New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America's Global Cities

Chicago, whose surrounding marshlands abounded in ""wild onions,"" was wrested from Native tribes in 1795; Los Angeles County in the 1930s used a federal law allowing deportation of ""indigent aliens"" to expel tens of thousands of Mexican immigrants from the U.S. These are among the surprising historical footnotes to be found Abu-Lughod's revealing study of the forces of globalization that have swept three major American cities over the last century. A prolific sociologist and professor emerita (Northwestern University and Manhattan's New School for Social Research), Abu-Lughod singles out New York, Chicago and Los Angeles as America's ""global cities"" shaped by the increased importance of business services, a dichotomized class structure and the internationalization of commerce. Globalization, she insists, is much older than many scholars understand, with the seeds firmly in place in the mid-19th-century. A central thesis here is that, since 1973, the class and income gap between rich and poor Americans has widened sharply thanks to regressive government policies, cutbacks in entitlements and a tax system that shifts wealth upwards from the poor and the middle classes to corporations and the wealthy. The writing, which is unusually vigorous and incisive for so academic a tome, and the scores of photographs and maps, will secure a place for this book well beyond the drafting tables of aspiring city planners. (Aug.)