ABSTRACT
Setting the scene Mobile mega-events such as the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup help to put the organising cities on a global stage and to compete with other so-called global cities. Categorising cities in terms of their significance in global finance and trade is relatively easy (cf. Sassen, 1991). The (perceived) hierarchy of importance becomes more blurred, and thus more contested, when other, qualitative indicators are taken into consideration. 1 Regardless of how city rankings are calculated, scoring high on them is considered beneficial and desirable by authorities, business elites and citizens alike. Unsurprisingly, annual global city rankings generally attract extensive media coverage (mainly when the classification is favourable) and are a popular topic of discussion (especially when the rank is less than expected). Importantly, ‘world-cityness is not determined by a city’s location in a pre-existing structure, but needs to be performed and worked at in a multiplicity of sites’ (Doel & Hubbard, 2002, p. 365; emphasis added). In other words, despite the apparent metric objectivity of city rankings, a global city is best thought of as ‘a social construct, not as a place or an object consisting of essential properties that can be readily measured outside the process of making meaning’ (Smith, 1998, p. 485).
