World city topologies

TLDR

The paper argues that fluid flows, actant networks, performances, and practices fold city spaces and times, challenging the privileging of geometrical space and linear time in global city explanations, and seeks to develop a topological view of cities in global networks. The authors reconfigure space as everywhere and folded, time as non‑linear and multiple, and apply these concepts to critique political‑economy spatialities, ultimately depicting global cities as “Bodies without Organs.” The resulting spatiotemporal topology shows cities as networks that both connect and disconnect, defying conventional borders and temporal frames and revealing the stretched, folded relations that shape global urban space.

Abstract

This paper develops ideas from poststructuralism, actor-network theory, nonrepresentational theory and complexity theory to begin to produce a topological consideration of cities in global networks. In other words, the paper argues that fluids and flows, actant networks, performances and practices fold the spaces and times of cities in ways that question the privileging of geometrical space (near and far) and linear time (now and then) in explanations of global and world cities. To reach a conceptualization of world city topologies, the paper is in four parts. First, space is set free and rethought as everywhere and folded into everything. Second, time is rethought as non-linear, multiple and folded into everything. Third, these new conceptualizations of space and time are mobilized to challenge the spatialities and temporalities produced through the political-economy approach of a writer such as Saskia Sassen. Finally, my rethinking of space and time in globalization is worked through to portray global and world cities as ‘Bodies without Organs’. This spatial formation is seen to be one that connects and disconnects through networks and folds. Overall, my rethinking of space, time, globalization and cities produces a spatiotemporal pattern or topology that defies familiar geographical borders and temporal frames to point to the spaced and timed quality of relations that stretch.