Global Cities

Global Cities traces the population change in 33 cities around the world from the moment they received their modern names—often through colonial conquest—to the present day.

Each form represents the changing population of the city it hangs above.  Longer forms are older cities, shorter forms are newer ones.  The top of the piece, where the forms are the widest, documents the population of the city around 2017. On the wall, graphics of each city are shown chronologically, presenting a different take on the same information.

Many of the factors that shape our cultures and landscapes are encoded in this piece including settler colonialism, the slave trade, world wars, population growth, mass migration, and climate change.  But just as important are the Indigenous stories that are not here.  Indigenous people lived in nearly all these places before they were colonized and given their current names.

Bonus fact: the clear part of each form is a guesstimate of Population before accurate administrative records were kept.  Beijing has such a long and intricate black form because Song, Yuan, and Ming rulers kept incredibly detailed population records!