Читать книгу Global Political Cities - Kent E. Calder - Страница 15

A second dimension of the global political city is its role as a forum for policy activities with broader political significance. Forums can, of course, generate and propagate far-reaching and cosmopolitan policy proposals. At the same time, however, they can also link thinkers and policy analysts across national borders. Thanks to podcasts, streaming video, and the internet, foreign venues are becoming readily accessible, at least visually and psychologically, to domestic audiences. “All the world,” as Shakespeare put it, “is a stage.”¹⁷ Global capitals such as Washington, DC, and Beijing, as well as IGO centers such as New York City, which hosts the United Nations, are becoming locales where leaders with global influence interact personally. Leaders, both domestic and foreign, also pose there for their own parochial audiences, to whom they are ever more intimately connected by advancing technology.

Local cities with more modest formal political roles can also become globally significant political stages, especially when they lie at the edge of geo-economic “tectonic plates.” The case of Hong Kong shows this dramatically. So did Berlin during the Cold War, or Stalingrad during World War II.