“Global cities are machines for producing wealth, but they also produce and expand inequalities”, opined Saskia Sassen, during her lecture hosted by PUKAR. The lecture was attended by over 120 persons, comprising of students, academicians, professionals and urban planners.

Speaking about a master category called Global Cities – a category that subsumes varieties of knowledge and produces new understandings – Prof. Sassen brought out connections between global capital, finance and global politics.

Prof. Sassen observed that global capital is increasingly taking electronic or digital forms, it is no longer human. However, when humans work with this capital, it gets politicized.

She summarized the process of creation of new global cities in the following manner: The global capital and global finance depends on a growing network of global cities, because essentially it needs space. The politics of space comes in when the expanding financial centres require new built environments. When people work in these spaces, they also require homes, services and thus a new global centre is born. Such growth also leads to top level concentration of power, because it facilitates the working of global politics and economics.

Another feature of the global city, as sighted by Prof. Sassen, is that it is an economic & technical platform as well as a platform for a new politics – where the disadvantaged fight for their rights and connect with the global politics. The politics may deal with very specific, local and parochial issues, however, it is global because it happens in all the cities.

She presented statistical data which compared several global cities of the world. She specifically shared the information about what place Mumbai occupies in the world. It was startling to discover that while Mumbai was among the top 40 in producing wealth, it rated among the lowest on quality of life.

In the open dialogue that followed, members of the audience asked engaging questions about this ‘dual’ nature of global cities – of huge populations creating wealth but not being served well. Prof. Sassen shared many insights from her recent book on Global Cities.