Bilbao and globalization: Transnational networks, political economy, and urban restructuring in a city on the global map (Spain)

This dissertation questions one of the most important and common assumptions in current global city research, namely, that globalization can be applied almost exclusively to the current period of economic restructuring in which states are “losing control.” My case study of the city of Bilbao shows that globalizing processes have been common to the history of the city ever since its foundation in 1300. In addition, I show that Bilbao's globalization and de-globalization through the centuries cannot be explained without taking into account the important role of the state in processes of economic restructuring and urban development. In my explanation, politics and history become fundamental components of globalization. Thus I depart from conventional explanations of this phenomenon as an economic or even financial process affecting all cities similarly. In testing my hypothesis, I combine insights and concepts from global-city research, historical macrosociology and world-systems research, and economic geography. My work can be seen as an attempt to incorporate the latter two into the first, and thus develop a new synthesis able to account for cities's globalizing processes within historical and political contexts at regional and national levels. My dissertation explores the organizational architecture of Bilbao in the world economy, and my approach allows me not only to capture a dynamic in formation (because Bilbao is not a well established global city in the top of the hierarchy), but also to explain this current cycle of globalizing Bilbao in comparison with previous cycles in history. In short, I discuss the specific trajectories through which Bilbao has become and is becoming part of global circuits, but I also question that such global linkages may represent the only basis to explain Bilbao's urban development throughout history. Specifically, I argue that global flows must be explained and understood in the context of broader developments occurring at the local level in order to fully grasp the precise reach of globalization, which consists not only of “relations,” but also of “structures,” and differentiated “territories.” I explain a city through globalization rather than globalization through a city, as most theories of the global city do.