Global capital control and city hierarchies: an attempt to reposition Vienna in a world city network

Abstract

This paper is devoted to foreign direct investments (FDIs), which have been allocated on a very low regional level. This makes it possible to first position Vienna within a global city system according to international capital flows and to analyze changes in this position. In addition to being a case study, this paper shall attempt to make a contribution to the conceptualisation of global cities as focal points of FDI-capital flows and the formation of a global city network by firm hierarchies. The dataset is used to analyze Vienna’s FDI-relations to other cities and makes it possible to examine spatial hierarchies based on uneven capital flows. As the data extend over a period of 17 years (from 1989 to 2005), the question can be posed whether geostrategic changes like the fall of the Iron Curtain and Austria becoming a member of the EU have led to new patterns of capital flows. It could be established that there is an ongoing degree of hierarchization within Vienna’s global city network and that the above mentioned changes in the “long decade of the 1990s” established Vienna as a gateway-bridge between the East and the West. On a global scale, however, Vienna’s city status was not raised in the process.