Globalization Becoming Instrumental in Re-thinking the Global City: A Postcolonial Reading

Abstract

This paper will focus upon how the multi-faceted forces of global capitalism become operational in producing and contributing to the cultural homogeneity on a global scale. In contemporary times, the patterns of urbanization and the hierarchies embedded in them are largely connected to and resulted from the colonial rule. Global cities are characterized by the socio-economic polarizations in the population. The existing inequities between the urban and non-urban populations become more prominent due to direct foreign investments in global cities. Both the architecture and the urban space are affected by the discursive forces of the global cities along with the built environment which also bears the impacts. The significance of the historical processes of globalization have been downplayed in the economic and presentist analyses of how the contemporary global cities are formed. The growth of research has immensely expanded in the last three decades in the history of colonialism and the postcolonial architecture and urbanism. What is reflected in recent studies of postcolonial criticism is that how the postcolonial urbanism is more attentive to the role and activities of the native as alternative voices and visions. This paper will also critically analyze how the term ‘global city’ has been appropriated by the discursive forces of globalization to represent and reify, a particular aspect of both the city’s activity as well as of the world, the world of economy. Hence, postcolonial criticisms become instrumental in dealing with the issues of representations, globalization, nationalism, historiography and cultural identities.