The term `global city' bestows an image of an urban place that is contemporary, international, multicultural, `wired', cosmopolitan, polarising and having geographically boundless power. Nevertheless, the literature fails to produce a common identity for setting the global city apart empirically and in analysing policy issues related to it. This paper argues and tests the proposition that the global city is better described and analysed from a holistic construct of competing perspectives. To do this, it: identifies seven global city dimensions; subjects the dimensions to a principal components analysis; and, uses the resulting composite factor to drive a K-means cluster analysis to differentiate 53 US urbanised areas. The results identify significant clusters that set apart global cities and provide a broadened base for cross-disciplinary comparative urban research.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Abrahamson, M. (2004) Global Cities. New York: Oxford University Press.
2.
Abu-Lughod, J.L. (1999) New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America's Global Cities. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
3.
Alderson, A.S. and Beckfield, J. (2004) Power and position in the world city system, American Journal of Sociology, 109, pp. 811—851.
4.
Alderson, A.S. and Beckfield, J. (2007) Globalization and the world city system, in: P. Taylor, B. Derudder, P. Saey and F. Witlox (Eds) Cities in Globalisation, pp. 21—36. London: Routledge.
5.
Altshuler, A. and Luberoff, D. (2003) Mega-projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
6.
Beauregard, R.A. (1995) Theorizing the global-city connection, in: P. L. Knox and P. J. Taylor (Eds) World Cities in a World-system, pp. 232—248. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
7.
Beaverstock, J.V. (2004) Managing across borders: knowledge management and expatriation in professional service legal firms, Journal of Economic Geography, 4(2), pp. 157—179.
8.
Beaverstock, J.V., Taylor, P.J. and Smith, R.G. (1999) A roster of world cities, Cities , 16, pp. 445—458.
9.
Bishop, B. (2000) The changing face of American politics, Austin 360 News (www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/today/news_4.html ).
10.
Boschken, H.L. (1988) Strategic Design and Organizational Change: Pacific Coast Seaports in Transition. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
11.
Boschken, H.L. (1998) Global shift in container traffic, Public Works Management andPolicy, 2, pp. 368—372.
12.
Boschken, H.L. (2002) Social Class, Politics and Urban Markets: The Makings of Bias in Policy Outcomes. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
13.
Boschken, H.L. (2003) Global cities, systemic power and upper-middle-class influence, Urban Affairs Review, 38, pp. 808—830.
14.
Brint, S. (2001) Professionals and the `knowledge economy': rethinking the theory of postindustrial society, Current Sociology, 49(4), pp. 101—132.
15.
Castells, M. (1989) The Informational City. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.
16.
Castells, M. (1996) The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell.
17.
Clark, T.N. (2001) Amenities drive urban growth. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association , San Francisco, August.
18.
Clark, T.N. (2002) Urban amenities, migration, and entertainment. An email exchange with the FAUI network (listserv.nd.edu; 4 May).
19.
Clark, T. N. (Ed.) (2004a) The City as an Entertainment Machine. New York: JAI Press/ Elsevier.
20.
Clark, T.N. (2004b) The new Chicago: not New York or LA, and why it matters for urban social science. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, September.
21.
Clark, T.N. and Hoffmann-Martinot, V. (1998 ) The New Political Culture. Boulder, CO : Westview Press.
22.
Clark, T. N. and Rempel, M. (Eds) ( 1997) Citizen Politics in Post-Industrial Societies. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
23.
Coates, D. and Humphreys, B.R. (1999) The growth effects of sports franchises, stadia, and arenas, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 18, pp. 601—624.
24.
Connell, J. (Ed.) (2000) Sydney: The Emergence of a World City. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
25.
Danielson, M.N. and Doig, J.W. (1982) New York: The Politics of Urban Regional Development . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
26.
Derudder, B. (2006) On conceptual confusion in empirical analysis of a transnational urban network, UrbanStudies, 43(11), pp. 2027—2046.
27.
Derudder, B., Taylor, P.J., Witlox, F. and Catalano, G. (2003) Hierarchical tendencies and regional patterns in the world city network: a global urban analysis of 234 cities, Regional Studies, 37, pp. 875—886.
28.
Derudder, B. and Witlox, F. (2005) An appraisal of the use of airline data in assessments of the world city network, UrbanStudies, 42(13), pp. 2371—2388.
29.
Eakin, E. (2002) Creative cities and their new elite. A book review reproduced by Terry Clark on the Internet (FAUINET@listserv.nd.edu; 3 June) .
30.
Erie, S. (2004) Globalizing L.A. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press.
31.
Federal Transit Administration (2000) 2000 National Transit Database: Table 20, National transit summaries and trends . US Department of Transportation, Washington, DC.
32.
Florida, R. (2001) The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books.
33.
Frank, A.G. (1998) ReOrient: Global Economy in the Global Age. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
34.
Friedman, T.L. (2000) The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New York: Anchor Books.
35.
Friedmann, J. (1986) The world city hypothesis, Development and Change, 17, pp. 69—83.
36.
Friedmann, J. (1995) Where we stand: a decade of world city research , in: Paul L. Knox and Peter J. Taylor (Eds) World Cities in a World-system , pp. 21—47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
37.
Friedmann, J. and Wolff, G. (1982) World city formation: an agenda for research and action, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research , 6, pp. 309—344.
38.
Hall, P. (1966) The World Cities. London: Heinemann.
39.
Hamnett, C. (1994) Social polarization in global cities: theory and evidence, UrbanStudies, 31(3), pp. 401—424.
40.
Hawes, D. (2000) Interpreting the new political culture, Policy & Politics, 28, pp. 263—268.
