ABSTRACT
Although twenty years ago the term was hardly used, globalization now seems to be ever present in the speeches of politicians and the pronouncement of business leaders. Indeed, it has become something of a catch-all term, “used by many to bundle together virtually all the ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ of contemporary society”. Today, a new range of cities have emerged as the command and control centers of global capitalism. These include London, New York, Tokyo and Paris, cities “distinguished not by their size or their status as capital cities of large countries, but by the range and extent of their economic power”. In addition to challenging the ethnocentrism of globalization debates, urban geographers have also called into question the narrowly economistic perspective which informs many accounts of globalization. Indeed, there have been claims that “economic globalization inevitably leads to cultural homogenization where local differences are simply obliterated”.
