World City Hierarchy Research Articles

Review of “Emerging global cities: origin, structure and significance”

The authors challenge the “global city literature” school of urban studies thought advanced by such authors as Saskia Sassen, which empirically rank-orders world cities based on their concentration of business activity and confers higher power and importance to cities atop this hierarchy. The book advances a critique of the global city literature alongside scholars such as Neil Brenner and Jennifer Robinson, arguing that such hierarchical conceptions of world cities ignore third world or Global South cities, instead treating higher-ranked cities as ideal and merely reproducing North American and Eurocentric views of urban life. As opposed to the orthodoxy of global city literature, the authors suggest that “emerging global cities” such Dubai, Miami, and Singapore emerged from a position of insignificance to prominence, without “sponsorship” from the supposed global elite cities atop the world city hierarchy. The book contributes a novel set of characteristics explaining this ascendance, which can most directly benefit global urban studies focused on cities in the Global South: a legal system that investors are confident with, a pro-business yet non-corrupt government bureaucracy, local political leaders motivated to make their city globally competitive, including the use of city branding, and the inward migration of foreign labor to fuel growth in globalizing formal economic sectors. These factors contribute novel criteria missing from the global city literature to explain the flexibility for peripheral cities to ascend.

Migrating up the World City Hierarchy: Seoul as a World City of ‘Transfer’ for the Latin American Creative Class

This paper focuses on the world city of Seoul as an alternative, temporary destination for creative class migrants from Latin America. The creative class is a concept developed by Richard Florida to describe, "creative individuals whose economic function is to create new ideas, technology and/or creative content." In this research, world city of ‘transfer’ refers to world cities ranked by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) that are of high middle (Alpha) to lower ranking and that become ‘temporary stops’ for the migrating creative classes, whose ultimate destinations are the Alpha+ and Alpha++ world cities. This research namely asks: (1) From the perspective of creative migrants from developing countries, what causes them to leave world ‘transfer’ cities, such as Seoul, and not settle there long term? and (2) What kind of policies can be applied to help creative migrants stay in these cities permanently? Social integration policies should be implemented when trying to further develop a world city’s quality of place. Qualitative research methods such as in-depth interviews with Latin American creative people were employed to demonstrate Seoul’s need for social integration policies aimed at retaining global talent and not just attracting it.

Bridging Theory on Global Corporate Hierarchy and City Diplomacy: The Case of China

This study tests the relationship between the hierarchical position of cities in the global economy and a typology of cultural, economic, political, and social external relations, namely city diplomacy. We conduct this test on a sample of 46 Chinese cities, seeking to bridge otherwise separate existing theories on the structure of the world city hierarchy and varied dimensions of city diplomacy. Contrary to expectations, we find that the aggregate of the typology of city diplomacy, rather than only the economic dimension, is most closely associated with position in the world city hierarchy. This tentatively suggests that the collective effect of internationally-oriented cultural, economic, political and social activities in Chinese cities reflect the global structure of the highest levels of globalized urban wealth.

A világgazdaság irányító és ellenőrző központjai 2012-ben

Napjainkban a városokkal foglalkozó társadalomtudományi kutatások tekintélyes része fókuszál azokra a városokra, amelyek a globális gazdaságban meghatározó irányító és ellenőrző funkciókkal rendelkeznek. Az 1980-as évek közepétől ezekben a kutatásokban sokszor világvárosokként vagy globális városokként azonosítják a gazdaságirányítás csomópontjait (John Friedmann és Saskia Sassen hatására), elsősorban a „fejlett termelést segítő szolgáltatások” mennyiségi koncentrációja alapján. A tanulmányban visszatérek a világvárosok meghatározásának 1960/1970-es évekre jellemző, Peter Hall nevével fémjelzett irányzatához, és a multinacionális/transznacionális vállalatok, regionális nagyvállalatok, bankok és egyéb pénzpiaci szervezetek koncentrációja alapján definiálom a világgazdaság vezető csomópontjait. Az elemzésben a Forbes „The Global 2000” rangsorát, vagyis a világ 2000 legnagyobb tőzsdei cégét és azok főbb adatait (forgalom, piaci érték, profit, eszközállomány) tartalmazó adatbázist dolgozom fel. A globális irányító és ellenőrző központok rangsorát egy komplex mutató, az irányítás és ellenőrzés index segítségével vizsgálom meg. Alapvető célom egyrészt azt bemutatni, hogy 2012-ben mely városok voltak a világgazdaság irányító és ellenőrző központjai, másrészt azt megvizsgálni, hogy a feltörekvő gazdaságok, különösen a BRIC-országok vezető városai milyen viszonyban állnak a fejlett országok tradicionális gazdaságirányító központjaival.

Exploring the co-evolution of the geographies of air transport aviation and corporate networks

In this paper we aim to contribute to the literature on the empirical parallels between urban hierarchies and the transport networks supporting and/or reflecting these hierarchies. We adopt a stochastic actor-based modeling framework to analyze the co-evolution of the world city hierarchy and global air passenger networks between 2000 and 2010/2011. The data are drawn from an inventory of the location strategies of globalized service firms across world cities and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Major findings include (1) exogenous effects, such as the impact of economic development and regionality; (2) endogenous micro-level effects producing macro-level patterns, such as preferential attachment processes; and (3) the two-way impact of both networks. (i.e., cities that are well connected in the aviation network tend to attract more major offices of globalized service firms, while the co-presence of major offices of globalized service firms in cities in turn stimulates the development of aviation connections between them).

Urban hierarchy of innovation capability and inter-city linkages of knowledge in post-reform China

The 2000s has witnessed increasing interests in cities’ role of innovation in the era of knowledge-based economy. Compared with substantial empirical analysis on the world city hierarchy of innovation, this paper attempts to examine the national urban hierarchy of innovation capability in China, in terms of ranking systems, spatial pattern and inter-city linkages of knowledge during the post-reform period since the late 1970s. Based on quantitative analysis such as principal component factor analysis and clustering analysis, this paper identifies the five-tier hierarchy of innovation, which is headed by Beijing and Shanghai, followed by the capital cities of each province and regional centre cities. The development of China’s urban hierarchy of innovation capability has been driven by such factors as the scale of innovation, scientific scale, innovation potential and innovation environment. The paper further investigates the inter-city linkages of knowledge measured by the number of co-authored papers among the cities. Beijing is positioned in the central position of the knowledge diffusion and knowledge cooperation innovation. More knowledge diffusion among high level cities has occurred than that among the low level cities as well as between the low level cities and high level cities, and provincial capital cities and the regional central cities.

JERUSALEM: A TALE OF A CITY

<p>World class cities are few and far between, sometimes referred to as ‘global cities’ or simply ‘world cities’. There are no more than a dozen metropolitan areas in the world that can claim this kind of global status. London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo sit at the top of this world city hierarchy. They have enormous concentrations of economic, political, and cultural clout – measured by such things as the number of corporate headquarters, the size of their stock exchanges, the presence of national and international political bodies, and their role in music, fashion, and other cultural activities. What would it take to make a city claimed by two nations and central to three religions “merely” a city, a place of difference and diversity in which contending ideas and citizenries can co-exist in benign yet creative ways? The intractable conflicts in the Middle East and the cycle of violence among Israelis and Palestinians are deeply embedded in historical struggles over national sovereignty and the right to territory. For this reason, questions about whose state will prevail in what physical location have defined the terms of conflict and negotiation. This also has meant that most proposed solutions to “the Middle East problem” have revolved around competing claims of nation-states, their rights to existence, and their physical and juridically-sanctioned relationships to each other. While true generally, this framing of the problem has been especially dominant in the case of Jerusalem, a city that is geographically and historically an overlay of spaces and artifacts that carry deep meaning for competing peoples and nations. The current struggles of Palestinians and Israelis to each claim this hallowed ground as their capital city has added yet another layer of complexity, conflict, and political division, all of which is reflected in the competing/dual nomenclature Al-Quds/Jerusalem used to refer to the city –as well as the violence and contestation that continues to accelerate unabated.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>K</strong><strong>e</strong><strong>y</strong><strong>w</strong><strong>o</strong><strong>r</strong><strong>d</strong><strong>s</strong>: two nations, three religions, Jerusalem</p>

Testing a Global City Hypothesis: An Assessment of Polarization across US Cities

Social polarization is perhaps most evident within the world's large cities where we can easily observe stark contrasts between wealth and poverty. A “world city” theoretical perspective has emerged that associates large cities’ importance in a global network of cities to the degree of internal polarization within these cities. The research reported here locates 57 large US cities within this world city hierarchy and then empirically examines the hypothesized positive association between global centrality and social polarization using a multivariate, cross–city analysis. The findings are mixed, with some evidence that global centrality increases income polarization, but only in the context of higher levels of immigration. There is no evidence that a city's centrality affects occupational polarization. We conclude by suggesting implications for the world city literature and future research.

Trajectories of North—South City Inter-relations: Johannesburg and Cape Town, 1994—2007

Examining networks of cities in the world rather than ‘world cityness’, the study offers a ‘Southern’ perspective on world city research. It includes places not ordinarily considered. Fourteen years of sample data on cross-border, intercity airline traffic are used as time-series relational information. The data express links between two of South Africa’s principal cities and cities elsewhere in Africa and beyond. The analysis shows persistent and intensifying links, but also sporadic and unstable intercity relations. A gathering concentration on proximate city pairs is apparent. The research also reveals that urban areas commonly regarded as topping the world city hierarchy mix with smaller and less well-known African places in the rankings of connections with Johannesburg and Cape Town. The complex intercity links which constitute urban significance on the world map are not reducible to a subordinate nesting of Third World city ties in a dominant First World matrix.

Integrating world cities into production networks: the case of port cities

AbstractIn this article we analyse the location patterns of firms that provide specialized advanced producer services (APS) to international commodity chains that move through seaports. Such activities can take place in world cities or in port cities. The analysis of APS location patterns in port cities provides a good opportunity to integrate the study of world cities into the framework of Global Production Networks. Based upon our empirical findings, we conclude that while port‐related APS activities predominantly follow the world city hierarchy, a number of port cities stand out because they act as nodes in global commodity flows and as centres of advanced services related to shipping and port activities. Based on these empirical findings we address future avenues of research.

Regionality in the world city network

Recent research on measuring world city network formation has shown a mixture of hierarchical and regional tendencies. Using specially created data, the relative importance of these tendencies, and different regional sets of world cities, are evaluated using a discriminant analysis research model. It is found that regionality is at least as important as hierarchy amongst world cities. This contradicts the world city literature where the concept of a “world city hierarchy” dominates and regional patterning of world cities is relatively neglected. As well as suggesting a reorientation in world cities research, these findings have wider implications for globalisation in general. The latter is not, and I argue cannot, produce a homogeneous global space, which is what a single global hierarchy implies. Rather, it is always the case that globalisation processes simultaneously create more than one large scale of social activity.

The Rank-Size Rule and Fractal Hierarchies of Cities: Mathematical Models and Empirical Analyses

This paper contributes to the demonstration that the self-similar city hierarchies with cascade structure can be modeled with a pair of scaling laws reflecting the recursive process of urban systems. First we transform the Beckmann's model on city hierarchies and generalize Davis's 2 n -rule to an rn-rule on the size – number relationship of cities ( r > 1), and then reduce both Beckmann's and Davis's models to a pair of scaling laws taking the form of exponentials. Then we derive an exact three-parameter Zipf-type model from the scaling laws to revise the commonly used two-parameter Zipf model. By doing so, we reveal the fractal essence of central place hierarchies and link the rank-size rule to central place model logically. The new mathematical frameworks are applied to the class counts of the 1950–70 world city hierarchy presented by Davis in 1978, and several alternative approaches are illustrated to estimate the fractal dimension.

Hierarchical tendencies amongst world cities: a global research proposal

This is a plea for global-scale analyses of social change with particular reference to the study of the hypothesis that there is a world city hierarchy. Data deficiencies (state-centrism and attribute bias) and theoretical limitations in conceptualizing how a world city hierarchy might develop are highlighted and suggestions for overcoming these problems are presented. Empirically, this involves a pilot study of US world cities using geographical content analysis of the business section of city newspapers to explore inter-city relations. Theoretically, it is proposed that the static conception of hierarchy be replaced by the more modest idea of hierarchical tendencies within a broader space-time context. Combining these empirical and theoretical proposals, a research programme for a global study is outlined and readers are invited to consider how it might be implemented.