Cidades Globais - em perspectiva

Abstract

The current study begins with the acknowledgement of "global cities" as one of the most defying and important subjects of contemporary urbanism debate. At the same time, we acknowledge that the prophylaxis of resource and publications on this theme identify a set of specific urban situations, to which a vast set of statistical data and tables presented in a more or less appealing design, describe this specific scenarios. The so called "global cities" are presented as the ultimate result of globalization. The purpose of this study is to demystify this concept. In a first moment it is intended that, resourcing to an historical setting - Braudel's long term - we might understand the current urban theories - Saskia Sassen's global cities - as the result of a long evolutionary process where cities have always been related to the international context. In a second moment there's an effort to demystify, through the analysis of Porto, that the processes of globalization are exclusive to a reduced number of cities and that these processes are only the result of the recent economical context. We show how in the regional setting of Porto, even though this city is not a part of contemporary debate, there are also manifestations of globalization and that these manifestations are present in many different areas of how the urban is built. The aim is thus to reflect on the encompassing contemporary urbanism, and especially alert to the importance of observing the city of Porto as an active participant in the processes of globalization, mystification excluded, to better understand the transformations and future development of the city.