Looking from below at the transformations under way in cities throughout Europe and the United States opens up an altered perspective on the processes identified with globalization. Many of these processes extend far beyond global cities. Parallel trends within the urban region of different countries have often proven more crucial to these changes than activities that cross national boundaries. The rise of developmental, environmental and social policy within urban regions; the mobilization of urban economies around this shift; the expansion of mobile clienteles for services and residences; and the spread and institutionalization of neighborhood and social movements all constitute developments as local as they are global. In the age of the internet, as opportunities for connections with other localities around the globe expand, this decentered but global change will continue to alter the conditions of governance. The urban governance that they have fostered remains a limited but crucial enterprise. The experiences of these eleven cities offer a glimpse into the difficulties that efforts to reconcile developmental, social and environmental aims are likely to confront.

The most general lessons that follow from the foregoing analysis concern the nature of the transformations linked to globalization. Accounts of global forces and their effects within and upon cities have too often taken the firms and other actors in transnational or translocal markets as the prime movers and presumed that those effects have come about through direct assertions of economic power.