De Gruyter Handbook of Cities, Infrastructure and International Relations (De Gruyter Contemporary Social Sciences Handbooks, 35)

Cities have been the motive force of globalisation.As cities have grown to sizes unknown in the historical record, they very often dwarf many states in terms of population and economic power, placing our frameworks for understanding the international system under strain.Cities have increasingly tried, often successfully, to translate their new-found heft and economic might into political power - in the halls of international organisations, in the United Nations system, and also through the many hundreds of transnational networks that are having real influence on global governance issues and outcomes in areas such as climate change, migration, global health, and disaster risk management. This volume argues that cities and infrastructures of connectivity - including transportation, digital architectures, computational stacks, and energy infrastructures - are also important components of international order itself - objects and mediums of geopolitical competition.The ‘global’ cities that