ABSTRACT

The dominant role that leading cities play in the process of global development in the early twentyfirst century has been given explicit expression in the concept of the ‘world city’. Although nebulous in size-definitional terms, the idea is that certain cities dominate world economic affairs and transactions. At one level, this is a very straightforward and obvious proposition, and indeed, Peter Hall drew attention to the significance of what he specifically referred to as world cities in the developed world in the mid-1960s (Hall 1966). However, the contemporary relevance of world cities has been elaborated by the American social scientist and academic planning and development analyst, John Friedmann (see Friedmann and Wolff 1982; Friedmann 1986, 1995). In the 20 years since Friedmann’s original work served to make the term popular, a number of other writers have contributed to what Friedmann (1995) referred to as the ‘world city paradigm’ (see King 1990; Sassen 1991, 2002; Knox and Taylor 1995; Taylor 2004). However, both King and Sassen have written under the modified title, the ‘global city’.