This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.New York City (top) and London (bottom) are the only two cities ranked Alpha ++ by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network.Ī global city, also known as a power city, world city, alpha city, or world center, is a city that serves as a primary node in the global economic network. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors.
In fact, I see Friedmann’s world cities closer to Sassen’s global cities than to earlier notions of world cities as capitals of empires or as the top of the global power hierarchy, because both are, as I shall argue, concerned with networked cities engaged in the articulation and governance of cross-border economic activities. Though I agree that there are important differences between the concepts of Friedmann and Sassen (most significantly Sassen’s exclusive focus on producer service firms and hence her disregard of multi- or transnational corporations), I disagree with Derudder’s notion that the two have ‘very different’ (ibid.) takes on the role of cities in economic globalization. This view has been challenged by Derudder (2006, 2034) who claims that ‘world’ and ‘global city’, as employed by Friedmann and Sassen, refer to ‘very different analytical frameworks’, namely the spatial distribution of economic power more generally in the case of Friedmann and the geography of the production of the inputs that constitute the capability for global economic control in the case of Sassen.
Both implys that no significant conceptual differences are being attached to the terms. Today, many authors use the terms ‘global’ and ‘world city’ either interchangeably or, if they opt for one of the two terms, do not provide a rationale for their choice. For an opening chapter of a book titled Global City Challenges, it seems to be appropriate to begin with a terminological clarification.
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