The large city of today emerges as a key
site for these new types of operations. It is
one of the nexuses where the formation
of new claims materializes and assumes
concrete forms. The loss of power at the
national level produces the possibility for
new forms of power and politics at the
subnational level. The national as container
of social process and power is cracked. This
cracked casing opens up possibilities for a
geography of politics that links subnational
spaces. These dynamics are perhaps sharpest
in global cities around the world. They are
the terrain where a multiplicity of globalization
processes assume concrete, localized
forms. These localized forms are, in good
part, what globalization is about. Thus they
are also sites where some of the new forms
of power can be engaged. If we consider that
cities concentrate both the leading sectors
of global capital and a growing share of disadvantaged
populations – immigrants, many
of the disadvantaged women, people of
colour generally, and, in the megacities of
developing countries, masses of shanty
dwellers – then we can see that cities have
become a terrain for a whole series of conflicts
and contradictions.