In an age of expansive global networks, huge migration flows, and rapid transnational connections, cities are increasingly the focus of movement and change. There is a real sense in which cities are the crucible of the new, where cultures, people and environments combine in various settled and often less settled ways. Unsettling Cities offers a way of understanding the global nature of cities, where their very openness has served to shape their dynamism and character. Based on the assumption that cities cannot be understood apart from one another and the wider relationships which bind them, Unsettling Cities explores the mix of proximity and distance, community and difference, even the natural connections, which make up the rich and diverse texture of city life. Within this understanding, the contributors show how the changing fortunes of cities, the mix of different times and spaces within them, are related directly to the power and influence of the global networks which touch them. John Allen The Open University, UK, Ash Amin University of Durham, UK Steve Graham, University of Newcastle, UK Kerry Hamilton, University of East London, Stephen Hinchl

John Allen is Senior Lecturer in Economic Geography at The Open University. His recent publictions include A Shrinking World? (1995, co-edited with Chris Hamnett) and Rethinking the Region (1998, with Doreen Masssey and Alan Cochrane)

Doreen Massey is Professor of Geography at The Open University. She is co-founder and joint editor of Soundings: a journal of politics and culture Her recent books include Spatial Divisions of Labour (2nd Ed 1995) and Space, Place and Gender (1994).

Michael Pryke is Lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences at The Open University. He has published a number of articles