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This is an excellent introductory text for students who are new to the debates about cities and regions in a globalizing world. It should be essential reading across a range of courses in geography, sociology, planning, and urban studies. The book is the latest product of long collaboration between the two authors, both of whom are based in New Zealand, and reflects their wide scholarship and the depth of their teaching experience.
The book is structured around ‘questions and debates about the interrelations between place, identity and everyday life and their relations to processes of globalization’ (p. 1). Perkins and Thorns argue that although globalization is not new, it is currently in a new phase, through rapid and diverse flows of information, ideas, goods, and people. Part I establishes their overall frame of reference through a review of the extensive literature on place, identity, and everyday life. This involves an analysis of ideas relating to structure–agency debates and the relations between lived experiences in specific localities and wider – increasingly global – patterning of such relations. The authors review the growing interest in globalization among social scientists, especially since the 1980s, including the work of Wallerstein, Jessop, and Friedmann. Globalization, they argue, ‘is best seen as a set of interrelated processes rather than as something that has happened and has been finished’ (p. 31). They explore the rise and significance of transnational corporations and the extent to which they are indifferent to territoriality. They also discuss cultural and social dimensions of globalization, including the impact of new communications technology and media, especially the immediacy of reporting of distant events and the diversity of sources of ‘news.’ They review the growth of migration streams and the local impacts of migrants, suggesting that migrants are sometimes blamed for a range of deleterious changes when ‘in reality these are much more likely to be related to the restructuring of welfare provision, inadequate pensions and housing allowances and the absence of public and private investment in infrastructure’ (p. 40). This ‘reality,’ however, is asserted rather than evidence based, so their claim may be unlikely to convince those skeptical of their argument. Their argument that the analysis of globalization should include environmental dimensions, by way of contrast, is more convincing and soundly based. They conclude this section by describing globalization as ‘multi-dimensional, multi-causal and constituted around a number of interconnected processes rather than having one single form’ (p. 45).
The first two chapters of Part II, ‘Organizing and living in our everyday worlds,’ explore the growth and change of cities and regions with an emphasis on changing processes and forms of urbanization, perspectives on ‘the home,’ and second homes. These rework a large extant literature, largely from an Antipodean perspective, albeit informed by wider international scholarship.
The chapter on ‘Virtual places and spaces’ was the most original part of this book for me and is likely to be especially useful for contemporary students who have grown up during the ICT revolution but may not have understood its significance for the making and remaking of places and spatial relations. They explore some dramatic geographical variations in the use of the Internet and cell phones, with their different sociospatial ‘digital divides,’ at local urban–rural and international scales. This chapter also reviews debates about ‘network society’ and changing relationships between territorial and interest-based and ‘virtual’ communities. Perkins and Thorns note that many new media both enable and create new forms of individual freedom but also provide means for surveillance and intrusion into privacy, whether by governments or, as has been well documented, private companies such as Google or supermarkets. This chapter includes further development of the immediacy and variety of reportage through diverse media, and asks how we can judge the authenticity of diverse and contradictory accounts of events such as the Iranian elections or the Canterbury/Christchurch earthquakes. The chapter on ‘places of consumption’ comprises a comprehensive reworking of a diverse global – albeit largely English-speaking – literature in leisure, consumption, advertising, and commodification, and their changing sociospatial relations.
Part III, ‘A finite world,’ is organized around a critical perspective on debates about sustainability, including economic development, physical urban sustainability, and the authors’ long-standing interest in housing, communities, and neighborhoods. One theme examined in depth here is the impact of marketization in housing provision and government approaches to housing policy, especially home ownership. The discussion includes a critique of the global financial crisis and its impact on the everyday lives of millions of citizens. This part of the book draws on a wide international literature, again largely from English-speaking countries and from an Antipodean perspective. Developments in India and China, however, are explored in some depth, especially regarding urbanization and transport. Rapid growth in car ownership in China and India is attracting established major players from other countries such as Toyota and Ford, but also increasing their own domestic vehicle production for export to other countries, including Australia and New Zealand.
The book’s concluding chapter is well-balanced and thoughtful, based on a critical review of debates from what I take to be a social democratic perspective, albeit nowhere specified as such. They argue that top-down strategies and action are necessary to address current global problems, especially regarding sustainability in its various forms, but that a renewed focus on the local is also critical.
Overall, this is a very well-written and organized book that is pitched perfectly for students in specialist undergraduate or postgraduate courses concerned with cities and regions. Their lecturers, too, will find the discussion here both stimulating and extremely well-informed. The authors’ perspective is largely Antipodean, but their systematic analysis of relationships between global processes, cities, regions, and localities, to the micro level of individuals and their homes, is of international relevance and interest.