Student Workshop: 'Globalization, World Cities and History'

2nd GaWC Student Workshop

Abstracts

Presentations I: Globalisation and World Cities in History (09.45-11.30)

The World City of Paul Otlet (1868-1944): A City to Merge and Control Global Networks of Information

Wouter Van Acker (W.VanAcker@UGent.be), Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University¹

This paper traces the evolution of Paul Otlet's concept of the World City (Cité Mondiale) in the period from 1910 till 1941.² Paul Otlet was a Belgian intellectual who played a central role in the rationalization of information and documentation management in the first decades of the twentieth century. A substantial part of his endeavours concerned the promotion of a World City which constituted the vision of a total centralization of all international power and knowledge in one city.³ The World City would house the League of Nations, the International Labour Organization, the World Bank, a centre for the Olympic Games, an International Centre for Science, Culture and Information, etc. This model of a total centralization of international institutions in one city was the only solution in Otlet's view to organize the emerging global networks.

Much as the intentions of Otlet's World City were charged with noble ideas, things turned out impracticable in practice. The World City surely was a utopia or a spatial non-space, dwelling around the world. Nonetheless, in order to promote his idea of the World City, Otlet collaborated on different occasions with a whole series of architects: H.C. Andersen and Ernest Hébrard, Octave van Rysselberghe, Louis Van der Swaelmen, Le Corbusier, Victor Bourgeois, Maurice Heymans and Stanislas Jassinski. These architects elaborated a spatial representation of Otlet's programme for a World City. Although the programme of these designs stays fixed, the context for these assignments and the specific design of the architect or urbanist in question reveals each time another aspect of the geography of the World City.

If Otlet's model was criticized for being utopian and impracticable, conversely you could say that Otlet's model was a pertinent critique of the contemporary state of affairs and of the competition between the nations. The strength of Otlet's centralist model was that it was based on his reflection about informational networks. For Otlet, the tension between a national logic – which for Otlet was a territorial network of information – and an international logic – which for Otlet was a functional network of information – would only be solved by coordinating these from one place. Dispersing the international power over the world would only slow down the exchange of information and consequently lead to inefficiency and to institutional weakness. Of course, Otlet's ideals have to be situated in age where paper was the main carrier of information. However, if we consider the present two-seat system of the European Parliament, one can wonder if information is as placeless as we often assume: after all, the cost of moving files to and fro is the reason why a lot of the European parliamentarians are against using Strasbourg as a seat and propose to keep Brussels as the sole location of the European Parliament.

¹ W. Van Acker is with the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Faculty of Engineering, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. For a description of the research project ‘The Analogous Spaces of Paul Otlet', see: http://www.architectuur.ugent.be/_guest/doctoraat.aspx?PK=93

² The research for this paper is based on a thorough investigation of the funds ‘Cité Mondiale' at the archives of the Mundaneum in Mons (Belgium)

³ Concise bibliography on Otlet's World City:

- Giuliano Gresleri en Dario Matteoni, La Citta' Mondiale. Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier (Venice, 1982).
- Catherine Courtiau, ‘L'Epopé‚ de la Cité Mondiale de Paul Otlet', Lectures, 41 (1988) 13-17.
- Boyd Rayward, The Universe of Information: The Work of Paul Otlet for Documentation and International organisation (Moscow, 1975).

International Centres in a Globalising Age: ‘ World City ' Schemes, Internationalism and National Prestige, 1907- 1939

Daniel Laqua (d.laqua@ucl.ac.uk), Department of History, UCL

‘Globalisation' as a process of increasing global interdependence is not unique to the late twentieth and early twenty-first century: the term refers to developments which gathered pace at different points in history.¹ The half-century between the 1860s and the outbreak of World War I offers one example of such an earlier globalising wave, facilitated by the expansion of international trade, an accelerating integration of financial markets, as well as great advances in transport and communication.² Many cultural and political commentators at the fin de siècle described their world as being increasingly interconnected – and this analysis was frequently combined with demands for the creation of new international institutions and the expansion of international law.³

