ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of globalization has renewed interest in thinking about the place and role of cities in the international system. Recent literature proposes that the fate of cities (and their residents) has become increasingly tied to their position in international flows of investment and trade. Where traditional thinking on the city (e.g. Hawley 1950; Duncan et al. 1960) treats processes of urbanization as regional or national phenomena, a new urban sociology argues for situating the city in the larger context of the development of the world economy (Friedmann 1986; Knox and Taylor 1995; Sassen 2001). Globalization is argued to be generating a new geography of centrality and marginality that cuts across the old divides in the world between the rich developed countries and the poor underdeveloped countries, and between East and West (Sassen 1994:4). In particular, developments of the past few decades are seen as producing a new global hierarchy of cities, at the apex of which are located what have variously been referred to as ‘world cities’ (Friedmann 1986) or ‘global cities’ (Sassen 2001). Such cities are argued to be the key nodes or command points that exercise power over other cities in a system of cities and, thus, the world economy.