41.
Heldman, R.K. (1992) Global Telecom-munications. New York: McGraw-Hill.
42.
Hodos, J.I. (2002) Globalization, regionalism and urban restructuring: the case of Philadelphia, Urban Affairs Review, 37, pp. 358—379.
43.
Hymer, S. (1971) The multinational corporation and the law of uneven development, in: J. W. Bhagwati (Ed.) Economics and World Order, pp. 113—140. New York : Macmillan.
44.
Jones, D.( 1985) Urban Transit Policy: An Economic and Political History . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall .
45.
Keeling, D.J. (1995) Transport and the world city paradigm, in: P. L. Knox and P. J. Taylor (Eds) World Cities in a World-system, pp. 115—131. New York: Cambridge University Press.
46.
Kerr, C. (1963) The Uses ofthe University. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
47.
Knox, P. L. and Taylor, P. J. (Eds) (1995) World Cities in a World-system . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Markusen, A. and King, D. (2003) The Artistic Dividend: The Arts' Hidden Contribution to Regional Development. Minneapolis, MN: Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.
50.
Matsumoto, H. (2004) International urban systems and air passenger and cargo flows: some calculations, Journal of Air TransportManagement, 10, pp. 241—249.
51.
McKenzie, E. (2001) Is the new political culture only middle class? Column in the Chicago Journal reproduced on the Internet (FAUINET@ listserv. nd.edu; 3 December).
52.
Nelson, A.C. (2001) Prosperity or blight? A question of major league stadia locations, Economic Development Quarterly, 15, pp. 255—265.
53.
Noam, E. (1992) Telecommunications in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
54.
Norgaard, R.B. and Baer, P. (2005) Collectively seeing complex systems: the nature of the problem, BioScience, 55(11), pp. 953—960.
55.
Nyman, J. (1996) Breaking the rules: Miami in the urban hierarchy , Urban Geography, 17, pp. 5—22.
56.
Park, R.E. and Burgess, E.W. (1967) The City: Suggestions for the Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
57.
Perkins, S.J. (1997) Internationalization: The People Business. London: Kogan Page.
58.
Porter, M. (1998) Clusters and the new economics of competition, Harvard Business Review, November/December, pp. 77—90.
59.
Rath, J. (2002) Immigrants and the tourist industry: the commodification of cultural resources. Paper presented at the 15th World Congress of Sociology, Brisbane, Australia, July.
60.
Reich, R.B. (1992) The Work of Nations. New York : Vintage Books.
61.
Rimmer, P. (1998) Transport and telecommunications between world cities, in: F. C. Lo and Y. M. Yeung (Eds) Globalization of the World of Large Cities, pp. 433—470. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.
62.
Sassen, S. (1994) Cities in a World Economy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
63.
Sassen, S. (1998) Globalization and Its Discontents. New York: The New Press.
64.
Sassen, S. (2001) The Global City. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
65.
Sassen, S. (2004) The repositioning of citizenship: toward new types of subjects and spaces of politics. Paper presented at the Conference on Transforming Citizenship? Transnational Membership, Participation and Governance, Campbell Public Policy Institute, Maxwell School of Syracuse University, April.
66.
Savitch, H.V. and Kantor, P. (2002) Cities in the International Marketplace. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
67.
Sellers, J.M. (2001) Governing from Below: Urban Regions and the Global Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
68.
Short, J.R., Kim, Y. and Wells, H. (1996) The dirty little secret of world cities research: data problems in comparative analysis, International Journal of Regional and Urban Research, 20, pp. 697—717.
69.
Smith, D.A. and Timberlake, M.F. (1995) Conceptualising and mapping the structure of the world system's city system, UrbanStudies , 32, pp. 287—302.
70.
Smith, D.A. and Timberlake, M.F. (2001) World city networks and hierarchies, 1977—1997, American Behavioral Scientist , 44, pp. 1656—1678.
71.
Smith, D.A. and White, D.R. (1992) Structure and dynamics of the global economy: network analysis of international trade, Social Forces, 70, pp. 857—893.
Tajbakhsh, K. (2001) The Promise of the City: Space, Identity and Politics in Contemporary Thought. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
75.
Taylor, P.J. (2004) World City Network: A Global Urban Analysis. London: Routledge.
76.
Taylor, P.J. and Lang, R.E. (2005) U.S. cities in the `world city network'. Survey Series, Metropolitan Policy Program, The Brookings Institution , Washington, DC. February.
77.
Thrift, N. (1994) Globalisation, regulation, urbanisation: the case of the Netherlands, UrbanStudies, 31(3), pp. 365—381.
78.
Timberlake, M.F. (2006) A global city hypothesis: an empirical assessment among U.S. cities, 1990—2000. Paper presented at the World Congress of the International Sociological Association, Durban, South Africa, July.
79.
US Army Corps of Engineers (2000) Waterborne commerce of the United States: Part 5 national summaries. Waterborne Commerce Statistics Center, New Orleans, LA.
80.
US Bureau of the Census (1997) Economic census of the US. US Department of Commerce, Washington, DC.
81.
US Bureau of the Census (2002) Census of the population, Summary File 3A. US Department of Commerce, Washington, DC.
82.
US Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics (2001) Airport activity statistics of certified air carriers: summary tables for 2000. Bureau of Transportation Statistics , Washington, DC (www.bts.gov/publications/airactstats2000/).
83.
Walks, R. (2001) The social ecology of the post-Fordist/global city: economic restructuring and socio-spatial polarisation in the Toronto urban region, UrbanStudies, 38, pp. 407—447.