Schemes for the construction of ‘world capital cities' as institutionalised centres for international life were one manifestation of these developments: they were meant to help manage globalisation by ‘organising the world'. In the twentieth century's first decade, such plans were developed in different countries – either in competition or in conjunction with one another. Endeavours by the Rome-based artist Hendrik Christian Andersen to build a ‘World Communication Centre' were, for example, taken up by the Belgian internationalists Henri La Fontaine and Paul Otlet.⁴ The promotion of such artificial world cities was connected to the emerging transnational networks of town planners and urban reformers. However, plans for such new cities stood in potential conflict with existing urban centres which had emerged as focal points for different aspects of internationalism – especially London (finance), Paris (culture), Brussels (international congresses), Bern (intergovernmental bureaus) and The Hague (international law). In discussing these tensions, my paper illustrates how plans for ‘world capital cities' and notions of ‘world order' interacted with questions of national prestige.⁵

By considering centres for international life, the proposed paper also reflects upon the continuities between the Belle Epoque and the interwar period: many historians have stressed that the earlier wave of globalisation came to a halt with the outbreak of World War I.⁶ However, with the League of Nations' establishment in Geneva (1920) and the legal institutions based at The Hague's Peace Palace (a building inaugurated in 1913), at least two European cities could claim to represent institutionalised international life more than had previously been the case. Furthermore, campaigns for a Cité Mondiale in the 1920s and 1930s highlighted the continuing vitality of quasi-utopian schemes to create a new urban centre for all internationalist ventures.⁷

¹ See e.g. the various case studies in A.G. Hopkins (ed.), Globalization in World History (London, 2002).

² Cf. C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford, 2004) – according to Bayly, globalisation in the nineteenth century was preceded by a period of ‘archaic globalisation'.

³ One example of such analysis is provided by the Austro-German Nobel Peace laureate Alfred Hermann Fried, e.g. in A.H. Fried Das internationale Leben der Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1908).

⁴ W. Sonne, Representing the State: Capital City Planning in the Early Twentieth Century (Munich and London, 2003).

⁵ With regard to this, I base my arguments on archival materials used for the doctoral thesis which I am currently preparing on ‘Internationalism, Transnationalism and Identity between 1880 and 1930' with special focus on Brussels as a centre of internationalist activities.

⁶ See e.g. N. Ferguson, ‘Sinking Globalization', Foreign Affairs, vol. 84, no. 2 (2005), pp. 64-77, which considers similarities between the pre-1914 and the current period of globalisation.

⁷ The presentation of Wouter Van Acker elaborates on this. For an example of these plans, see UAI, Cité Mondiale à Genève. World Civic Center. Mundaneum avec des plans de Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret (Brussels : UAI, 1929). Cf. Valérie Piette, ‘Le project de création d'une Cité Mondiale ou l'utopie pacifiste faite de briques', Cent ans de l'Office International de Bibliographie 1885-1995 (Mons, 1995).

Globalisation and the External Relations of Cities in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Raf Verbruggen (R.Verbruggen@lboro.ac.uk), Department of Geography, Loughborough University

In their study of urban networks since the late 1970s, historians and historical geographers have paid much attention to the external relations of towns and cities with the surrounding world. In this paper, an overview is given of different approaches to the historical study of the external relations of cities. On the one hand, towns and cities have strong links with their non-urban hinterlands. One of the first geographical theories investigating these town-hinterland relationships is Walter Christaller's central place theory. Under Christaller's influence, historians have reconstructed central place hierarchies for a large number of regions within and outside of Europe. On the other hand, cities never exist alone, but always are part of multi-nodal city networks. Cities are engaged in relations with other cities through flows of people, commodities, innovations, etc. In the past, such urban networks have almost always been studied as national urban systems. Present-day globalisation however has shown that cities are nodes in global networks which transcend the national level. But are transnational city networks limited to our contemporary society? My research investigates the existence of a transnational city network generated by the activities of business organisations in late medieval and early modern Europe. In this geo-historical period, state structures were still weak, and cities were able to be engaged in relations with other cities without being contained within the framework of the territorial state. In the past, the study of such large-scale, transnational city networks has mostly been neglected by historians. My PhD-research attempts to contribute to filling this gap through the application of concepts developed by geographers and social scientists investigating the external relations of world cities in our globalising society to a historical case. This allows to question whether globalisation and the so-called network society are as new as often conceived in the scientific literature.

Presentations II: World City Discourses Beyond the Core (09.45-11.30)

Intellectual Networks and Transnationalism in the New Spain

Cristy Haydee Robledo Escobedo (C.Robledo-Escobedo@sussex.ac.uk), Migration Studies, Sussex University

For some scholars and researchers of migration, ‘transnational communities' and political activities of Diasporas have appeared mainly at the late 90's. These might be true for certain patterns of migration in certain regions, but cannot define global migration.

