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Globalization has a great impact on the physical structure and social-economic fabric of cities all over the world. More than ever, the world's urban population is living in large cities (with 1 million inhabitants or more) or so-called mega-cities (with a population of 10 million or more). At the same time, the changing functions of cities within the world system call for our attention. New means of communication, transport and logistics are transforming cities and connecting them with each other under conditions of post- industrial capitalist development in a global system. This is why the term globalizing cities is used in this course, as distinct from global or world cities (as coined by Sassen and Friedman). Approaching globalizing cities from the perspective of development geography means that much attention is paid to socio-economic inequalities in cities, especially in the global south, but also in the global north.
Following through on the title of this course we start off this course by discussing some key changes in the conceptualization of the urban and rural domain, delving into concepts such as hinterland, planetary urbanism, adaptive urbanism, the global village, the hinterland, formal and informal economies, translocality, etc. These concepts are discussed not only in a historic sense, i.e. how they emerged over time, and produced new insights to understanding change in urban and rural contexts, but also how take on particular grounding, meaning in particular contexts. Thus, extreme heterogeneity in income situations (f.i. the ‘dirty rich’ versus ‘slum dogs’ in India) might be considered to be particularly present in urban contexts in the global South. Yet this not only recurs in the global north, it is also prevalent in rural contexts, where an emergence of structurally differentiating modes of access to, and utilization of, natural resources results in increasing rifts in local communities, a process further enforced by globalization. The result is a diverse landscape of ‘local’ livelihoods that are each immersed, albeit with rather different outcomes, in global developments.
In a different manner globalization also impacts local structures and processes in rural regions, resulting in adaptations of, or new, social, economic and political structures which often traverse the geographical boundaries of local villages and regions. With regard to urban issues development geography focuses especially on the position of marginal groups in society and their opportunities for emancipation, notably through the so-called informal sector. Yet concepts such as exclusion/access can also be applied to the rural context given rising inequalities between, and within, rural regions. Hence attention will be paid to processes of social exclusion as well as emancipation, and thereby also locally enacted coping strategies and participatory policies, notably exploring how these can incite desired progress and higher levels of equality. Special attention will also be given to the role of the informal sector in low-income countries.
Finally, we seek to provide insight into the intrusion of global changes that have a substantive impact on the everyday lives of people. Climate change, and its impact on local ecologies and thereby also livelihoods is certainly one theme that we will delve into, also to show its wider significance, namely to help explain the impact of it as one modality of globalization on local domains and their actors notably, but not only, in the global south.
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