The environmental problematic in world cities

Abstract

In John Berger's novel Lilac and Flag there is a description of a fictional trip taken from the airport periphery to the centre of the city of Troy: It is possible you have been to Troy without recognising the city. The road from the airport is like many others in the world. It has a superhighway and is often blocked. You leave the airport buildings which are like space vessels never finished, you pass the packed carparks, the international hotels, a mile or two of barbed wire, broken fields, the last stray cattle, billboards that advertise cars and Coca-Cola, storage tanks, a cement plant, the first shanty town, several giant depots for big stores, ring-road flyovers, working class flats, a part of an ancient city wall, the old boroughs with trees, crammed shopping streets, new golden office blocks, a number of ancient domes and spires, and finally you arrive at the acropolis of wealth. (John Berger 1990: 170) This description guides us through the archetypical landscape of today's internationalized city. The narrator/driver/passenger (like world city researchers) most likely belongs to a new group of globe-trotters called ‘transnationally literate migrants’ by Gayatri Spivak (1993). These not only understand the variable semiotics of various global places but also know how to act in these places and help develop counter-discourses and strategies.

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