The process of colonisation implies the concept of globalisation. Building an Empire is creating the bases of a global and dynamic economy, and culture. Therefore considering the existence of different Empires in history would allow us to acknowledge the existence of different types of globalisation.

The Spanish - America relation was a good example of a globalised economy, political system, culture and religion. The population of the Spanish American territories assimilated Christianity and Spanish language. Looking back at the history of the Spanish Empire allows us to see that globalisation, and transnational relations are not just a paradigm of last century migration; nor a North-North Migration understood as the European Migration to the US.

There was a strong intellectual network between Spain and the New Spain. Most intellectuals were formed with European philosophical and political ideas. And furthermore the New Spain 's (Mexican) independence can be seen as the result of the great need of the Spanish Diaspora and second generation to participate in political and economic decisions in the country. Which later reflected as well in a political and economical crisis for Spain for the loss of the American colonies.

Therefore global relations and transnationalism existed at least for the last 6 centuries, of course in a slower pace but still existed; which cannot be denied by contemporary transnationalism and globalisation.

The Discursive Construction of the Global City: A Case Study on Delhi, India

Anna Mayr (anna_mayr@gmx.de), Global Studies Programme, Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg (Germany) & University of KwaZuluNatal, Durban (South Africa) & Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (India)

The paper I would like to present at the 2nd GaWC Student Workshop is based on my master thesis at Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Germany and University of KwaZuluNatal, Durban, South Africa. The Discursive Construction of the Global City attempts to position New Delhi 's aspiration to become a global/world city within contemporary global/world city discourses.

Abstract:

Academic research on global cities has ignored the city as a place to live in for a long time. As opposed to social scientific research focusing on the relationship between different cities as driving entities of globalization, I am looking at the meaning of the global city on the local level. The focus on the production of an image of the global city in Delhi provides an insight how globalization is perceived in the specific context of the Indian capital.

Two visions have shaped Delhi in the past, the colonial city and the planned city after India 's independence. Among the actors and agencies, who nowadays produce an image of the city from dominant or visible positions, voices are getting loud to make Delhi a world-class-city. Campaigns run by major newspapers and marketing strategies of urban development agencies celebrate Delhi as a global city, displaying positive visions of the quality of life in the mass media and public spaces. These advertisements promote an identification with the 'migrant city' and connect it to the 'developed West', rather than to the remote hinterland. Although such elite visions of the city remain diverse, actors and agencies who produce such an image share presumptions on which the idea of a future global city is based.

For different reasons it is perceived that a ‘new' Delhi is coming into being. Social and economic change is creating new forms of private and professional life, new leisure activities and new desires. Recent improvements that have made the city cleaner, greener and faster, the quality of life in the city has met new standards. Delhi is thus perceived as ready for taking off to manifest its status as a place of global reference.

I will argue that the competition for the status of a global city plays a major role in the discursive construction of the global city on the local level. Under different aspects, physical features of the city and the lifestyles of citizens of a global city are understood as modelled in the global cities in the 'developed world'. Thus, the construction of a global city does not only imply an increased international exposure for the city, the citizens also negotiate a localized understanding of global culture.

Global Cities & Histories of Two Korean-American Women and a Chinese Couple

Aiko Miyatake (aiko_miyatake@hotmail.com), Literacy Studies, School of Education and Allied Human Services, Hofstra University

This interdisciplinary study is mainly focused on a gender issue and divided from three sections: (1) Globalization and immigration among China, Russia, South and North Korea, Japan, and the United States; (2) Historical incidents and events such as World War II, The Korean War, and The Tiananmen Incident, and: (3) Living in Urban and suburban areas in various positionalities such as a wife, a mother, and a grandmother.

The researcher introduces two Korean American women who are over eighty-years-old and one Chinese American couple in their mid fifty. The researcher explores her anthropologic viewpoint and investigates her study with a qualitative research. Her research questions are how immigrants in the United States from East Asia have lived in home countries and a host country, and how have their historical incidents influenced their lives and the lives in the second generation. Sometimes the cities they have stayed are not their choices but the must. The enormous numbers of historical events in their lives are connected each other politically, culturally, religiously, historically, linguistically, and economically. The researcher finds out that there are so many voices as well as silence in the participants' life, but they are not written because of their status as a woman or an immigrant. Although many East Asian Americans are considered as model minority, they have struggled with their social economic status, cultural gap, family issues, language barriers, and individual identities. The researcher wants to present their oral histories with their narratives in a variety of languages.

