Sassen has a guest professorship at the Humboldt Uni this semester. She and Richard Sennett are speaking at the HdKdW (House of world cultures, aka the pregnant oyster, in the tiergarten) on Sunday evening. So I'm also curious...
Funny - I had read this text last week in the N5M3 workbook, recognized it upon skimming it here about 2/3 of the way through.
I found Sassen's use of terminology worthy of attention - terms which one can apply to any of the processes forging what she calls the "new geography of power": i.e., "cross-border activities", apply equally to global capital, transnational corporations, ngos, but also in her analysis to tactical media, translocal networks. As long as one keeps in mind what grave discrepancies in distribution and utilization of material resources bring forth the new situation of "distributed power" I guess it's an interesting analysis and certainly fits the pgo project of critique -would be interesting to know what went down at the conference. As I read this text it was easy for me to identify - Berlin i think is one of these global cities, if I understand correctly what she means. But it sounds, well, hmmm, I dunno - in any case I think the de-nationalized zones (a phrase which brings other associations to the german-tuned ear) of these global cities depend on the quite nation-state-supported border police, as anyone who's seen the labyrinthine subbasements of the brussels airport can tell you.
anita