A global urban gaze
‘I am nomadic… home is the place where I can work.’ [1]
This photograph portrays sociologist Saskia Sassen sitting in her apartment in New York, looking at the city through the window. Illustrating Sassen’s cosmopolitan vision of the world, the image shows her looking directly at a global city, the main subject of her research. In the background we can see her desk, with a few books, certainly some of her own writings, a clock that looks like a tower and that seems to be controlling the space, and a green teapot. The desk behind her is part of her workplace, where her books and articles are written: the place from which her agency emerges. A citizen of the world, however, her agency is not bound, physically or metaphorically, to the idea of the home. Sassen’s work has a clear influence on her lifestyle, and vice versa, as her childhood and education were also very international. [2] Even her clothes seem to be a kind of Japanese-style silk ensemble, perhaps a souvenir from one of her many trips.
Sassen does not build, or design, the city, but she investigates its future inner workings. In the picture, she has adopted a very laid-back position, casting a calm gaze at that buzzing global city, almost suggesting her secure knowledge of it. Her passive pose shows this more passive agency; not an agency on the city itself, but its analysis. It is a passive agency in the sense that it is observational, descriptive and analytical; it is not a direct action, but one that has a clear influence on, and consequences for, the way cities and their globalisation are perceived and conceived, as she aims to find the link between the social, economic and spatial aspect of New York.
Her first of eight major works, entitled The Global City: New York, Tokyo and London, [3] published in 1991, set the tone of her research. It analyses how a growing global economy is highly linked with territorial and urban agency. She argues that a global city and geographical centrality is transformed by global systems like cross-border dynamics, transnational networks and multinational firms. With this thesis, she triggered the popular idea that globalisation goes beyond geography. [4] The academic journal Development and Change commented that it ‘should be read not only by… economists but also by urban geographers, sociologists, and planners.’ [5]
Consequently, in 1995 she was invited to the ANYwise conference in Seoul, South Korea, with the theme of ‘Urban Continuity and Transformation; Reconfiguring Centrality.’ There, she articulated the socio-economic and spatial idea of centrality. She focused on the future forms of centrality and explained spatial pluricentralities in terms of geographic dispersal and globalisation. Until 1999, she participated at these conferences, which aimed to link the discipline with cross-cultural knowledge and dialogue with a variety of actors, five times. [6] She was, thereby, part of a turning point in urbanism and city planning.
Sassen’s analytical view of the city’s global aspects influences not only how she conceives the world, but also the vision of others, namely through her publications, conferences and teaching, which in turn re-shape the cities themselves.
Image Credits: Photo Steve Pyke.
1. Barbour, Celia. “The guilt of Having a Good Thing.” The New York Times. 23 September 2007. (Accessed 24 April 2022) Link.
2. Saskia Sassen was brought up in three different countries and two continents, speaking five different languages. “Saskia Sassen’s CV.” Saskiasassen.com, n.d. Web. (Accessed 2 April 2022) Link.
3. Sassen, Saskia. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton University Press, 1991.
4. Sassen, Saskia. “Overview.” The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton University Press, 2001. 3–16. (Accessed 19 May 2022) Link.
5. “The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo.” Princeton University Press, n.d. Web. (Accessed 11 May 2022) Link.
6. Sassen, Saskia. “Reconfiguring Centrality.” Anywise. Ed. Cynthia C. Davidson. MIT Press, 1996. 126-32.