Keywords: immigrant - historical incidents especially wars – gender - linguistic issues

Presentations III: Perceptions of World Cities in the Past and Present, Examples from Europe (13.30-14.45)

Sexual Mecca, City of Doom or Cosmopolitan Capital? Weimar Berlin through British Eyes

Dr. Colin Storer (ahxcs@nottingham.ac.uk), School of History, University of Nottingham

Twenty years ago John J. White published a paper in which he argued that a pattern could be discerned in the changing reactions of English-speaking visitors to Berlin during the interwar years. In his discussion of the British and American view of the German capital, White concluded that Berlin was perceived during the Weimar period as a ‘Sexual Mecca', a modern Babylon, the home of a new sexual emancipation, but also as a doomed city, plagued with unrest and political violence. More recently this focus on British perceptions of the decadence and debauchery of Weimar Berlin has been echoed in works such as Norman Page's Auden and Isherwood: The Berlin Years (1998) and John Ramsden's Don't Mention the War (2006), as well as in the work of historians of the German capital such as David Clay Large. Yet this focus is somewhat simplistic and misleading. While it is true that some British and American visitors did see Berlin in this light, there were also those whose writings give a very different picture of the capital of Republican Germany. By exploring a wide range of sources this paper will argue that British reactions to Weimar Berlin were in fact much more complex than the traditional focus on Berlin as a ‘Sexual Mecca' and ‘City of Doom ' would suggest. It will demonstrate that while many British visitors were attracted by Weimar Berlin 's reputation for hedonism and political unrest, there were also large numbers who saw it as something more: a modern cosmopolitan capital and important cultural centre.

Interpreting the "Watercolor of her Thoughts": Gervaise Macquart and the Emotional Geography of Zola's Paris

Douglas James (douglas.james@ucl.ac.uk), University College London

That we react to our material surroundings is well known. So too is the fact that these reactions evolve with our environment. As sites of the rapid evolution of the material and built environment, cities lend themselves peculiarly nicely to studies of humans' responses to the changing geography of their homelands, workplaces and arenas of recreation.

Most studies of this kind have tended to focus on such a capacity to respond almost solely in material or demographic terms: for example, how the creation of out-of-town shopping centres has altered our consumer practices, or how particular constructions can provoke migration. This paper shall attempt to widen the lens, to seek, capture and explain emotional responses to urban change. The area of study shall be later-nineteenth-century Paris, whose vigorous transformation under the aegis of Baron Haussmann provides an ideal point of departure from which to analyse Parisians' changing emotional response to their city's dramatic metamorphosis.

The claim that urban settings are ‘emotionally causative' shall be tested by a reading of Emile Zola's Parisian oeuvre, with especial attention to be paid to L'Assommoir, that gritty tale of working-class strife and misery. Whilst Zola's realist depictions will not be taken as literal, it will be argued that they, along with other commentators' writings, are sufficiently indicative to warrant an assertion that buildings and urban spaces in general have a direct bearing on the emotional make-up of those who live in, work in and play in them. From this, we can begin to map a city's emotional geography.

Metropolitan Area of Lisbon: The Role of History and Globalization in Metropolitan Development

Rosa Branco (rosabranco@gmail.com), Department of Geography and Regional Planning, Nova University Lisbon

This paper aims at analyzing some aspects of the city of Lisbon 's history, in order to better understand its path of integration in world-wide economic systems and how it is related to governance models and strategic approaches for the city's development.

My Ph.D research looks in particular at how the impacts of globalization have affected/are affecting the development of the metropolitan area of Lisbon , focusing on the ways in which public agents' intervention and institutional models can transform to better meet these challenges. Analyzing the history of urban development and international relations is a major concern, although still considerably unexplored to date in my research. Therefore, I am interested in discussing and receiving input on theoretical and methodological approaches to complement my reflexions on this subject.

My starting point for this presentation is the idea that there are analogies between different historical phases of expansion and that, in the words of G. Arrighi, “ In each of them, the governmental and business organizations that had reconstituted the global market on new foundations were also best positioned to reap the benefits, and shift on others the burdens, of the intensifying competition that ensued from the reconstitution.” (ARRIGHI, 1999: 242-243).

