I see this claim a lot, but is it really true? Florence looked very different to me from New York; New York looks very different from Gloucester, Mass.; Manhattan looks very different from Brooklyn. Visiting Sydney in 2001, we heard some Asian-flavored techno like I've never heard in the northern hemisphere. Are things really homogenizing to this degree? Doug <<<<<>>>>>
thanks for kind word, re. passage that troubles you, i think that you "over-read" point i was trying to make, which was not that cities are all becoming/looking the same, however, reading above exercpt today, i would try to be clearer and more precise: there exists interconnected networks of finance and specialized producer services, cities with different national and cultural backgrounds exhibit similar features, one of which is globalized' professional-managerial-investor stratum (for lack of better term)...
identifiable number of places are simultaneously more cosmopolitan and more heterogeneous, high-end folks existing alongside shrinking number of middle income earners and 'traditional' working class, polarization combining with spread of casual labor and informal economy functioning outside of state regulation, labor unions, and employee benefits...
simplified binary history in which 'old' and 'new' urban political economies are said to follow sequential order misses circumstances in which two exist side by side in complex and contradictory ways... mh