Cities have long been regarded, in Lewis Mumford’s words of 1938, as "a point of maximum concentration for the power and culture of a community." Yet they served not only as centers of regional or national communities but also as nodal points of long-distance connections and cross-cultural encounters as well as drivers of ecological change. Looking at urban areas through the lens of global history, the seminar will explore the role played by cities in a world connecting and ask in how far the development and experience of cityscapes was affec­ted by conditions of global connected­ness. Focusing on selected case studies since the nineteenth century, we also explore the effects of asym­­­me­trical power relations that produced segmented and unequal cityscapes and continue to shape urban historical narratives. In sum, the seminar aims at furnishing historical tools for a better under­standing of the intersections between globalization and urbanization. close