Uni Reading List
Index / 001 EN
The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo cover

Sociology

Sociology

The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo

Saskia Sassen

A landmark study arguing that economic globalisation has concentrated command functions in a few major cities. Using New York, London and Tokyo as cases, Sassen shows how the dispersal of production goes together with the centralisation of finance and specialised services, and how this reshapes urban labour markets and inequality.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with urban sociology or economic geography and with basic concepts in the global economy is assumed.

Difficulty Level
Advanced
Academic Level
Graduate
global citiesurban sociologyglobalizationproducer servicesurban inequalitymonograph

01 / Reading Guide

Reading Guide

Citation

Sassen, S. (2001). The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. (First edition published 1991.)

Chapter Summary

The second edition adds a new preface and an epilogue to the structure of the 1991 book. Sassen updated the core data and rewrote the chapters in response to the debates the first edition provoked, and the epilogue reviews developments in globalization since 1991. The book has ten chapters in three parts plus a concluding chapter, four appendices and a long bibliography, about 450 pages in all. Its method, as the contents show, is to move from the global economy to the economic order of cities and then to their social order, using New York, London and Tokyo as parallel cases.

Chapter 1: Overview

The opening chapter sets out the argument. According to the publisher, the book's distinctive emphasis is on the cross-border dynamics through which these cities, and a growing number of other global cities, form strategic transnational networks.

Part One, Chapters 2–4: The Geography and Composition of Globalization

Chapter 2, "Dispersal and New Forms of Centralization", treats mobility and agglomeration and the link between capital mobility and labor market formation. Chapter 3, "New Patterns in Foreign Direct Investment", examines the major patterns of investment and international transactions in services. Chapter 4, "Internationalization and Expansion of the Financial Industry", covers the conditions and components of financial growth, the global capital market and financial crises.

Part Two, Chapters 5–7: The Economic Order of the Global City

Chapter 5, "The Producer Services", discusses the category of services, the spatial organization of finance and new forms of centrality. Chapter 6, "Global Cities: Postindustrial Production Sites", looks at where producer services locate, across nation, region and city, and at new elements in the urban hierarchy. Chapter 7, "Elements of a Global Urban System: Networks and Hierarchies", considers the movement toward networked systems, expansion and concentration, leading currencies and the international property market.

Part Three, Chapters 8–9: The Social Order of the Global City

Chapter 8, "Employment and Earnings", asks whether the three cities tell one tale and examines earnings. Chapter 9, "Economic Restructuring as Class and Spatial Polarization", covers the overall effects of leading industries, social geography, consumption, casual and informal labor markets, and race and nationality in the labor market.

In Conclusion, Chapter 10: A New Urban Regime?

The concluding chapter asks whether the changes described amount to a new urban regime.

Epilogue and Appendices

The epilogue returns to four themes: the global city model, the financial order, the producer services, and social and spatial polarization. Four appendices give a classification of producer services by U.S., Japanese and British industrial classifications, definitions of urban units for Tokyo, London and New York, population data for selected Japanese prefectures and cities, and a note on Tokyo's land market.

Key Concepts

Part One

  • Dispersal and new forms of centralization: the pairing in the title of Chapter 2, discussed with mobility and agglomeration.
  • Command centers: the role that, according to the publisher, New York, London and Tokyo came to play in the global economy.
  • Foreign direct investment and services trade: the flows examined in Chapter 3.
  • Financial industry internationalization: the subject of Chapter 4.

Part Two

  • Producer services: the category of business services discussed in Chapter 5 and defined in Appendix A.
  • Postindustrial production site: how Chapter 6 describes global cities.
  • Global urban system: the networks and hierarchies of Chapter 7.

Part Three and conclusion

  • Class and spatial polarization: the social effect of economic restructuring that Chapter 9 and the epilogue address.
  • Informal and casual labor markets: part of the account of the social order in Chapter 9.
  • New urban regime: the question the final chapter raises.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

  • A comparative design. The book treats three cities together, and the publisher describes their changes as massive and parallel, so its claims about the global economy are tested across settings in the United States, Britain and Japan.
  • Economy and society in one argument. Parts Two and Three connect producer services and finance to employment, earnings, consumption and informal work, so the argument runs from global finance down to household and neighbourhood life.
  • Revised with new material. The publisher stresses that the data were updated and the chapters rewritten for this edition, with a new preface and an epilogue.
  • Reference apparatus. The appendices on classification and urban-unit definitions explain how the cities were compared.

Limitations

  • Three cases. The title commits the analysis to New York, London and Tokyo. The publisher mentions a growing number of other global cities, but the contents give them no chapter of their own.
  • Dense data. Chapter and section titles refer to tables, classifications and earnings comparisons; readers wanting a narrative account of city life will find a heavily statistical argument.
  • A snapshot of 2001. The data were updated for 2001, and the epilogue is the only place where later developments appear, so more recent evidence has to come from other sources.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is the specialised, research-based study on the urban sociology list. Parker's Urban Theory and the Urban Experience and Gottdiener, Hohle and King's The New Urban Sociology are textbook routes into the field, and Lin and Mele's The Urban Sociology Reader collects classic and contemporary writings, including work on globalization. Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities is a classic study of neighbourhood life, and Sampson's Great American City a neighbourhood-level study of Chicago.

Sassen asks a different question from those two: not what makes a neighbourhood work, but how a few cities came to hold command functions in the global economy and what that did to their labour markets. Read a textbook first for the vocabulary of urban sociology, then Sassen for the global-economy argument.

How to Use This Book

It suits graduate students and advanced undergraduates who know some urban sociology or economic geography and basic ideas about the global economy.

Read Chapter 1 and the epilogue first for the argument and its later restatement. Then read Part One for the global background, Part Two for the economic order, and Part Three for the social order. Students interested in labour and inequality can go straight to Chapters 8 and 9; those interested in the financial sector can focus on Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 10 is a short wrap-up, and the appendices are worth consulting whenever a chapter relies on a particular classification.