Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and co-chair of The Committee on Global Thought. Her research and writing focuses on globalization, immigration, global cities, new networked technologies, and changes within the liberal state that result from current transnational conditions. She focuses on the unexpected and the counterintuitive as a way to cut through established “truths.” Her most recent publications include “When Territory Exits Existing Frameworks,” which is forthcoming from Harvard University Press, as well as “Cities in a World Economy,” “Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages,” “A Sociology of Globalization,” and “The Global City.” She edited “Deciphering the Global” and “Digital Formations: New Architectures for Global Order.” Her books have been translated into 21 languages.
She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Cities, and has chaired the Information Technology and International Cooperation Committee of the Social Science Research Council (USA). She has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Newsweek International, among other publications, and contributes regularly to OpenDemocracy.net and The Huffington Post.
cities
Open Sourcing the Neighborhood
Rapid change in cities creates highly legible moments: the material reality of new buildings, expanding transport systems, modest shops replaced by luxury shops and modest middle-classes displaced by the rich professional class, or a bike-path where there had been none. And when rapid change happens simultaneously in several cities with at least some comparable conditions, it makes it possible to see how diverse the spatial outcomes can be in spite of similar underlying dynamics, such as the rise of mega-structures or of one-way streets.
