ABSTRACT
The inspiration for this book came from the wide range of debates, problems and issues raised at the 7th International Urban Planning and Environment Association’s Conference (UPE7, 2007) entitled ‘World Class Cities: Environmental Impacts and Planning Opportunities’. These were important issues to tackle and this book has set out some challenging questions: when urban forms are clearly polycentric and cities becoming more fragmented, how significant are these concepts, can anything be learned from practice and are there any commonalities that help guide ways forward? Not only is this broad in scope, both in terms of the concepts discussed and cities reviewed, but also it is clear that the size, complexity, and differences between these cities make generalisations difficult. A further complication is that many of the debates and issues are separated in academic research and publication. That is particularly true for the two debates which are primarily discussed in this book: the world city debate and that of the sustainable urban form. To this end this book attempts to link the concepts of polycentrism and fragmentation to the question of whether there are any pathways or processes in the context of world, or even ‘world class’, cities in achieving more sustainable urban forms. Derudder and Witlox clearly define the world city debate and other chapters, such as those of Marcuse and Radović, extend the debate into issues associated with globalisation. Many of the contributions to this book come from research fields that delve into the relationships between urban planning and urban form, and with sustainability. This combination of research agendas is not without conflicting positions and even contradictory uses and understandings of terms. One of the key starting points is from the standpoint of world cities, and the identification of a gap in the debate, namely about the physical form these cities take. This is the first aspect of inquiry in the book.
