In less than a generation, the dominant image of American cities has transformed from one of crisis to revitalization. Poverty, violence, and distressed schools still make headlines, but central cities and older suburbs are attracting new residents and substantial capital investment. In most accounts, native-born empty nesters, their twentysomething children, and other educated professionals are credited as the agents of change. Yet in the past decade, policy makers and scholars across the United States have come to understand that immigrants are driving metropolitan revitalization at...

In recent decades, hundreds of millions of people across the world have moved from rural areas to metropolitan regions, some of them crossing national borders on the way. While urbanization and globalization are proceeding with an intensity that seems unprecedented, these are only the most recent iterations of long-term transformations--cities have for centuries served as vital points of contact between different peoples, economies, and cultures. Making Cities Global explores the intertwined development of urbanization and globalization using a historical approach that demonstrates...