Lec 31: The world of the city

Question 1

1) How has the world distribution of cities changed?

Answer 1

• After the 2008 recession, a majority of the world became urban
• After 1980, there was a growth in the number of large cities  coincides with the beginning of post-fordism as a ROA

Question 2

2) What spatial configurations emerge from post-fordism?

Answer 2

• The local becomes more important than ever
• The forces of agglomeration are increasingly important, but simultaneously there is also globalization

Question 3

3) What are the twin geographical forces?

Answer 3

• Local processes
  o Clustering to benefit from agglomeration economies
  o Key clusters as localized industrial production complexes
• Global processes
  o MNCs, financial flows, trade flows, new global institutions

Question 4

4) What does Glocalization describe?

Question 5

5) Are new industrial spaces isolated?

Answer 5

No, large world cities constitute nodes of the new global economy structure

Question 6

6) What was Peter Hall’s key question?

Answer 6

• Why do some cities represent disproportionately large shares of the world economy?
• Ie Why are some v important in terms of trades, financial flows, political power, knowledge creation and dissemination

Question 7

7) What do Friedmann and Wolff do? What do they focus on?

Answer 7

• They create the first ranking of world cities, based on their degree of enmeshment into world economic activities
• They focus on MNCs and the locations of their headquarters

Question 8

8) What is the GaWC? What does it produce?

Answer 8

• The globalization and world cities research network
• The first truly global inventory of world cities

Question 9

9) The GaWC ranks cities according to overall… , which is based on which 4 corporate services? How is each city technically ranked?

Answer 9

• World-cityness; their global connectedness in terms of different types of corporate services
• 4 corporate services: accounting, advertising, banking/financial, and legal services
• Each city ranked based on the number of different corporate service providers it has in each of the 4 sectors

Question 10

10) What are the GaWC’s 3 levels of ranking within the 4 corporate service sectors?

Answer 10

• Prime or alpha: 5+ firms, 3 pts
  o Ex London, Paris, NY, Tokyo
• Major or beta: 3-4 firms, 2 pts
  o Toronto, SF, Sydney
• Minor or gamma: 1-2 firms, 1 pt
  o Montreal, Amsterdam, Boston

Question 11

11) What do circular networks of cities show?

Answer 11

• That some countries are extremely connected
• That some gamma countries are important at the local level

Question 12

12) World city ranks have changed between 2000 and 2013. How so?

Answer 12

• Many more asian cities in 2013
• Toronto drops

Question 13

What are some regional centers in the Americas, Eu-Africa-Middle East, an Asia&Oceania?

Answer 13

• Americas: Miami
• Eu & others: Paris, Johannesburg, Brussels
• Asia: HK in north and Singapore in south