Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo
The 1999 Annual Political Geography Lecture
World cities and territorial states under
conditions of contemporary globalization
Peter J. Taylor
Department of Geography, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK
Abstract
This is largely an empirical paper which uses a unique set of office geography data to
describe inter-city relations across the world. After identifying a set of 55 world cities, these
patterns are related to states in a preliminary analyses of city–state connections. Particular
emphasis is placed upon identifying trans-state processes and regional city hierarchies. This
empirical reporting is sandwiched between a theoretical and practical introduction and conclusion. Using Braudel’s conceptualization of capitalism as a world of monopolies, world city
formation is introduced as a particular geographical knowledge nexus for creating new monopoly products. In the concluding section, the future of globalization is linked to the possibilities for world city network knowledge monopolies.  2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All
rights reserved.
Commercial cities and nation-states are emblematic of the two types of spaces
geographers deal with, the spaces of flows and places, respectively. Networks of
cities and mosaics of states depict two very different ways of imagining the spatial
organization of the modern world, alternative metageographies if you like. Beyond
geography, Charles Tilly (1990) has interpreted cities as representing capitalism competing with states which represent coercion. Following his lead, in a previous paper
I provided a very brief historical sketch of the changing relations between cities and
states in the modern world-system (Taylor, 1995a). The story had three stages. First,
antagonistic relations: state formation was a centralization of power at the expense
of other power centres, including cities. Second, a mutuality: cities became integral
to the creation of ‘national economies’ and their prosperity depended upon the states
they were located in. Third, the return of antagonism: under conditions of contempor-
E-mail address: [email protected] (P.J. Taylor)
0962-6298/00/$ - see front matter  2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 6 2 - 6 2 9 8 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 6 0 - 8
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P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
ary globalization, the old mutualities seem to be breaking down, as the most
important opportunities for cities may not lie within their own state’s territory. Thus,
in an argument typical of world-systems analysis, we seem to have come full circle,
back to ‘cities versus states’. Implying, as it does, a diminution of state power
through the ‘release’ of cities towards a more global destiny, the story fits in well
with globalization theories which predict the end of the state. Focusing solely on
the third stage of my original story, in this presentation I want to revise the simple
‘fall of mutuality thesis’ and thereby scotch any notion that I see cities simply replacing states as the key ‘spatial’ institutional centre of modern life today or in the
near future.
I will begin by clarifying what I mean in my title by “under conditions of globalization”. I interpret globalization as a one among many tendencies which can be identified in contemporary social change. Particularly associated with the new enabling
‘distance-shrinking’ technologies of the last few decades, at the core of the idea of
globalization is the notion of the enhanced importance of trans-state processes. This
is important because embedded statism has been a primary force in the development
of the modern world-system since its inception. To be sure, trans-state processes
have always existed (Taylor, 1995b), but what is different today is the thesis that
these processes have grown to such an extent that they not only rival state-based
processes, but that they are dominating the late capitalist world-economy. Hence,
the key problem with contemporary globalization debates is that they have tended
to be couched in either/or terms, forcing a choice between globalization and statecentric positions. I refuse to make this choice. By viewing globalization as just one
tendency in a world-system where the states are integral to social reproduction, we
can ensure a more subtle consideration: beyond simple global versus state to consideration of their manifold inter-relationships, as illustrated by Brenner (1998) for
contemporary Europe.
World/global cities are the most conspicuous geographical manifestation of contemporary trans-state processes. The relationship between such major cities and their
contemporary states has always been quite a complex affair and the current situation
is no exception. Most of the great cities of history were centres of state power and
the roster of world/global cities are dominated by capital cities, as we shall see. The
empirical core of this paper derives from research with colleagues at Loughborough
University on world/global cities to which I have added my own political dimension.
The result is what I believe to be a unique political geography, which integrates the
traditional political mosaic of state territories with the network of world cities in a
single analysis. All this is very preliminary, as will be made clear, but combining
the world-space of territories with the world-space of flows is surely a critical way
forward for the subdiscipline in the next millennia. Before and after the empirics, I
deal with some theory and practice for carrying out such research. Doing global
research is no straightforward matter.
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
7
Introductory theory and practice
World city research is strong on ideas, but weak on evidence. Much of the latter
is based upon methods drawn from traditional urban and regional development
research — using data from national censuses to make comparisons between cities
based upon sectoral changes, for instance. What is typically missing from such comparative analysis is any information on the relations between the cities. It is studying
the nodes in the space of flows without reference to the flows themselves! But before
I address this empirical predicament, I want to look again the general theory behind
world city research. In his initial formulation, John Friedmann (1986) set world cities
within a world-systems framework, with cities as the ‘basing points’ of capital in
the world-economy. But world-systems analysis implies much more than locating
cities in core or semi-periphery. Here I begin by using Braudel to look afresh at
capitalism and the state, and cities’ relations to them both.
Braudel’s provocation
Fernand Braudel has broken away from the Adam Smith/Karl Marx orthodoxy
which equates the rise and spread of capitalism with the successful establishment
of competitive markets (Braudel 1982, 1984; Wallerstein, 1991). This conventional
wisdom has, of course, been bolstered in the last decade by the demise of state
socialism and the development of economic globalization. Braudel provides us with
a lovely bit of unconventional wisdom: capitalism is inherently anti-market. Any
sensible capitalist avoids a proper functioning market because that is not where the
biggest profits are to be made. Put the other way round, markets are bad for capital
accumulation because they do not allow enough of it. If capitalism does not equal
market, what does it equate with? For Braudel the answer is simple: monopolies,
that is where the big profits are to be made. I suppose the orthodox response would
be that relying on a monopoly can only be a short-term expedient; without the competition of the market to stimulate efficiency, monopoly ultimately leads to stagnation
and bankruptcy. Yes, of course, but capital is mobile; sensible capitalists will have
long since forsaken a failing enterprise and moved on to new monopolies where
returns remain high, temporarily.
