The author chronicles LA's emergence as the nation's leading trade centre and gateway to the Pacific Rim in the 20th century, exploring recent epic battles over port development, expanding LAX, creating a new international airport in Orange County, building the Alameda Corridor rail link and more.

This book combines a historical narrative of urbanisation in Los Angeles with an examination of its changing social geography. It provides a solid base from which to understand and explore the city further and a defined emphasis on recent developments. It focuses on the role of local actors in the globalisation of Los Angeles and traces the ways in which local states, boosters, labour unions, social movements, neighbourhood and community organisations and other agents participate in negotiated world city formation.

How Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and China deal with such urban environmental issues as ports, goods movement, air pollution, water quality, transportation, and public space. Over the past four decades, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and key urban regions of China have emerged as global cities—in financial, political, cultural, environmental, and demographic terms. In this book, Robert Gottlieb and Simon Ng trace the global emergence of these urban areas and compare their responses to a set of six urban environmental issues. These cities have different patterns of development: Los Angeles has been the quintessential horizontal city, the capital of sprawl; Hong Kong is dense and vertical; China's new megacities in the Pearl River Delta, created by an explosion in industrial development and a vast migration from rural to urban areas, combine the vertical and the horizontal. All three have experienced major environmental changes in a relatively short period of time. Gottlieb and Ng document how each has dealt with challenges posed by ports and the movement of goods, air pollution (Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and urban China are all notorious for their hazardous air quality), water supply (all three places are dependent on massive transfers of water) and water quality, the food system (from seed to table), transportation, and public and private space. Finally they discuss the possibility of change brought about by policy initiatives and social movements.

Drawing on eight case studies from key cities on the periphery of global cities literature, Relocating Global Cities argues that all cities are globalizing in important ways. Case studies of Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Bangkok, Manila, Tampa, Sydney, Brussels, and Caracas provide the basis for an alternative theoretical approach to global city formation. Reconciling a market-based understanding and an agency-based understanding of global cities, this book proposes that globalization and cities are mutually constituted by the global political economy engaging with transnational and local agents. The volume proposes an alternate theoretical approach to the literature of globalization while remaining grounded in concrete discussions of key cities. Its expert contributors reconcile the conflicting ways in which two dominant paradigms, one emphasizing market forces and the other the unique actions of individuals and groups, embody our understanding of global cities. This book will be of interest to students and researchers alike, and is a perfect complement to texts in Urban Studies and Globalization.

California is at the cutting edge of technological change, demographic transformation, and international engagement. It has the country's largest population, and is its biggest producer of agricultural and manufactured goods, its main exporter and importer, and a leading center for higher education, research, the media, and philanthropy. Its population is the most international; more than a quarter of the state's residents were born in another country. But habits of thought and structures date from the mid-twentieth century, when California was turned inward. California today lacks ideas, institutions, and policies commensurate with its global stakes and clout. Global California addresses an important subject: how the citizens of a state with the dimensions and power of a nation are affected by international trends, and what they can do to identify and promote their own interests in a rapidly changing world. In this fresh, well-informed, and balanced analysis, Abraham Lowenthal deals with numerous thorny issues—from globalization, trade, and infrastructure to immigration, environmental pollution, climate change, and California's ties with neighboring Mexico and the dynamic Asian economies. A recognized authority on foreign affairs, Lowenthal argues that the real choices are not whether to cheer globalization or condemn it. Rather, Californians need to think strategically and act effectively to gain as much as possible from international engagement while managing its risks and costs. They need to build "cosmopolitan capacity" to understand and respond to global challenges and opportunities. Too much is at stake for California—its citizens, government, firms and non-governmental organizations—to leave thinking and acting on international affairs to the federal government and to East Coast think tank experts. This volume shows Californians how to succeed in an ever more interconnected world.

How do city-regions successfully compete in the global age? Mixing history and policy analysis, Steven Erie offers a compelling account of the improbable rise of Los Angeles, explaining how a region with no natural harbor and a metropolis situated a distant 20 miles from the coast managed to become the world's ninth largest economy and a leading trade and transportation center. In Globalizing L.A., he argues that physical infrastructure development was a catalytic yet underappreciated factor in the transformation of L.A. and Southern California into a global economy, provocatively challenging the conventional wisdom that emphasizes information flows, intellectual property rights, or social capital. The book also highlights the unheralded role of local political institutions and public entrepreneurs in shaping the region's development, growth, and globalization. Beginning with the fierce battles over railroad and harbor development in the late nineteenth century, Erie chronicles L.A.'s emergence as the nation's leading trade center and gateway to the Pacific Rim in the twentieth century. The book explores recent epic battles over port development, the expansion of LAX, the landmark Alameda Corridor rail link, and implementing NAFTA border-infrastructure projects. Until the 1990s, the book argues, L.A. behaved much like a city-state where powerful, semi-autonomous development bureaucracies and entrepreneurial leaders provided the farsighted strategic planning that made these infrastructure projects possible. Today, Southern California faces daunting challenges, from community and environmental resistance to new post-9/11 security concerns, which will affect its future development and global competitiveness. More Praise for Globalizing L.A. "A significant new contribution to the study of urban development. . . . This book will change the way we think about Los Angeles and Southern California. . . . It is the next great book on the region."--David Perry, Director and Professor, Great Cities Institute University of Illinois at Chicago.

