ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes work of a broader research project on global suburbanization and Roger Keil’s own work on the subject. Global city formation has been predominantly a narrative of centrality. The very notion of a global city conjures up central places, central functions, and concentrated urbanity. The focus of global city research has been predominantly on advanced producer services, often located in the central business districts, that support the burgeoning, fast-changing, and pace-setting financial industries at the core of the globalized urban region. The insertion of the region’s suburban communities into the global city was taken to a certain extreme in Compton, south of Los Angeles, one of the poorest suburbs in the United States. In the future, we need to address both the difference between central city and suburbs as well as the diversity within the latter, including their hybrid, in-between, and postsuburban forms.
