World city network integration in the Eurasian realm

A team of authors from the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) research network explores the main empirical features of the global economic integration of Eurasia through an analysis of the (shifting) position of that macroregion's key cities. More specifically, they examine the gateway roles played by key cities in four major subregions-China, the former Eastern Bloc (FEB, i.e., Central and Eastern Europe), former Soviet Union (FSU), and India-in the channeling of transnational flows of capital, goods, knowledge, and people in 2000-2008, focusing on the globalization of firms in the financial and business service sectors. Although cities in the four subregions share a common recent history of transition from closed and state-centered to open and market-based economies, the study reveals the persistence of distinctive geographical idiosyncrasies in their connections across the globe

World city networks and global commodity chains : towards a world-systems' integration

There are two literatures that explicitly describe the spaces of flows that constitute contemporary globalization - World City Network analysis and Global Commodity Chain analysis. We explore the possibilities of their integration by returning to their common origins in world-systems analysis. Each model is described and critiqued and it is argued that each can be used to address some of the other's limitations. This is illustrated through world city process additions to understanding the coffee commodity chain and commodity chain additions to understanding Mexico City and Santiago's positioning in the World City Network. This complementarity is just a first step towards a more complete integration; the conclusion describes the next steps towards just such a research agenda

Pathways of change : shifting connectivities in the world city network, 2000-08

This is an empirical paper that measures and interprets changes in intercity relations at the global scale in the period 2000-08. It draws on the network model devised by the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) research group to measure global connectivities for 132 cities across the world in 2000 and 2008. The measurements for both years are adjusted so that a coherent set of services/cities is used. A range of statistical techniques is used to explore these changes at the city level and the regional scale. The most notable changes are: the general rise of connectivity in the world city network; the loss of global connectivity of US and sub-Saharan African cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami in particular); and, the gain in global connectivity of south Asian, Chinese and eastern European cities (Shanghai, Beijing and Moscow in particular)

Modelling Locational Decision Making of Firms Using Multidimensional Fuzzy Decision Tables: An Illustration

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/60302/1/WitloxEdited.PD

Filling some black holes: modeling the connection between urbanization, infrastructure, and global service intensity

This empirical article combines insights from previous research on the level of knowledge-intensive service in metropolitan areas with the aim to develop an understanding of the spatial structure of the global service economy. We use a stepwise regression model with the Globalization and World Cities research network's measure of globalized service provisioning as the dependent variable and a range of variables focusing on population, infrastructure, urban primacy, and national regulation as independent variables. The discussion of the results focuses on model parameters as well as the meaning of outliers and is used to explore some avenues for future research

The changing geography of globalized service provision, 2000-2008

This empirical paper maps changes in the global geography of advanced producer service provision across major cities in the 2000-2008 period. The analyses are based on a systematic assessment of geographical shifts in the office networks of leading firms in finance, management consultancy, accountancy, advertising and law, using measures of inter-city connectivity. It has been previously shown that there has been a general shift of these services from 'West to East'. In this paper, variations in the degree and pattern of this global shift among the different sectors are described and interpreted. The results point to an inherent complexity in economic globalization that is sometimes overlooked in general descriptions of the meta-process