ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part examines the applications of global city theory to investigations of urban restructuring in some of the most globally integrated metropolitan centers of western Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia. Early contributors to world city theory attempted to explain certain key developments and processes internal to a given city with reference to its external positioning in the global urban system. The part provides a common effort to develop comparative perspectives on the process of global city formation. Some make use of global city theory through individualizing case studies that are intended to illuminate the particularities of the places under investigation, albeit with reference to a broader geoeconomic context. The part decribes some kind of comparative perspective in order to concretize and extend some of the more general propositions of global city theory.
