The Suburban Transformation of the Globalizing American City

As the American metropolis has turned inside out since 1970, the emerging outer suburban city has captured critical masses of leading urban activities from the central city that spawned it. Globalization increasingly shapes U.S. urban development in the 1990s, yet research to date has focused on the central city and mainly ignores the outer ring, where a growing majority of metropolitan residents live and work. Following a brief review of the unprecedented recent suburbanization of major economic activities, this article explores the rapidly expanding international role of suburban business complexes in large metropolitan areas, particularly Greater New York. Among the perspectives discussed are the world city hypothesis, relationships between telecommunications and urban form, high-technology industrial location processes, the influence of corporate headquarters on global information-flow networks, and the foreign presence in suburban America. It is concluded that globalization forces intensify and accelerate the suburban transformation of the American city. A new urban future is being shaped as fully developed suburbs become the engine driving metropolitan and world city growth.