WORLD CITY THEORY, GLOBALIZATION AND THE COMPARATIVE-HISTORICAL METHOD Reflections on Janet Abu-Lughod's Interpretation of Contemporary Urban Restructuring

Janet Abu-Lughod's most recent book, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America's Global Cities (1999), represents an impressive accomplishment. Framed with reference to contemporary debates on globalization and world cities, the book articulates a powerful appeal for a more historically nuanced perspective on contemporary forms of urban restructuring. Whereas scholars such as Anthony King (1991a, 1991b) have articulated analogous criticisms of the "presentism" that continues to pervade contemporary urban studies, Abu-Lughod is among the first urbanists to attempt systematically to explore the full methodological and empirical ramifications of a genuinely historical perspective for the interpretation of urban change in the present period. In a phrase, Abu-Lughod argues insistently throughout the book that "history matters." Her analysis is framed around the contention that contemporary discussions of world cities, post-Fordism, and globalization have radically exaggerated the historical uniqueness of contemporary urban transformations, which can be understood more adequately, she argues, in the context of many centuries of interaction between world-scale economic processes and changing localized economic, social, and political conditions. Thus, as Abu-Lughod persuasively demonstrates in this book, it is only through a sustained account of the longue durée historical legacy of global forces within major metropolitan regions that we can begin adequately to decipher the complex, contested transformations that have unfolded in cities in the United States and beyond during the past three decades.