Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

The global city and its citizens are changing with global social, cultural, and political impacts felt within both urban public spaces, and citizens’ daily personal, public, and private lives. Both the city and its citizens propel changes upon one another. Not only has the core aesthetic of global cities changed rapidly overtime, but the very use, creation, and understanding of the city has been modified to adjust to global impacts felt within urban public spaces. The global city is growing to house many different groups within it. As the city grows, it accommodates newcomers and with them new ideas and power structures - dynamics. These differing personal spaces are shaping and imprinting their blended understandings of life upon the city thereby constantly re-creating urban public spaces. The growing presence of newcomers within the urban public spaces of these cities has added to their cosmopolitan, diverse, and multi-culture nature. In some instances, it is possible to witness the fusion of cultures morphing into an all-together new transnational public identity. The increase in population within these cities – the quest to find a new home and a “better” life is most striking within the context of international migration to large global urban spaces. Although the growth of cosmopolitanism and multi-culturalism, on the one hand enables a new and vibrant life to the city, it has also highlighted major concerns within these societies challenging the level of social cohesion, co-existence, and connectivity present. The presence of multiple groups and identities sharing the public sphere has created increased familiarisation, while old and new denizens of learn to live together. Yet, in doing so it has also, created social tensions and further highlighted what may be termed as the “identity fault lines” already existing within these societies. This has given rise to a new stage in social movements and political and public debates about the nature of the modern day “democratic” public sphere.