanently in the periphery.
