"Advances our knowledge of globalization by documenting Accra’s unique incorporation into the world economy, highlighting the complex local global processes in the city’s globalization, drawing attention to the key actors in the city’s ongoing globalization, and helping to fill a gaping hole in the literature on the globalization of Accra and other less-celebrated cities."—Economic Geography
"An important contribution to urban geography . . . rich in research detail on a city that has a significant story to tell about globalization."—Garth Myers, author of Verandahs of Power: Colonialism and Space in Urban Africa
Description
As urbanization of the world’s population grows at an ever-increasing pace, the need to understand the effects of globalization on cities is at the forefront of urban studies. Traditional scholarship largely employs a framework of analysis based on the globalizing experience of Western cities. In Globalizing City, Richard Grant draws on ten years of empirical research in Accra, Ghana’s capital city, to show how this African metropolis is as deeply transformed by globalization as the cities of other world regions.
Grant reveals the ways in which international, transnational, and local forces are operating on the urban landscape of Accra, from elite gated communities to the poorest slums. Through interviews and extensive fieldwork, he examines how foreign companies, returned expatriates, and native Ghanaians foster globalization on multiple levels. Globalizing City offers an excellent case study of the complex social and economic dynamics that have transformed Accra, providing an essential guide for studying globalizing cities in general.
About the Author
Richard Grant is associate professor of geography at the University of Miami. He is coeditor of The Global Crisis in Foreign Aid, also published by Syracuse University Press.
February 2009