It also offered a narrow, economistic conception of cities that vastly prioritized the experiences of wealthy cities in the Global North. This literature predominately identified cities as the sites of global processes, with limited capacity to influence or shape them. Most early scholarship on cities and globalization came from urbanists and political economists, who studied the development of “global cities” that were acting as the critical nodes in the architecture of the world economy. IR has been slow to acknowledge the increasing importance of cities in international affairs, as it conflicts with the state-centric paradigm of mainstream theory. At the international level, multilateral organizations have recognized this shift and are increasingly involving cities, or networks of cities, as interlocutors in global forums. Across areas such as migration, health, environmental sustainability, and economic development, citizens and city governments are constantly exposed, and need to respond to, the impacts of globalization on cities. It is predicted that by 2050 close to 70 percent of the world’s population will live in urban areas, meaning that 21st-century challenges will be largely urban in nature.
During this time the world has witnessed dramatic globalization and urbanization, centralizing populations in cities. The literature on cities and international relations (IR), or “global urban politics,” as it is sometimes termed, is a diverse stream of social science research that has developed in response to major demographic and economic shifts that began in second half of the 20th century and continue to today.
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