Cities in Global Capitalism

Ugo Rossi is Senior Researcher in Political and Economic Geography at the University of Turin

"Ugo Rossi offers a highly original analysis of the current urban condition. The book plays imaginatively on the complex relationships linking cities, neoliberal capitalism and globalization and extracts from these materials a remarkably informative and incisive diagnosis." - Allen J. Scott, UCLA"In this historically grounded, highly current and well-argued volume, Rossi combines critical reviews of diverse theoretical currents and empirical analyses to highlight recent trends, crises and struggles in and beyond the capitalist heartlands. He explores the growing links between neoliberalism and globalization, making cities ever more critical as sites of everyday resistance as well as crucial spaces of accumulation. Enjoy reading this book and acting upon it." - Bob Jessop, Lancaster University"Rossi provides a remarkably comprehensive, clear, and tremendously useful survey of theorizations of the relation between cities and capitalism. As he does so, he offers the reader a rich exploration of the many facets of that complex and mutually constitutive relation." - Miranda Joseph, The University of Arizona"Reading contemporary global capital from the perspective of the city, Ugo Rossi's Cities in Global Capitalism presents a critical geography, rich in analysis and haunted with spectral figures. Rossi shows how the city - the site of historical struggle, artistic and social innovations, and revolutionary uprisings - has been shaped by capital and its state partners with new spatial inequalities, potentialities, and peripheries. As the city once again becomes the destination for the global rich, economic innovation becomes a leading edge of gentrification and the abandoned warehouses of Fordist production become the ghost towers haunting the urban sky - vast areas the mega rich own but rarely inhabit as the ever-expanding homeless below pass by." - Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Columbia University"Cities in Global Capitalism presents an impressive tour de force on the mutually reinforcing relationship between cities, on the one hand, and the capitalist system on the other. Sifting through a wide range of work from across numerous disciplines, Ugo Rossi's account of the contemporary global urban condition is conceptually sophisticated, geographically nuanced and historically sensitive!" - Kevin Ward, University of Manchester"Ugo Rossi's book is a clear and illuminating overview of the complex relationships between globalized capitalism and urban spaces. A valuable contribution to the project of critically reflecting on our contemporary condition." - Nick Srnicek, author of Platform Capitalism and Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work"The Introduction alone is worth the price of admission. It provides an original, up-to-the-minute […], creative framework and overview of cities in global capitalism that is rare. Others in the field of urban studies provide narrower depictions, specific in-depth explanations. But Rossi gives you the whole show; tries to explain it all. It takes chutzpah. […] As a project, Rossi's is ambitious and sweeping, but it is never out of control, the arguments always systematic and tightly drawn." - Trevor J. Barnes, Papers in Regional Science

• Introduction 1. Emergences 2. Extensions 3. Continuities 4. Diffusions 5. Variations Conclusion: Living in the age of ambivalence