Globalization 3 3 MICROCOSMIC RESEARCH AND GLOBAL AWARENESS : RETHINKING THE LOCAL HERITAGE

Ray Bromley is Professor ofPlanning and Geography at the State University ofNew York at Albany. He has published extensively on urban , regional, and national planning, and on casual labor and microenterprise development. His current research is on planning history, with case studies ofthe Bronx and Peru . The globalization process, initiated by the fifteenth-century Eu ropean voyages of discovery, has had massive and irrevocable effects. On the negative side, it has been associated with colonialism, imperialism, wars, forced migrations, slavery, genocide, and the eradication of a wide range of ecosystems, species, communities, and cultures. On the positive side, it has been accompanied by considerable economic growth and technological progress, a growing worldwide concern for democracy, human rights and individual freedoms, massive voluntary migrations, reduced morbidity and mortality, and the emergence of cities and neighborhoods with high levels ofethnic diversity and cultural syncretism.