Revisiting city connectivity

Abstract

This article introduces a new perspective on city connectivity in order to analyze non-hub cities and their position in the world economy. The author revisits the different approaches discussed in the Global Commodity Chains (GCC), Global Production Networks (GPN) and World City Network (WCN) discourses and argues that synergies can be found if the WCN’s firm-level argument is merged with the GCC and GPN’s call for geographic embeddedness. This article lays out that a new bottom-up approach in the field of city network analysis can help investigating non-hub cities, taking a city’s local economy and its ego-network as a starting point. Sudan’s capital Khartoum serves as a test case and confirms that this approach leads to interesting findings. While Khartoum would score one of the lowest rankings in ‘classic’ connectivity audits, using a city’s ego-network offers an alternative assessment that provides a better understanding Khartoum’s status in the global petroleum industry.