Virtual Global Cities Project 2015
This virtual tour through a selection of global cities in these web portfolios. Two analytical dimensions
focus our critical lens: vernacular and transnational urbanism (in architecture, commerce, consumer products, jobs, ads, ways of living, cultural practices,
etc). Cross-cutting these, two spatial dimensions draw our attention within the built environment and social/cultural flows of global cities: slums and
dreamworlds of neoliberal urbanism. We adopt virtual tactics for walking-in-the-city, positioning ourselves as transnational flâneurs
tacking between the urban inequalities of slums and skyscrapers to ask: WHOSE CITY IS IT?
Each Virtual Global Cities project is dedicated to a particular world city in the Global South, and integrates virtual ethnographic documentation, visual images, scholarly literature, and critical interpretive analysis to guide the user.
University students majoring in many different fields created these web portfolios. We are not (yet) expert urbanists, and our results may be a bit uneven; we range from freshman to seniors, and a sprinkling of graduate students, and here we hone our skills in research, writing, critical analysis. Through this collaborative project, we discover that our comparative gaze offers some astounding insights about global cities. Taken together, we hope you'll agree that the synergy between our individual projects amounts to a sum much greater than its parts.
ENJOY!