Swirling that old wine around in the wrong bottle: a comment on White. (response to James W. White in this issue, p. 451)

At its finest, Professor White's critique is a genuine engagement with the more complex issues raised by the global city model; this is particularly so with the question of the state and the thorny methodological challenge of negotiating a macrolevel process such as economic globalization and the political and socioeconomic specifics of each city. At its crudest, the critique is that in the model, all that matters is economics, the state is irrelevant, globalization homogenizes all these cities, Tokyo is like New York, and there was no dualization before globalization. His is not a sustained attack that gradually demolishes the model in a necessary analytic sequence. White's critique alternates from the bulldozer to the microsurgical approach with the corresponding damage and benefits accruing to his effort. I could take the high road and engage only the microsurgeon in White, but I can not resist the bulldozer--so I will address both.

First, his assertions that in the global city model globalization is conceived of as a force coming from outside and homogenizing cities. In my reading of the evidence and the pertinent literature--much of which is cited by White--the global city model is precisely an analytic strategy to correct the common assumption in economic approaches to globalization that the global is that which crosses borders, as in international trade and investment. The global city represents a strategic space where global processes materialize in national territories and global dynamics use national institutional arrangements. In this sense, the model …