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551 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 8 (1997)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0551 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE Under the onslaught of globalization, North American cities are changing dramatically. This process-anything but new-today exhibits a new charac- ter and intensity that places cities within dramatically transforming eco- nomic and social networks. Hyperactive flows of investment, seamlessly penetrating the city, transform aging downtowns into glittering consumption landscapes. Business decisions thousands of miles away close plants and factories, thereby sending cities into tailspins. Cities compete desperately and ferociously to attract jobs and investment in a fight for survival. And the dizzying arrival of new commodities and fashions reverberates through the urban everyday to resculpt cultural fabrics. In this city, a heightened com- modification and search for global purpose alter urban culture, politics, and civic life in fundamental ways. But this poignant change is merely one in a historical set of transforma- tions that has altered North American cities. What is different about this one? Most fundamentally, it creates an unparalleled scale of operation-the global-that links places like never before. The North American city hooks up with faraway control points that render places pieces in a global whole. Furthermore, city life, inexorably colliding with a global culture of consump- tion, becomes startlingly commodified. With a frenetic international financial system and media flowing exuberantly through daily life's circuitry, commodi- fication now penetrates the everyday's furthest corners. To this set of changes, Jerry Mander declares that globalization involves the most fundamental rede- sign of political and economic arrangement since the Industrial Revolution.1 Globalization stems from the ruptured and rebuilt international economy of the 1970s. Out of ominous economic stagnation, enterprise decisions to globalize supported by governments and technology recrafted economic stabilization and orderly profit taking. Banks, financial companies, service providers, and manufacturers spawned global webs of operation, with spaces of operation rendered far-flung and increasingly replaceable. Like inter- changeable pieces in a puzzle, spaces could be assembled and disassembled to ensure orderly entrepreneurialism. Like other landscapes, cities frequently became discardable staging grounds for business usage. If a city was unco- operative or outgrew its usefulness, another staging ground could be found. In this way, globalization has dramatically de-linked business enterprises from their place-based employees. Cities become victims, beneficiaries, or survivors in this new reality. Renouncing community roots, enterprises stake out desires and expect them 1. Jerry Mander, The Dark Side of Globalization: What the Media Are Missing, Nation, 15-22 July 1996, pp. 8-16 8

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