Mounting interest in the global system of cities has led many scholars to portray large, world-class cities as control points in the global economy. From this position, they govern global banking, finance and international corporate relations with the assistance of advanced business services and telecommunications. While large cities have taken on many global functions, recent research has cast them only as outposts in the global economy and pays little attention to their role in regional and national economies. This paper explores the role of five large US cities in regional and national economies. Using primary trade data for five high-order business services, we identify the extent to which these large cities trade with other large cities of the US urban system, smaller-sized cities, and test statistically the effect that firm attributes and physical characteristics of the city system have on shaping the areal extent of large city interaction (trade). The results indicate that: trade is consistently biased towards other large cities; the size of origin cities is associated with the size of destination cities; and, distance more so than destination city size plays the dominant role in shaping large city patterns of trade.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Abu-Lughod, J. (1995) Comparing Chicago, New York and Los Angeles: testing some world cities hypotheses, in: P. KNOx and P. Taylor (Eds) World Cities in a World System, pp. 171-191. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2.
Bennett, R. and Graham, D. (1998) Explaining size differentiation of business service centres, UrbanStudies, 35, pp. 1457-1480.
3.
Camagni, R. and Salone, C. (1993) Network urban structures in northern Italy: elements for a theoretical framework, UrbanStudies, 30, pp. 1053-1064.
4.
Drennan, M. (1992) Gateway cities: the metropolitan sources of US producer services exports, UrbanStudies, 29, pp. 217-235.
5.
Ellison, G. and Glaeser, E. (1997) Geographic concentration in the U.S. manufacturing industries: a dartboard approach, Journal of Political Economy , 105, pp. 889-927.
6.
Esparza, A. and Krmenec, A. (1994) Producer services trade in city systems: evidence from Chicago, Urban Studies, 31, pp. 29-46.
7.
Esparza, A. and Krmenec, A. (1996a) The spatial extent of producer service markets: hierarchical models of interaction revisited, Papers in Regional Science, 73, pp. 375-395.
8.
Esparza, A. and Krmenec, A. (1996b) The spatial markets of cities organized in a hierarchical system, The Professional Geographer, 48, pp. 367-378.
9.
Fainstein, S. and Harloe, M. (1992) Introduction: London and New York in the contemporary world, in: S. Fainstein, I. Gordon and M. Harloe (Eds) Divided Cities, pp. 1-28. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
10.
Friedmann, J. (1986) The world city hypothesis, Development and Change, 6, pp. 69-83.
11.
Friedmann, J. (1995) Where we stand; a decade of world city research , in: P. Knox and P. Taylor (Eds) World Cities in a World System , pp. 21-47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
12.
Gottman, J. (1970) Urban centrality and the interweaving of quaternary activities, Ekistics, 29, pp. 322-331.
13.
Knox, P. (1995) Introduction: world city hypotheses and contexts , in: P. Knox and P. Taylor (Eds) World Cities in a World System , pp. 3-20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
14.
Knox, P. (1996) Globalization and urban change, Urban Geography, 17, pp. 115-117.
15.
Krmenec, A. and Esparza, A. (1993) Modeling interaction in a system of markets, Geographical Analysis, 25, pp. 354-368.
16.
Krmenec, A. and Esparza, A. (1999a) City systems and industrial market structure, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, pp. 267-289.
17.
Krmenec, A. and Esparza A. (1999b) Entrepreneurship and extraregional trade in the producer services, Growth and Change30, pp. 216-236.
18.
Newman, P. and Thornley, A. (1996) Urban Planning in Europe. London: Routledge.
19.
Noyelle, T. and Stanback, T. (1984) The Economic Transformation of American Cities . Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld .
20.
Ó Huallachain, B. (1989) Agglomeration of services in American metropolitan areas, Growth and Change, 20, pp. 34-49.
21.
Pumain, D. (1998) Urban research and complexity, in: C. Bertuglia, G. Bianchi , A. Mela (Eds) The City and its Sciences, pp. 323-361. Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag.
22.
Sassen, S. (1991) The Global City. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
23.
Simon, J. and Love, D. (1990) City size, prices and efficiency for individual goods and services, Annals of Regional Science, 24, pp. 163— 175.
24.
Sutcliffe, A. (1993) The giant city as a historical phenomenon, in: T. Baker and A Sutcliffe (Eds) Megalopolis: The Giant City in History , pp. 1-14. New York: St Martin's Press.
25.
United States Small Business Administration ( 1998) Office of Advocacy, Firm Size Data, Small Business Data, Statistics of U.S. Businesses (available at: http:www.sba.gov/ADVO/stats/us8895.html;http://www.sba.gov/ADVO/stats/us_ind95.html;http://www.sba.gov/ADVO/stats/msa95.html).
26.
White, J. (1998) Old wine, cracked bottle?Tokyo , Paris, and the global city hypothesis, Urban Affairs Review, 33, pp. 451-477.
