Building a national capital in an age of globalization: the case of Berlin

Abstract

Berlin is being remade as capital of a unified German nation state, just at the time when the role of nation states is being called into question by the claims of globalization, and the associated rise of global cities. The experience of Berlin suggests that it may be unhelpful to accept the world‐city agenda as a universal template. Instead, it is necessary to explore the ways in which different agencies, companies and authorities negotiate the world around them, seeking to insert the city into pre‐existing ideas and realities, as well as to influence and shape them, in what is best understood as a wider process of ‘worlding’.