Peter J. Taylor

El adiestramiento de una amante

الجغرافيا السياسية لعالمنا المعاصر - الجزء الثاني

Allen J. Scott

Jennifer Robinson

This book presents an incisive outline of the historical development and geography of cities. It focuses on three themes that constitute essential foundations for any understanding of urban form and function. These are: (a) the shifting patterns of urbanization through historical time, (b) the role of cities as centers of production and work in a globalizing world, and (c) the diverse housing and shelter needs of urban populations. The book also explores a number of critical urban problems and the political challenges that they pose. Empirical evidence from urban situations on all five continents is brought into play throughout the discussion.

The International Year of Global Understanding - IYGU

Working, Housing: Urbanizing

Ron Johnston

Fred M. Shelley

The essays in this collection show how electoral geography has shifted from empiricist activity towards a closer involvement with the wider issues addressed by social scientists. They illustrate the potential contributions that electoral geographers can make towards the understanding of global, national and local societies.

Developments in Electoral Geography (Routledge Library Editions: Political Geography)

Paul N. Edwards

Saul E. Halfon

In laboratories all over the world, life -- even the idea of life -- is changing. And with these changes, whether they result in square tomatoes or cyborgs, come transformations in our social order -- sometimes welcome, sometimes troubling. Changing Life offers a close look at how the mutable forms and concepts of life link the processes of science to those of information, finance, and commodities. These essays -- about planetary management and genome sequencing, ecologies and cyborgs -- address actual and imagined transformations at the center and at the margins of transnational relations, during the post-Cold War era and in times to come.

Genomes, Ecologies, Bodies, Commodities

Changing Life

This insightful Advanced Introduction explores the key attributes of cities, identifying their five basic characteristics; innate complexity, the agglomeration of activities, inter-city connectivities, the projection of power, and relations to states. Peter J. Taylor gives a broad and engaging overview of how these characteristics work and relate to each other, supplemented by ten short city insights which offer readers specific examples of cities and themes.

Advanced Introduction to Cities

Ben Derudder

Professor Department of Geography Peter J Taylor

With the advent of multinational corporations, the traditional urban service function has 'gone global'. In order to provide services to globalizing corporate clients, the offices of major financial and business service firms across the world have formed a network. It is the myriad of flows between office towers in different metropolitan centres that has produced a world city network. Through an analysis of the intra-company flows of 100 leading global service firms across 315 cities, this book assesses cities in terms of their overall network connectivity, their connectivity by service sector, and their connectivity by world region. Peter Taylor's unique and illuminating book provides the first comprehensive and systematic description and analysis of the world city network as the 'skeleton' upon which contemporary globalization has been built. His analyses challenge the traditional view of the world as a 'mosaic map' of political boundaries. Written by one of the foremost authorities on the subject, this book provides a much needed mapping of the connecting relationships between world cities, and will be an enlightening book for students of urban studies, geography, sociology and planning.

A Global Urban Analysis

World City Network

'Peter J. Taylor has produced a sweeping, empirically grounded, defense of cities as fundamental building blocks of long-term, large scale social structures; a way of freeing social science from state-centric bias; and indeed, mankind's hope. However, the single greatest strength of this complex, seductive, argument is the insistence on treating cities relationally, as process. Here the key to understanding the significance of cities is by studying them in terms of the dynamic networks they form and in their relations to states.' – Richard E. Lee, Binghamton University, US 'The founding father of the famous Globalization and World Cities research network and think-tank on worldwide links between cities presents this fascinating overview on cities in geohistory. By moving cities to the centre stage, Peter Taylor proposes that concern for states tell only part of the macro-social story of humanity. Cities have been, and are, the engines of innovation. This impressive new book provides new insights into why cities succeed or fail. The book is in the class with broadminded presentations like Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel.' – Christian Matthiessen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark and President, International Geographical Union's Commission on Urban Geography 'This is a "big" book by Peter Taylor. It tells of the extraordinary world-making powers of cities across the ages, it explains why a state-centric social science has constrained recognition of these powers over the last two centuries, and it outlines a new "indisciplinarity" to help us make sense of a human condition increasingly forged out of the urban. Anyone troubled by the social sciences as we know them, ought to read this book.' – Ash Amin, Cambridge University, UK and author, Land of Strangers Accepting that cities are extraordinary, this book provides an original city-centred narrative of human creativity, past, present and future. In this innovative, ambitious and wide-ranging book, Peter Taylor demonstrates that cities are the epicenters of human advancement. In exploring cities as sites through which economies flourish, by harnessing the creative potential of myriad communication networks, the author considers cities from varying temporal and spatial perspectives. Four stories of cities are told: the origins of city networks; the domination of cities by world-empires; the genesis of a singular modern creative interval in which innovation culminates in today's globalised cities; and finally, the need for cities to act as centres for human creativity to produce a more resilient global society in the current crisis century. Providing a long-term view through which to consider the role of cities in attending to incipient crises of the twenty-first century, this closely argued thesis will prove essential for students and scholars of urban studies, geography and sociology, and all with a professional interest in, or personal fascination for, cities.

Peter J. Taylor

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