'Global Cities and Anti-Globalist Resistance'

Global cities can be seen as the embodiment of the kind of globalization disputed by anti-globalists. The idea that location has become unimportant in the era of globalization is disputed by Saskia Sassen in the form of a materialistic cartography of the infrastructures of globalization. This cartography demonstrates the importance of a network of cities that are turn-tables in the economic globalization of exactly those financial transactions which an anti-globalist association like ATTAC would happily see taxed. This form of globalization, criticized by anti-globalists, is literally more active in some cities than in others. Besides, in global cities the sharp socio-economic contrasts which worry anti-globalists are clearly revealed. However, there is hardly any overlap between Sassen's network of global cities and the cities where the anti-globalization protests took place. Leaving aside the occasional, modest, parallel solidarity manifestation in global cities, all large demonstrations took place in Nice, not in Paris; in Cologne, not in Frankfurt; in Geneva, not in Zürich; in The Hague, not in Amsterdam; in Seattle, not in Los Angeles; in Melbourne, not in Sydney; in Quebec, not in Toronto; in Genoa, not in Milan. One could therefore just as well read the illustrious litany of cities of anti-globalist protest as a list of unlikely misses. The cities of anti-globalist protest were rarely global cities. One could conclude that they were 'anti-global' cities: cities that formally do not meet Saskia Sassen's criteria of a global city.