prof. dr. ben derudder – lead mexico city world city network: inter-city relations within...
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Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
World City Network: inter-city relations within contemporary
globalization
Prof. Dr. Ben DerudderGeography Department – Ghent UniversityGlobalization and World Cities research group (GaWC)http://www.lboro.ac.uk/[email protected]
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
A world of cities
• The ‘urban age’: > 50% of the world population now lives in (booming) cities
• No straightforward transition process: contemporary urbanization must be conceptualized as a structural transformation along, and intensified interaction between, every point of an urban-rural continuum
• Some staggering figures: - 1950-today: 86 → > 400 cities > 1 million inhabitants- from 2020 onwards: population growth = urban
growth
• Today’s changes are quantitatively and qualitatively different from earlier phases
• Quantitatively: much stronger growth figures E.g., London (1800-1910: x7) versus Lagos (1950-today: x40)
• Qualitatively: decoupling ‘development’ and urbanization, new forms of urban centralityE.g., 95% of urban growth in the ‘Global South’, New York was considered to be ‘history’ in the 70s
• There are differential patterns, cf. China ↔ India ↔ Latin America and Africa
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
De ‘Pearl River Delta’
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
Re-thinking cities in globalization (1)
• New York (and other cities in the 70s): decline as the only option because of the supposed ‘end of geography’ < ICT/services-nexus
• However, the opposite has happened: a renewed centrality for cities < ICT/services-nexus
• Why is this the case?
1) Importance of proximity in advanced services
2) Globalization 1: central marketplace for services (“you have to be there”)
3) Globalization 2: office network covering all major cities to service client
• World cities/Global cities according to Saskia Sassen: sites for the production of advanced services for a global marketplace
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
The geography of Internet Traffic (telegeography.com)
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
Global cities as sites for the production of ‘producer services’
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
Global service centres based on Sassen (GaWC)
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
Declining energy input/waste output in global cities
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
Re-thinking cities in globalization (2)
• Result: the world’s most connected cities in contemporary globalization are getting closer
• London-Frankfurt
“A virtual office in two centres ... all those 100% are working together as one team, they’re a European team with one head, there are no two heads any more ... This comparison Frankfurt and London - what does it mean? … I think increasingly we get to the point where we say it doesn’t matter.” (German bank, London, 2001)
• New York-London
“It’s amazing how this traffic increases. In that sense those two cities are moving closer together.” (US advertising, London, 2001)
• World cities = Sites of interconnecting flows in a multi-scale ‘world city network’World cities = A global-local space of interaction
• World city network = aggregation of inter-city flows within contemporary globalization
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
‘NY-LON’
Newsweek 13 Nov. 2000
(Source: Smith, 2005)
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
Times Square
New York
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
Rio de Janeiro
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
Jakarta
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
The Globalization and World Cities research group (GaWC)
• GaWC: research group that has been founded to devise a method for measuring relations between cities
• Starting points: ‘Globalization’: key cities cannot be purely understood in a ‘national’
framework ‘Inter-city-relations’: key cities derive their functional importance from
connections with/to other cities
→ Focus on office networks of ‘producer services’ such as Deloitte = services that cover financial, legal, and general management matters, innovation,...
→Starting point: global inter-city relations < shared presence of service firms
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
WCN < shared presence of APS firms
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
Measurement of the WCN
• Measurement of the WCN < a matrix of firms with information on their offices across world cities, whereby each cell describes the standardized importance of a city to a firm’s global service provision
• Choice of sectors (6): accountancy, advertising, banking/finance, insurance, law, management consultancy
• Choice of global service firms (100): a leading firm in the sector having offices in 15 or more different cities
• Choice of cities (315): capital cities of all but the smallest states plus many other important cities in larger states
• Standardized measurement of importance of a firm in a city (e.g. number of practitioners in a law firm) and their extra-locational functions (e.g. regional headquarters) < website APS firm
315 x 100 matrix summarizing global connectivity
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
The (urban) world according to GaWC
Prof. Dr. Ben Derudder – Lead Mexico City
WCN 2000-2008: major changes
- Decline of US cities (e.g. All cities but NY decline) - Rise of Chinese cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou)
- Concomitant rise of cities well-connected to Chinese cities (e.g. Sydney and Seoul)