Star forming clouds are not islands in and of themselves, but instead form out of, and are embedded within the interstellar medium of our Milky Way galaxy. Large scale galactic structure such as spiral arms, and clustered supernovae feedback from previous generations of star formation drive large scale turbulence which influences fragmentation within star forming clouds. Differential rotation within the disc stretches out large filaments of HI, within which molecular filaments are embedded. Magnetic fields generated by the large-scale dynamo thread the galaxy and influence the alignment of filamentary clouds and how they fragment. Thus, the history of star formation is intrinsically linked to the galactic environment in which it forms. However, star formation is almost always treated as a sub-grid process in galaxy simulations, while galaxy scale forces are neglected in studies of local star formation. In this talk I will use my own Cloud Factory simulations suite, as well as other results from the literature, to explore how star forming clouds and galaxies are linked, and the implications for our understanding of both.
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