This book contemplates the ethics of responsibility in a large range of meanings, consequences and impacts. It reflects the perspectives and reasoning of 24 authors from all continents. All chapters are original papers presented at the Fifth World ISBEE Congress, that took place in Warsaw, Poland, at the Kozminski University, on 11-14 of July, 2012. In this book, ethics and responsibility are considered essential traits of character, not only in the business or governmental arenas but in any initiative, decision and activity. The contributions to this book focus on a spectrum of themes, terms and concepts, the global corporate social responsibilities perspective covering impacts, challenges, analysis, criticism, consequences of important topics of real life, sustainability, international economy and regimes, corruption, poverty and violence, among others. The book is intended for academics, researchers and professionals in all continents who are dedicated to Ethics, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Social Innovation, and Sustainability Management.

This book critically analyses the influence of international policies and guidelines on the performance of interventions aimed at reducing health inequities in Latin America, with special emphasis on health promotion and health in all policies strategies. While the implementation of these interventions plays a key role in strengthening these countries’ capacity to respond to current and future challenges, the urgency and pressures of cooperation and funding agencies to show results consistent with their own agendas not only hampers this goal, but also makes the territory invisible, hiding the real problems faced by most Latin American countries, diminishing the richness of local knowledge production, and hindering the development of relevant proposals that consider the territory’s conditions and cultural identity. Departing from this general analysis, the authors search for answers to the following questions: Why, despite the importance of the theoretical advances r egarding actions to address social and health inequities, haven’t Latin American countries been able to produce the expected results? Why do successful initiatives only take place within the framework of pilot projects? Why does the ideology of health promotion and health in all policies mainly permeate structures of the health sector, but not other sectors? Why are intersectoral actions conjunctural initiatives, which often fail to evolve into permanent practices? Based on an extensive literature review, case studies, personal experiences, and interviews with key informants in the region, Globalization and Health Inequities in Latin America presents a strategy that uses monitoring and evaluation practices for enhancing the capacity of Latin American and other low and middle-income countries to implement sustainable processes to foster inclusiveness, equity, social justice and human rights. p/pp

This book gives an account of how the U.S. freight transportation system has been impacted and “globalized,” since the 1950s, by the presence of the shipping container. A globally standardized object, the container carries cargo moving in international trade, and it utilizes and fits within the existing transportation infrastructures of shipping, trucking and railroads. In this way it binds them together into a nearly seamless worldwide logistics network. This process occurs not only in ocean shipping and at ports, but also deep within national territories. In its dependence on existing infrastructural systems, though, the network of container movement as it pervades domestic space is shaped by the history and geography of the nation-state. This global network is not invariably imposed in a top-down manner—to a large degree, it is cobbled together out of national, regional and local systems. Heins describes this in the American context, examining the freight transportation infrastructures of railroads, trucking and inland waterways, and also the terminals where containers are transferred between train and truck. The book provides a detailed historical narrative, and is also theoretically informed by the contemporary literature on infrastructure and globalization.

This popular text mixes classic theory and research on urban politics with the most recent developments and data in urban and metropolitan affairs. Its balanced and realistic approach helps students understand the nature of urban politics and the difficulty of finding effective "solutions" in a suburban and global age. The ninth edition has been thoroughly rewritten and updated with a continued focus on economic development and race, plus renewed attention to globalization, gentrification, and changing demographics. Boxed case studies of prominent recent and current urban development efforts provide material for class discussion, and concluding material demonstrates the tradeoff between more "ideal" and more "pragmatic" urban politics. Key changes in this edition include: Every chapter has been thoroughly updated and rewritten. The Ninth Edition reflects the most current census data and the newest trends in such areas as the "new immigration," suburbanization, gentrification, and big-city revivals; There is coverage of the big-city pension crisis and politics in Stockton, Detroit, and other cities facing possible bankruptcy; A brand-new opening chapter introduces the concepts of the Global City, the Entertainment City, and the Bankrupt City; New photos and boxes appear throughout the book; Increased coverage of policies for sustainable urban development.