This change in thinking is largely a product of a focus on globalisation and its flows - of money, information, knowledge, goods, people, images, cultural practices etc – which are seen to bring cities together into a world city network. For example, recently Peter Hall (with Pfeiffer) has written about “A networked urban world” (2000), John Friedmann (2002) has written about “Intercity networks in a globalizing era”, Saskia Sassen (2002) has edited a book entitled Global Networks - Linked Cities, and Peter Taylor has recently published a book on a World City Network (2004). In urban geography and urban studies in general the idea that cities (and to a lesser extent other human settlements) are linked together has become something of a new interest. However, it is not simply what a city contains that is important, rather it is the joining-up of cities through trans-national networks and flows of capital, people, information, practices and economic activity which is increasingly fundamental to the changing geography of the world. The cities that possess these attributes are called global cities because they dominate the world economy and set the trends for other cities around our planet. This is because they contain, amongst other things: international stock exchanges, the headquarters of multinational corporations, trans-national institutions, and the primary offices of global advanced producer service firms in sectors such as accountancy, advertising, banking, insurance, and law. The global cities of London, New York, Tokyo, Paris and Frankfurt 2 are perhaps the most important cities for the world-economy.
The consequences of globalisation for transforming our world’s cultures, economies, societies, environments, and politics are increasingly important and it is the increasing number of world-oriented cities that are in many ways both the producers of, and the foci for, the global trends which help shape the lives of much of the world’s population. One of the key themes of the 21 st century will continue to be globalisation 1.
“The new millennium marks yet another urban milestone: not only is this the first urban century, it is the first century in which the world’s city dwellers will form part of a single networked globe” Please refer to the published version when quoting the paper.
This Research Bulletin has been published in Geography, 90 (2), (2005), 172-176.
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