Introduction

In the previous chapter, I traced the century-long history of cities’ autonomy, concluding my review by reflecting on the current and possibly future state of local freedom. I briefly mentioned how globalisation has changed the political role of the state by reducing its political importance at an international level. However, globalisation has also had a profound impact on cities. Globalisation, on the one hand, has provided some ‘big’ cities with the opportunity to become economic hubs and gain significant international influence. On the other hand, globalising forces have brought uniformity to distant places though the worldwide provision of the same services and products. This, in turn, may have threatened the autonomy of cities, especially through the erosion of their distinctive features. Against this backdrop, states have been fairly inactive towards cities, leaving them to face the consequences of globalisation, whether positive or negative. Therefore, in this chapter1 I want to dwell on the epistemological (and political) importance of cities’ autonomy in our contemporary globalised world. In particular, I will employ a cultural-identitarian reading of local autonomy by connecting the latter to the persistence (and re-shaping) of urban identity. Many advocates of globalisation would object and claim that global processes make any talk about local identity and local autonomy outdated. The very same phrase ‘urban identity’ could be perceived as a reminiscence of the past, at odds with our digital present, which promises to deliver an immaterial and hyperconnected ‘metaverse’. Indeed, during the Covid-19 pandemic we had a taste of how digital tools could transform our lives, enabling us to work and connect with people based in distant places. And yet, the place where we live still matters, inevitably shaping our choices and behaviours. Cities still differ from one another: both visibly, through the built environment and the historico-cultural heritage, and on a more abstract level, through the ecologies of social and political relations.

It was around the beginning of the 1970s that globalisation as an object of study made its way into the social science camp (Brenner, 2004, p 27).