World City Network: A Global Urban Analysis

Globalization describes a situation in which important social relations are becoming worldwide, transcending national boundaries. But how are these transnational flows and connections organized if not through countries? The most common answer to this question considers cities to be the organizational ‘hubs’ of globalization. World City Network interprets cities as global service centres. With the advent of multinational corporations, the traditional urban service function has ‘gone global’. In order to provide services to globalizing corporate clients, the offices of major financial and business service firms across the world have formed a network. It is the myriad of flows between office towers in different metropolitan centres that has produced the world city network. Through an analysis of the intra-company flows of 100 leading global service firms across 315 cities, this book assesses cities in terms of their overall network connectivity, their connectivity by service sector, and their connectivity by world region. Peter Taylor’s book provides the first comprehensive and systematic description and analysis of the world city network as the ‘skeleton’ upon which contemporary globalization has been built. The analyses challenge the traditional view of the world as a ‘mosaic map’ of political boundaries.