ABSTRACT
Globalization is now the subject of a growing number of books, articles, conferences and even whole careers. …While the academic treatment of globalization has produced numerous insights into the workings of global capital, especially as it occurs in ‘world cities’ like New York, London, and Tokyo, it has tended to neglect the causes and effects of globalization farther down the urban hierarchy. What does globalization mean for people in these smaller cities and how are they involved in directing the process? The work that follows provides a series of seven theorized case studies of cities from around the world to illustrate how globalization works outside the capitals of worldwide finance and banking. The notion of ‘world city’ is put aside in favor of ‘gateway city’ to illustrate that globalization is indeed global, taking many forms in many cities. By looking at cities below the top echelon, we seek to broaden the understanding of the globalization/city connection. We want to build upon the notion of gateway city, a term developed by Grant (1999) and Grant and Nijman (2000). We use the term ‘Gateway’ to refer to the fact that almost any city can act as a gateway for the transmission of economic, political and cultural globalization.