Portugal was an important player in the first global expansion of European capitalism, particularly in its early stage, by exploring and integrating new routes into international trade flows. Throughout the 15 th and 16 th centuries, Lisbon was the main European centre of maritime expeditions to Africa, Asia and America , the capital of the major trade power (until the rise of the Netherlands ) and the metropolis of a multicontinental colonial empire that lasted until the 1970's.

In the early 16th century, Lisbon was the largest city in the Iberian Peninsula with around 50 thousand inhabitants and its population was similar to London 's. World capitalism changed and political power balances shifted. Lisbon 's golden age was not very long and the social dynamics that could sustain an enduring and sustainable economic development failed to do so. The country lagged behind all throughout the industrial era and its capital city decayed in influence. By the end of the 20 th century, Lisbon was in no way portrayed as a major world-city. However, according to the GaWC data on inter-city relations ( TAYLOR , 2003), Lisbon ranks 12 in the Global Network Connectivity Indicators for European cities (and 25 for the world rank), it is also the 10 th European city in network power and is presented as a “ Gateway City ” in numerous policy documents.

The two historical events presented here are quite illustrative of this uneven evolution and of the role of some influential factors in urban development.

1. The beginning of the downfall of an imperial capital

In November 2007, commemorations of the 200 th anniversary of the flight of the court to Brazil remind us of the very particular status as capital city that was attributed to Lisbon .

In the name of defending their old alliance, Portugal maintains its alliance with England and is invaded by Napoleon's troops. As a result, the Portuguese king and its court (an estimated 12 thousand people) set sail to Brazil , where they establish the rule of the empire. Two very important consequences result: resistance to the French invasions is led by the most conservative and religious sectors of society (that later on clashed in a civil war with the liberals) and, in an inversion of status, a colony becomes the centre of the empire (with Rio de Janeiro becoming the capital city and the independence movement gaining enormous strength). This happens at a time when no European sovereign had ever set foot in America and Portugal was in a severe financial crisis brought about by the decay of maritime dominance, the expulsion of jews and conflicts among the elites. Lisbon , in particular, was still painfully recovering from the destruction of the 1755 earthquake.

2. The ending of an empire brings a new challenge to its capital

Estimations point to half to one million people arriving in Portugal from the African colonies during the summer of 1975. 64% of them were less than 40 years old, 63% had been born in Portugal . The majority re-settled in the urban areas of Oporto and, more importantly, of Lisbon .

After the Second World War, in an effort to save its colonial territories, the Portuguese regime invested heavily in the development of infrastructures and in the development of commerce with the colonies. Openness to USA influence was by far larger in the African colonies than in Portugal itself, where the escape from a backward and mostly rural society was emigration. This massive immigration and the earlier inflow of rural inhabitants where the two driving forces that shaped metropolitan area formation in Portugal in the last quarter of the 20 th century.

Summarizing this historical overview in a few crucial research questions for the Ph.D thesis:

•  If a city's position in the world urban system is all about power, has Lisbon ever been truly a world city?

•  Is the city's vocation in our days as a gateway city opening up to the Americas and Africa ?

•  Can governance models and strategic planning develop the capacity to play that role?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARRIGHI, G. (1999) – “ The Global Market” in Journal of World-Systems Research , Vol. V, Nr. 2, Summer 1999, 217–251 ( http://jwsr.ucr.edu/).

NORDREGIO (coord.) (2004) – ESPON 111. Potentials for polycentric development in Europe. Project report. S/l: ESPON.

Maritime Peripheries Forward Studies Unit (Coord.) (2002): Study on the Construction of a Polycentric and Balanced Development Model for the European Territory. Porto: Conferência das Regiões Marítimas da Europa/Célula de Prospectiva das Periferias Marítimas.

MINISTÉRIO DO AMBIENTE, DO ORDENAMENTO DO TERRITÓRIO E DO DESENVOLVIMENTO REGIONAL (2006) - Programa Nacional da Política de Ordenamento do Território. Relatório. S/l: Ministério do Ambiente, do Ordenamento do Território e do Desenvolvimento Regional.

Salgueiro, T. B. (1999) – A cidade em Portugal : uma geografia urbana . 3ª edição. Porto: Edições Afrontamento.

Soares, N. P. (1998) – O Sistema Urbano Português 1890-1991 (Ph.D Thesis in Geography and Regional Planning). Lisboa: Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

Taylor, P. J. ( 2003) – “European Cities in the World City Network” in H van Dijk (ed.): The European Metropolis 1920-2000. Rotterdam: Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam.