World City Network Research Articles

Spatial hierarchy and emerging typologies inside world city network

Abstract The first part of the paper provides a new approach to measuring a spatial structure of world city network (WCN). Based upon the results of media- popular ‘global city rankings’ produced by several international think tanks, our calculation allowed to reveal global urban hierarchy and identify several subnetworks inside of world cities. The second part of the paper devotes to recent discussions on nature of globalization and urban macrosystems, bearing in mind ranking results. It is shown that a typological approach can provide more insights to a role of city as part of WCN from functional and relationships prospective.

Spatialization of user-generated content to uncover the multirelational world city network

In this paper we tackle a fundamental and long-time challenge in urban geography, to uncover a functionally differentiated global city network. To this day, the empirical investigation of a global multifunctional city network remains a challenge given the scarcity of appropriate relational and multifunctional data sources. To overcome this research gap, we present an interdisciplinary network modelling approach that integrates methods from geographic information science with social network analysis, including automated semantic analyses.We apply our modelling framework to a globally available, user-generated database (ie, Wikipedia), still underutilized in urban geography and planning research. The proposed visual analytical investigation of the multifunctional world city network also includes a systematic evaluation to assess the robustness of the proposed approach, and the adequacy of crowd-sourced databases for scientific uses. By example, we discuss economical and political relations of a latent multifunctional global city network which we uncovered with our data-driven approach. Our results not only empirically replicate previously well-established world city network theory, but also generate new research questions about multiple functions of cities, as hypothesized in world city network research. Furthermore, we showcase the potential of coupling text-based user-generated data analysis with geovisual analytics for scientific investigations in urban studies.

Mapping cost distance using air traffic data

ABSTRACTRecent trends in transport and communication infrastructures have had a profound impact on the spatial organization of the world city network, which have long been of interest to geographers. Considering the former issue, our study is based on previous works on air transport geography and world city network studies. We introduce a new method to map the gap between geographical distance and cost distance by using air traffic data. In this paper, we created an international database for a large number of world cities and developed a way to map cost distance using conventional and Geographic Information System-based mapping techniques. The main result of this work is a set of maps showing the cost distances of world cities, which can be used as a significant source of information by world city network analysis.

Powering the world city system: energy industry networks and interurban connectivity

The authors explore energy as an alternative but important landscape of globalisation, where spatial geometries of global power and control are defined by particular historic and contemporary geopolitical and territorial forces. From the application of a social network analysis to energy corporate locations, it is argued that network geographic, relational, and hierarchical perspectives are all critical in enhancing understandings of the world city network. Some similarities with advanced producer services networks are noted, as well as important differences which are shaped by a combination of resource production and consumption, and geopolitical and economic power relations. The outcome is a dynamic set of interlocking local, regional, and global city globalisations.

Strategic globalizing centers and sub-network geometries: A social network analysis of multi-scalar energy networks

Over the past three decades, a multitude of studies have examined the relational properties of corporate networks as a proxy for analyzing interurban hierarchies and structures. While this has been important in illuminating the nature of global connectivity, a significant conceptual lacuna exists in understanding how a multi-scalar analysis of interurban networks informs a more complete understanding of the geographies of globalization, and how cities within these networks act as regional globalizing centers. Building upon the theoretical and methodological foundations of ‘world city network’ (WCN) research, this paper investigates the corporate networks of the energy industry as a historic driver of globalization using social network analysis from an Australia geographical perspective. Globally and nationally scaled energy networks derived from the Platts and Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) corporate lists are used to explore the convergence of nationally and globally articulated networks, and identify cities instrumental in the globalization of the national industry sub-networks. These are strategic ‘globalizing centers’ which, in contradistinction to ‘global cities’ or ‘world cities’ as broad classifications, play nuanced roles in anointing industry-specific circuits of capital and information. The analysis of two complementary yet distinct networks provides theoretical insight into how scale plays an integral role in defining/articulating interurban relations.

Cutting the Gordian knot of visualizing dense spatial networks: the case of the world city network, 2013

Networks have become ubiquitous in the analysis of socioeconomic patterns. Importantly, most of these networks have an inherent geographical dimension, and are therefore a relevant object for geographical research and related thinking on cartographic mapping and visualization. The visualization of spatial networks is, however, still in its infancy. In this paper, we present and discuss some of the typical issues associated with the visualization of spatial networks, as well as the emerging possibilities to tackle these issues. In particular, we focus on a state-of-the-art graph layout algorithm that uses edge bundling on network layers in conventional maps. We use the example of the geographies of the world city network in 2013 as researched by the Globalization and World Cities network (GaWC).

Are world cities also world immigrant cities? An international, cross-city analysis of global centrality and immigration

Systematic research on world cities neglects immigration, despite its significance to world city formation. In this article, we test a foundational, but untested, premise of world cities research: that global centrality in the world urban system is associated with larger, more diverse immigrant populations. Using an international sample of cities, we conduct multivariate regressions of Benton-Short et al.’s Urban Immigrant Index on the Globalization and World City Network measure of advanced producer service firm centrality and two other measures of global urban centrality, controlling for competing explanations of international migration. Our findings reveal that cities that are more central to the network of advanced producer service firms have larger, more diverse immigrant populations than less-central cities. World cities are thus not only key sites for corporate control of the world economy, but they are also central in international flows of immigrant labor, as Sassen hypothesized nearly 30 years ago.

Applying a World-City Network Approach to Globalizing Higher Education: Conceptualization, Data Collection and the Lists of World Cities

Both the commercial and education sectors experience an increase in inter-city exchanges in the forms of goods, capital, commands, people and information/knowledge under globalization. The quantification of flows and structural relations among cities in globalizing education are under-researched compared to the well-established world/global cities literature emphasizing economic linkages. In this paper, the city’s global education networks are examined through the Globalizing Education Index system, which consists of place power and network power indicators. The study finds that many more cities worldwide participate in global networks, suggesting decentralized knowledge flows under globalization. Meanwhile, concentration is attested by the presence of traditional education powers at the top of city hierarchy.

Globalisation of Islamic Financial Services and World City Networks

Islamic Financial Services (IFSs) sector is rapidly developing in the Middle East cities as well as growing in the South East Asian cities like Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta. Growth rate of this sector is notably significantly in the mainstream International Financial Centres (IFCs) such as London and New York. Currently these cities are said to be the ‘command and control’ centres of the global economy because they harbour producer's services firms which manage increasingly complex production networks. This paper draws an analysis of rapidly expanding IFSs sector through a study of how cities are being connected through the intra-firm networks which provide Shari‘ah-compliant financial services. It is argued that a focus on the globalisation of Islamic financial services (IFS) sector may provide an alternative to hegemonic imaginations of world city-formation through its focuses on globalising economic process. The relevance of such analysis is discussed against the conceptual backdrop of the world city network literature. Based on information on the location strategies of 27 leading Islamic financial services (IFS) firms in 47 cities across the world, this study employed the methodology on ‘globalisation and world city network’ (GaWC). The results show that globalisation within the Muslim world follows a unique urban trajectory, thereby creating a network of powerful cities. The results also show that Middle East is at the apex of the IFSs sector and Manama is identified the hub of the IFS sector which other major cities such as Amman, Dubai, Doha, Jakarta, Jeddah, Karachi, Kuala Lumpur, Kuwait, Riyadh and Istanbul etc. are also primary nodes in the city network. Outside the Muslim world, London is increasingly profiling itself as a global Islamic financial service (IFS) hub.

Extensive and Intensive Globalizations: Explicating the Low Connectivity Puzzle of U.S. Cities Using a City-Dyad Analysis

ABSTRACT:This article reports an experiment in world city network analysis focusing on city-dyads. Results are derived from an unusual principal components analysis of 27,966 city-dyads across 5 advanced producer service sectors. A 2-component solution is found that identifies different forms of globalization: extensive and intensive. The latter is characterized by very high component scores and describes the more important city-dyads focused upon London-New York (NYLON). The extensive globalization component heavily features London and New York but with each linked to less important cities. U.S. cities score relatively high on the intensive globalization component and we use this finding to explain the low connectivities of U.S. cities in previous studies of the world city network. The two components are tentatively interpreted in world-systems terms: intensive globalization is the process of core-making through city-dyads; extensive globalization is the process of linking core with non-core through city-dyads.

Tales of two cities: political capitals and economic centres in the world city network.

The majority of major cities in the world city network are capital cities. Between primacy and political specialization there are examples of countries where the capital city and a second city remain as major rival cities in contemporary globalization. In this paper we focus upon situations where the capital city is less important in global economic capacity: Rome and Milan, Berlin and Frankfurt, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, Delhi and Mumbai, Islamabad and Karachi.
 This is an exercise in double comparisons: between cities in each pairing and between the pairings. Despite the massive differences – economic, cultural and political – amongst our chosen pairs of cities we have found communalities relating to the specific circumstance we are investigating. First, there is some evidence that economic centres are more global and less local than their capital cities. Second, more particularly, we have shown that in terms of global economic connections there is a very consistent pattern: economic centres have a much more coherent and telling integration into the world city network.

Validity in World City Network Measurements

AbstractIn the literature on world city networks, there has been a proliferation of both theories and measurement methodologies, but relatively little attention to the linkage between theory and measurement. In this paper, I review the interlocking world city network model (IWCNM) and three additional bipartite projection‐based measures of the world city network, considering which theoretical conception of the ‘world city network’ construct each can validly measure. I introduce a new Stata command, onemode, to compute these four measures, and use them to produce world city networks from three publicly available datasets on advanced producer services, international organisations, and engineering and architecture firms. The results suggest that each projection‐based measure is potentially valid, but only for a corresponding understanding of the world city network. Researchers are encouraged to clearly define what they mean when invoking the phrase ‘the world city network,’ and only then selecting a measurement that is valid.

World City Network Research at a Theoretical Impasse: On the Need toRe‐Establish Qualitative Approaches to Understanding Agency in World City Networks

AbstractFrom the late 1990s, the establishment of a new relational ‘turn’ in the study of world city connectedness in globalisation has run parallel to the wider relational turn occurring in economic geography. Early work, built firmly upon a qualitative approach to the collection and analyses of new intercity datasets, considered cities as being constituted by their relations with other cities. Subsequent research, however, would take a strong quantitative turn, best demonstrated through the articulation of the inter‐locking world city network (ILWCN) ‘model’ for measuring relations between cities. In this paper, we develop a critique of research based around theILWCNmodel, arguing that this ‘top down’ quantitative approach has now reached a theoretical impasse. To address this impasse, we argue for a move away from structural approaches in which the firm is the main unit of analysis, towards qualitative approaches in which individual agency and practice are afforded greater importance.

Cities As Networks within Networks of Cities: The Evolution of the City/Firm‐Duality in the World City Network, 2000–2010

AbstractWe explore the temporal evolution of cities and firms (i.e. both modes) in a two‐mode intercity corporate network formed by 50 leading advanced producer service firms across 154 cities for the years 2000 and 2010. Drawing upon one‐mode network projection and three network centralities, we assess the shifting positions of individual cities and firms in the one‐mode intercity and interfirm networks. Major findings include: (1) the intercity network is more stable and hierarchical than the interfirm network; (2) brokerage functions, as captured by betweenness centrality, remain highly uneven for both cities and firms. For example, New York and London's distinct positions as the world's leading producer service centres remain intact; and (3) regional and sectoral tendencies are evident in terms of growth rates of centralities.

Network or Hierarchical Relations? A Plea for Redirecting Attention to the Control Functions of Global Cities

AbstractThe paper discusses in a personal appreciation of the literature whether the ‘interlocking world city network model’ (IWCNM) has contributed to overcoming the evidential crisis of world or global city research. After a brief summary of the main arguments made by John Friedmann and Saskia Sassen, the paper deduces methodological implications that follow from their economic‐geographical conceptualisation of global cities. In the third and fourth sections of the paper I recapitulate the rationale(s) given by Peter Taylor for the IWCNM and assess the model's contribution to empirically corroborating the global city concept. The paper's main claim is that the IWCNM bypasses the theoretical core of the global city paradigm, for which reason an evidential crisis continues to undermine the strength of the global city argument. Accordingly, in the last section of the paper a research strategy is proposed that is apt to take global city studies a step forward.

Cities in Contemporary Capitalism

AbstractThis article outlines essential concepts of the political economy approach of urban research and offers critical modifications and clarifications to some of its contentions concerning the functioning of cities as ‘strategic places’ of capital accumulation. The interrelations between contemporary capitalism and urban economic development are discussed at the scale of a transnationally extended urban system. Based on the general context of the global economic downturn, I focus on the role of cities in distinct circuits of capital, the switching of capital flows within the urban system and the different functional roles of cities within the world city network that interconnects cities both in the global North and South. I call into question the established focus of urban economic research on the role of cities as financial and service centres, arguing that cities might redirect their economic development trajectories towards ‘real economy’ activities, in contrast to relying on the disastrous development model of finance‐dominated capitalism.

An Alternative Approach to the Calculation and Analysis of Connectivity in the World City Network

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the empirical ‘world city network’ (WCN) literature by proposing an analytical framework that considers the significance of the positions of cities in the urban networks created by multinational corporations. To this end, we introduce an approach in which network centrality measures are interpreted against a randomized baseline model that retains the network's original degree distribution. Our framework is applied to Taylor's (2001 Geographical Analysis 33 181–194) specification of world cities being ‘interlocked’ through the office networks of globalized service firms. We thereby develop a new analytical take on Taylor's specification by using a primary-linkage algorithm that produces a one-mode directed graph based on the initial two-mode city and firm network data. We then randomize the resultant empirical network with a bootstrapping simulation approach, and compare the simulated parameters of this null model with our empirical network parameter, that is, betweenness centrality. We show the potential and limitations of our framework by discussing the position of cities such as Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, Almaty, and Karachi, which seem to hold more strategic and valuable positions than is suggested in Taylor's analyses. We discuss the wider significance of our approach by showing that the analytical strategy of interpreting measures against a randomized baseline model can also be adopted in other WCN approaches, including those using other data sources and network-related measures.

Advanced Producer Service Firms as Strategic Networks, Global Cities as Strategic Places

Sassen’s identification of global cities as “strategic places” is explored through world city network analysis. This involves searching out advanced producer service (APS) firms that constitute “strategic networks,” from whose activities strategic places can be defined. Twenty-five out of 175 APS firms are found to be strategic, and from their office networks, 45 cities out of 526 are designated as strategic places. A measure of “strategicness” of cities is devised, and individual findings from this are discussed by drawing on existing literature about how APS firms use specific cities. A key finding shows that New York and London have different levels of strategicness, and this is related to the former’s innovation prowess and the latter’s role in global consumption of services. Other cases of strategicness discussed in terms of the balance between production and consumption of APSs are Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai; Palo Alto; Mexico City; Johannesburg; and Dubai and Frankfurt.

Mapping the evolution of hierarchical and regional tendencies in the world city network, 2000–2010

This paper visualizes the evolution of the dominant hierarchical and regional patterns in the world city network, drawing upon an analytical framework integrating categorical correlation, hierarchical clustering, and alluvial diagrams. Our analysis confirms the continued interweaving of hierarchical and regional patterns in the world city network as measured by cities’ similarities in the presence of globalized service firms, but equally highlights some of the key changes that have occurred between 2000 and 2010 such as the rise of the BRIC cities, Dubai’s leading positions in the Arab Gulf, and the stratification of US cities.

Exploring the joint dynamics of intercity internet and corporate networks: a stochastic actor‐based modelling approach

AbstractIn this article, I show one possible solution to synthesis dynamics in multiple intercity networks. I adopt a stochastic actor‐based modelling approach to explore the co‐evolution of an intercity corporate network of 57 globalized advanced producer service firms across 93 cities, and another intercity internet network between these 93 cities, for the period 2004–2010. Stochastic actor‐based models (SABMs) help to connect interactions among cities and firms on the local scale with empirically observed networks on the global scale. My analysis accounts for the co‐evolution/interdependence among multiple world city networks (WCNs) and associated network changes in individual WCNs with exogenous city‐related covariates and endogenous local network structures.