Bilbao: Basque Pathways to Globalization

by Gerardo del Cerro Santamaria, Steven Tiesdell

Overview

The gleaming Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has put the Basque capital on the map of world cities and has exacerbated optimism among public officials worldwide about the role of spectacular architecture in urban renewal. This book - a theoretically-informed case study and a major synthesis of Bilbaos developments through the lens of globalization analyzes the Guggenheim project as the latest of Bilbaos globalization efforts, puts the project in the context of Bilbaos decades-long transformation and contends that Bilbaos positive economic performance since 1994 is not fundamentally due to the success of Frank Gehry's building, but rather to a complex array of causal processes that must be understood in the context of Bilbaos connections with the world economy and a changing world-system. The author argues that globalization processes in Bilbao are as old as the city itself and that the role of the State must be taken into account in order to explain the city's changing fortunes throughout the years. Globalization itself ought to be understood as a complex and variable network-like process with multiscalar nodes, an approach which is carefully theorized and empirically developed in this book. This is a volume in the "Current Research in Urban and Regional Studies Series". It takes into consideration Bilbao's social history and the complex relationships between local and global entities (regionalism v. state). It provides a socioeconomic analysis of the "Bilbao Effect".

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780080453248
Publisher:	Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Publication date:	11/24/2006
Series:	Current Research in Urban and Regional Studies , #1
Pages:	242
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.45(h) x 0.91(d)

About the Author

Gerardo del Cerro Santamaría, born in Spain and a long-time observer of urban and Basque affairs, teaches at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. Educated in Madrid and New York, and trained in urbanism and political economy by Manuel Castells, Janet Abu-Lughod and Diane Davis, Professor del Cerro holds Ph.D.'s from the New School for Social Research in New York and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Masters Degrese from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid and the New School for Social Research, and Program Certificates from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After receiving a High School Diploma in Science cum laude, he completed undergraduate degrees in logic and philosophy of science and music theory, and graduate degrees in classical piano and social science, specializing in urban sociology and urban political economy. He has taught and published on urban issues in Spain and the United States and is author or co-author of publications on urban environmental engineering, science and technology studies, program evaluation, engineering design & social science, and ancient Hindu culture & philosophy. Between 1997 and 2002, he served as Project Area Leader for the Gateway Engineering Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation and advised organizations in the USA, Spain, Russia, Japan and South Korea on social science methods for program and organizational planning and evaluation. Professor del Cerro is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. In addition to his teachingresponsibilities, he currently serves as Director of Institutional Research and Assessment at The Cooper Union in New York, where he has lived since 1992.

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Graphs Preface/Acknowledgments Introduction Bilbao a city on the Global Map. Chapter One: Cities, Globalization, Bilbao. Chapter Two: Economic Globalization in the Pre-Industrial Era. Chapter Three: Industrial Capitalism and the Nation-State. Chapter Four: Global Pressures and the Crisis of Fordism. Chapter Five: The Making of an Urban Mega-Project Chapter Six: Architecture, Globalization, and the Guggenheim Project. Chapter Seven: The Economic Globalization of the City-Region. Chapter Eight: Basque Pathways to Globalization Bibliography: On Citites and Globalization, On Bilbao and the Basque Country. Index