Introduction

In this chapter I want to address a number of issues: the notion of the world or global city as a representation; the location and context within which this representation has been constructed and circulated; whether the concept represented by the terms ‘world city’ and ‘global city’ is the same and the terms interchangeable, or whether each signals a different set of assumptions and contextual presuppositions with which the object is defined.

If, for the present, we accept that there is indeed some reality which the term ‘world city’ represents, I want to look at this principally as a cultural space and see what recent work in social and cultural theory suggests about it, and how this theory might be deployed to say something about the spaces and built environments of the world city. What is the significance of such a world city as a real or potential site for the construction of new cultural and political identities, or for processes of cultural transformation in general? And what relevance might it have, either for the persistence or modification of existing local, regional, or national identities and cultures, or alternatively, for the construction of new transnational ones? Let me begin by clarifying the terms I have introduced.