ancient cities

Further Readings
Bruno, E. 1953. Histórias e tradições da cidade de São
Paulo. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: José Olímpio.
Caldeira, T. 2001. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and
Citizenship in São Paulo. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Camargo, C., org. 1976. São Paulo, 1975—Crescimento
e pobreza. São Paulo, Brazil: Loyola.
Cannevacci, M. 1993. A cidade polifônica: ensaios sobre
a antropologia da comunicação urbana. São Paulo,
Brazil: Studio Nobel.
Kowarick, L. 1979. A espoliação urbana. São Paulo,
Brazil: Paz e Terra.
———. 1994. Social Struggles and the City. New York:
Monthly Review Press.
Langenbuch, J. 1971. A estruturação da grande São
Paulo. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: IBGE.
Leme, M., ed. 1999. Urbanismo no Brasil, 1895–1965.
São Paulo, Brazil: Studio Nobel.
Marques, E. and H. Torres, org. 2005. São Paulo:
segregação, pobreza e desigualdades sociais. São
Paulo, Brazil: SENAC.
Martine, G. and C. Diniz. 1997. “Economic and
Demographic Concentration in Brazil: Recent
Inversion of Historical Patterns.” In Urbanization in
Large Developing Countries: China, Indonesia, Brazil
and India. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Toledo, B. 2004. São Paulo: três cidades em um século.
São Paulo, Brazil: Cosac Naif.
SaSSen, Sa S k i a
Saskia Sassen (1949– ) is widely recognized as a
preeminent scholar in the field of global city theory;
indeed, she is credited with having coined the term
global city. Her early works in particular are considered
seminal contributions to the understanding
of global cities. They have provided a
foundation for subsequent theoretical and empirical
explorations of the links between globalization
and urbanization, and the sociospatial impact of
capitalist economic restructuring.
Sassen was born in 1949 in the Netherlands and
moved as a child to Buenos Aires. Her undergraduate
studies were undertaken at universities in
Argentina and Italy. In 1973 she earned an MA
from the University of Poitiers, France, and in
1974 Sassen completed a PhD in economics and
sociology at Notre Dame University in Indiana.
Sassen, Saskia
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She has held many academic posts, including professor
of urban planning at Columbia University in
New York City and professor of law and sociology
at the University of Chicago. She currently is the
Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia
University and Centennial Visiting Professor in
sociology at the London School of Economics.
Sassen is a much sought-after policy advisor and is
a member of the Club of Rome, a prestigious international
think tank.
Her early books, The Global City (1991) and
Cities in a World Economy (1994), followed the
work of John Friedmann and Wolff Goetz in the
1980s on “world cities.” In them, Sassen argued
against the intuitive supposition that in a world of
flows—of flexible, globalized production and
instantaneous electronic communication—place
would no longer matter. Instead she demonstrated
that while much economic production was being
dispersed around the globe, there was at the same
time a parallel concentration of other economic
activities in a network of special places—some 30
or 40 global cities that acted as command and
control centers of the global economy. These
global cities were not just the location of transnational
corporate headquarters but included a vast
supporting complex of financial and business
services.
Sassen’s research led her to conclude that global
city formation resulted in a dual and highly polarized
labor market. On one hand a global corporate
elite earned high salaries and enjoyed an extremely
high standard of material well-being; on the other
hand the work of the elite was supported by a class of
low-wage service workers, many of them immigrants.
Thus, her work revealed two essential contradictions
in global city formation. The first is that
while global cities command and control the
“placeless” flow of capital, they themselves are
very place-bound. The second is that the formation
and growth of the global city entails the linked
enrichment of some of its residents and the impoverishment
of others. The two groups live and work
in the same city, yet have vastly different experiences
of it.
Sassen argued that global cities are linked in a
transnational network of places. That insight represented
a break from earlier urban studies that
viewed cities as being embedded in national economic
systems and mainly linked to other cities