When the bombs went off on July 7th our response as Londoners was to confirm our defiant multicultural identity. It was in this guise that Ken Livingstone called the city ‘the future of the world’. But London heralds the future world in other ways too. It is, for example, a command centre of neoliberal globalisation, and the effects of this reverberate around the world, often in problematical ways. Doreen Massey, Professor of Geography at the Open University, has written widely on globalisation, regional uneven development, and the reconceptualisation of place. She is co-founder and co-editor of ‘Soundings: a journal of politics and culture’ and her latest book ‘For Space’ was published this year by Sage. She will be discussing how we can build an ‘outward looking’ politics for our world city – a politics of place beyond place.