World cities and peripheral development: The interplay of gateways and subordinate places in Argentina and Ghana’s upstream oil and gas sector

Serving as “gateways”, some world cities tie their wider hinterlands to global networks. The article revisits gateway–hinterland relations against the backdrop of assessments that lead to opposed conclusions on the benefits and shortcomings of integration into the world economy. Referring to the oil and gas sector in Argentina and Ghana, it answers the question of how gateways interact with subordinate places and also uncovers obstacles to peripheral development. The author finds that Accra and Buenos Aires concentrate corporate control. Argentina's capital serves as a gateway for knowledge generation and logistics too. Opportunities for peripheral development in both countries are considerable, albeit largely limited to generic services. Besides a certain concentration of business activities in the gateway cities, more important challenges to peripheral development are typical for small and medium enterprises (insufficient finance and management capabilities, unawareness of business opportunities, and the like). They include rent seeking and subcontracting. The latter leaves local companies in a particularly weak position vis‐à‐vis lead firms. The author argues that while integration into the world economy allows for peripheral development, the corresponding outcomes may not meet everyone's expectations. Related expectations must, therefore, be more down‐to‐earth than overly optimistic statements frequently made by politicians

Bypass urbanism: Re-ordering center-periphery relations in Kolkata, Lagos and Mexico City

This paper introduces the concept of “bypass urbanism” to account for a process of urbanization that is reordering center-periphery relations of urban regions into new hierarchies. Bypass urbanism became visible through a comparison of large-scale urban transformations at the peripheries of Kolkata, Lagos, and Mexico City by zooming out and considering their impacts on the socio-spatial structure of the extended urban regions. Bypass urbanism is not emerging from the construction of a singular new town or real estate project, but is the result of the simultaneous development of an ensemble of various independent but related projects. Therefore, bypass urbanism usually does not emanate from a coherent planning initiative, even less so from a hidden “master plan” at the hands of any single developer or state agency, but it emerges through a convergence of interests over large areas of land at the geographical periphery of urban regions that have been made available for new urban developments by various measures. We understand bypass urbanism as a multidimensional process that includes material-geographical bypassing, the bypassing of regulatory frameworks, and socio-economic bypassing in everyday life. It results in the creation of exclusive and excluding spaces that enable middle and upper-class lifestyles, at the same time leading to the peripheralization of extant urban areas that are bypassed and neglected. The massive scale of bypass urbanism that we have observed represents a new quality of urban development resulting not in isolated urban enclaves or archipelagos, but in the fundamental restructuring of the extended urban region with far reaching and incalculable repercussions

Transformation und neue Formen der Segregation in den Städten Lateinamerikas

Im ersten Teil dieses Artikels wird auf der Basis einer Aufarbeitung der Literatur zum Thema argumentiert, dass sich in den Städten Lateinamerikas in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten neue Formen sozialräumlicher Segregation herausgebildet haben. Die lange angenommene klare räumliche Differenzierung der Wohngebiete unterschiedlicher sozialer Gruppen entspricht dem komplexen Bild der gegenwärtigen Stadtentwicklung nicht (mehr). Neue Entwicklungstendenzen deuten auf das Entstehen einer «multi-fragmentierten» Stadt hin. Als wesentlicher Grund für das dichtere Nebeneinander von «arm» und «reich» bei gleichzeitig intensiverer Abschottung (u.a. durch gated communities oder condominios) werden die Transformations- und Globalisierungsprozesse ausgemacht, die eine kleinräumigere Segregation über Verarmungs-, Privatisierungs- und Deregulierungsprozesse fördern. Im zweiten Teil des Artikels wird eine Agenda für die condominio-Forschung vorgestellt. Zentrale Punkte bilden einerseits die Frage, warum es zum condominio- Boom kommt und wer seine zentralen Akteure sind, und andererseits die Forderung, die condominio- Forschung tiefer einzubetten in die allgemeine Segregations- und Stadtforschung. Beide Aspekte verweisen auf die Notwendigkeit, den Zusammenhang zwischen Transformationsprozessen und dem Entstehen neuer Formen sozialräumlicher Segregation zu vertiefen

Can the straw man speak? An engagement with postcolonial critiques of ‘global cities research’

This paper was published in the journal Dialogues in Human Geography and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820616675984.This paper engages with postcolonial critiques of global cities research (GCR). We argue that such criticisms tend to be hampered by their tendency to be polemical rather than engaging, as evidenced by both the quasi-systematic misrepresentation of the core objectives of GCR and the skating over of its internal diversity. We present a genealogy of postcolonial critiques starting from Robinson’s (2002) agenda-setting discussion of GCR, followed by an analysis of how her legitimate concerns have subsequently morphed into a set of apparent truisms. These misrepresentations are then contrasted with the purposes, diversity, and critical character of GCR as actually practiced. We interpret this discrepancy to be part of a gradually routinized straw man rhetoric that emerged as an unfortunate rallying point for postcolonial urban scholars. The consequence is that GCR tends to be casually invoked to distinguish one’s own position. We conclude by advocating practices of ‘engaged pluralism’ rather than ‘polemical pluralism’ when doing global urban research and propose that critical realism can provide an important epistemological bridge to make different positions communicate