ABSTRACT
The papers in this Special Issue of Urban Studies were originally prepared for presentation at an international conference on “City, State and Region in a Global Order” held in Hiroshima, Japan, in December 1998. Conference organisers were sceptical about claims that globalisation was forcing convergence in social patterns among the world's major cities: for example, the thesis that New York, London and Tokyo are converging on a global city model that transcends national and regional location (Sassen, 1991; Taylor 1995), or the claim that Los Angeles' ‘postmodern’ institutional and spatial mix models the future world metropolis (Soja, 1989; Miller, 2000), The re-appearance of convergence theories seemed particularly egregious when viewed from the vantage-point of great cities in highly urbanised, non-Western regions of the world, like Pacific Asia.
