ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a new look at cities from the perspective of the world economic system-in-formation. World cities exist in both core and semi-peripheral countries of the global system, and there is a spatial division of functions among them. But whatever their place in the hierarchy, world cities help to articulate with the global economy the regional or national economies they dominate. The world economic system is emerging in parallel with a series of profound technological breakthroughs whose ultimate consequences for life are at present only dimly perceived. World cities are the control centres of the global economy. The dynamism of the world city economy results chiefly from the growth of a primary cluster of high-level business services which employs a large number of professionals and ancillary staffs of clerical personnel. Tightly interconnected with each other through decision-making and finance, world cities constitute a worldwide system of control over production and market expansion.
