ABSTRACT
Cities have historically been the primary locales of social, economic, cultural and political development and innovation. The global economy not only constrains but also enables governments to pursue their national policy objectives. Bartelson distinguishes between three roles and workings of 'globalisation' as a process in relation to states. The three types of mutual engagement and interaction identified by Bartelson are: Transference, Transformation, and Transcendence. Municipal territories, or administrative and/or planning regions, are examples of such a territorial approach as geographic 'containers' of policy-making. The growing attention accorded to network relations and communication linkages as descriptors of 'spaces of agendas' has, as Sheppard observes, focused primarily on horizontal relationships across the same spatial scale. They conclude that cities need not be merely 'leaves in the wind', but can make choices and actively seek to influence their developmental prospects by drawing on particular combinations of local cultural and political milieux and economic factors.
