“Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo,” Donald Trump declared lately. America is not alone. “Brexit spreads across Europe” — such headlines also indicate that there are rising voices against globalization, especially in western developed countries. “Globalization refers to all those processes by which the people of the world are incorporated into a single world society, global society.” (Albrow, 1990) However, nowadays globalization appears the other way round. What has triggered the hostility to 21st century globalization, and how does it differ from 20th century globalization?
The main argumentation of this issue focuses on the different aspects of globalization during this period of transformation. In exploring the debates on globalization I am particularly interested in its impact on cities, because urbanization is one of those aspects, reflecting the changing face of globalization.
Globalization decelerated from the 1910s onward due to the World Wars and the Cold War. Naturally, 20th century globalization was occupied with post-war development policies and uncertainty, which adversely affected urban development. At that time urban planning was mainly led and limited by the crude vision of “functional segregation”, laid down in Athens Charter. This notion inclined urban planning to treat buildings and developments as isolated parts of the overall urban ecosystem, resulting in a 20th-century move towards establishing something stable, structured, and rationalised