Cities and the making of uneven development (1/2)

Abstract der Sitzung

Cities are the mothers of economic development, says Jane Jacobs; her assessment that cities boost innovation, productivity and efficiency is widely shared across theoretical and professional boundaries and proven by many studies. The question of the role of cities in the making of uneven development, however, receives much less attention.

Much work from the field of urban geography has focused on the problems associated with polarisation within cities, such as poverty or segregation. Uneven development, however, not only characterises cities internally. Cities can also be active engines of uneven development at the global scale, precisely through their successful role in generating and appropriating value.

Early work on so-called world cities aimed to reveal the role of cities’ functional integration into the global economy, arguing for the command and control functions of cities for the global economy. Since then, much quantitative (and some qualitative) work has looked at the role of advanced producer service firms in constituting networks of centripetal wealth transfer.

A broader understanding in the current moment requires an understanding of broader sets of industries or production networks (e.g. Tech firms in platform capitalism) and functions (centres of circulation, knowledge creation, wealth appropriation) through which cities play a key role in the making of globally uneven development. Moreover, we are interested in learning more about the role of actors within cities, who play a critical role in these processes, and of techniques or practices through which uneven development is produced and sustained.

We invite both theoretical-conceptual contributions as well as empirical papers to the session, which deal with the role of cities in the making of uneven development. Potential topics could include:

• Cities as centres of circulation (e.g. logistic hubs, fairs, auctions)
• Cities as centres of hegemonic knowledge creation (e.g. higher education institutions)
• Cities as centres of wealth appropriation (e.g. financial services, tax avoidance, freeports)
• Cities as gateways connecting cities with hinterlands
• Cities within networks of cities (e.g. world city networks)
• Role of particular actors within this process (e.g. urban elites, legal professionals)