Journal article
City networks: Breaking gridlocks or forging (new) lock-ins?
M Acuto, S Rayner
International Affairs | OXFORD UNIV PRESS | Published : 2016
Abstract
There is today a global recognition that we live in an ‘urban age’ of near-planetary urbanization where cities are at the forefront of all sorts of agendas. Yet little attention is offered to the active role of cities as political drivers of the urban age. There might today be more than two hundred ‘city networks’ globally, with thousands of para-diplomatic connections actively defining relations between cities, international organization and corporate actors. This actively networked texture of the urban age shapes all areas of policy and, not least, international relations, and holds much promise as to possible urban solutions to global challenges. Based on an overview of a representative s..
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Awarded by International Studies Association
Funding Acknowledgements
We owe a note of thanks to some extraordinary colleagues, Mika Morissette, Jack Doughty and Yvonne Yap-Ying, for their support in developing the dataset. We thank Simon Curtis, Elizabeth Rapoport, Jan Melissen and Agis Tsouros for support and comments on the project. Earlier versions of the dataset in this article were presented at forums including the WHO International Healthy Cities summits in Athens and Kuopio (October 2014 and 2015), the Charhar Institute Shanghai 'City Diplomacy' symposium (October 2014), and the International Studies Association annual convention in Atlanta (March 2016). Research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) under grant ES/K007742/1.