Historical capitalism is, for Braudel, a world of multiple monopolies, not multiple
markets. Capitalism is a mode of production which maximizes capital accumulation
and this is done through being flexible, being able to take the largest profits available
at any one time, irrespective of specialization. In fact, long-term successful capitalists
are inherently generalist in nature; they are neither financial, nor merchant, nor industrial, nor agrarian, but any and all, depending on the size of the profits available. So
where is the market in all of this? For Braudel this exists within a level of activity
below capitalism, in the sphere of economics. It is here that people compete as
producers and consumers in markets which set prices. Profits are made to enable
reproduction of the institutions and activities, but while markets operate fairly there
are no large returns to be made to satisfy the historical needs of capital accumulation.
Hence the spur for social change is not market competition but how to keep out of
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P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
such competition. Of course, the boundary between the levels of economics and
capitalism is a continuous zone of transition, as markets are cornered and monopolies
undermined. The whole point of the capitalist’s flexibility is to read this frontier so
that investment remains outside the market: into Lancashire textiles at one point,
return to London finance at the next, for instance.
I have called this argument Braudel’s provocation and by now you will have seen
why: instead of monopoly being “a spreading rot in the fabric of competitive capitalism” (Shepherd, 1970, p. 14) as is commonly supposed, it is itself capitalism.
Rather than monopoly indicating an imperfect market, the market is a sign of failed
monopoly. Turning conventional wisdom upsidedown is all well and good, but how
credible an argument is it for guiding our research? I fear positions may be
entrenched here, but please bear with me as I continue to plough this furrow. The
reasons are straightforward. First, the basic mechanism in Braudel’s capitalism is
power. Power is necessary to get above the market. This means that the state becomes
directly implicated as part of the capitalism, not something used for or against capitalism. Bringing the state to the centre of analysis is obviously relevant to political
geography. Second, the political manipulation of space has been crucial in the design
of monopolies; it is the simplest form among an array of strategies. As Braudel
(1982, p. 447) tells it “geography accounts for a good deal” because “overseas trade”
relied on distance to evade free market processes, eliminating “competition by holding a virtual or actual monopoly, and to keep supply and demand so effectively
separated that the terms of trade were entirely dictated” (p. 416). This ‘primitive
monopoly’ of distance is potentially of relevance for human geography in general.
In fact, once we begin to focus on monopolies, not as special exceptions to the
market, but as the normal operation of capitalism, then much old and new work in
geography and the social sciences in general, takes on a new perspective. Let’s begin
by describing some general monopoly strategies, or what I shall term anti-market
nexuses.
Anti-market nexuses are power configurations which enable capitalists to stay
above the market. They consist of variable mixtures of geography, knowledge and
coercion which provide a holder of capital with access to extra large profits. Table
1 lists eight well-known examples of market avoidance in historical capitalism. All
eight cases encompass competition, of course, but not market competition. ‘Monopoly competitions’ are inherent from imperial conflicts through to regional rivalries;
the most well-known is the corporate innovation competition of Schumpeter (1942),
where the promise of superprofits stimulates investment in technology to create monopoly positions.
These eight nexuses give a flavour to the world of multiple monopolies through
which capitalism operates. Certainly, there will be many other forms and the ones
listed are often closely entwined: imperialism, for instance, has worked so well
because of its relations to contemporaneous forms of all the other seven nexuses.
Anti-markets are easy to spot, although typically opaque in operation, you just have
to look for where the really big profits are being made. However, as monopolies
they are always under challenge and all of them have a limited life as capitalist
bonanzas. To repeat a key point, flexibility means that capitalists avoid being reduced
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
9
Table 1
Anti-market nexuses (combinations of geographical, knowledge-based and coercion strategies)
A. Imperialism. Rather than being outside capitalism this is a collection of primitive anti-market
strategies which combine territorially segmented markets, special knowledges and plenty of coercion.
B. Protectionism. These strategies use the state in a less coercive manner to privilege a territoriallydefined set of capitalists with autarchy as the limiting case.
C. Large multilocation companies. From the charter companies to today’s global behemoths their
concern for markets always reduces to market share; recent downsizing is a good example of capitalist
flexibility as some activities are hived off and returned to the market.
D. Mafiosi. From early ‘English adventurers’ indulging in piracy to contemporary financial laundering
of drug and military moneys, these are not alternative markets, they are examples of capitalist
monopoly, well illustrated in post-communist Russian transition to capitalism.
E. Corporatism. State-owned, state-related or state-connected family holding companies who use the
market for cheap supplies but operate themselves in a market-free utopia.
F. Hegemonies. Civil societies with huge economic efficiency advantages over all rivals so that they
operate effectively as a monopoly source for the latest production, for instance seventeenth century
Dutch control of the spice market, nineteenth century British control of the textile market, and
twentieth century US domination of the popular entertainment industry.
G. Innovation. Knowledge-based power using the state to protect its patents and trademarks, this relies
upon investment in technology to produce new unique products for which super profits will ensue.
H. Regionalism. Dynamic spatial knowledge complexes which combine a particular mix of skills and
information which cannot be easily replicated elsewhere thus avoiding direct competition (the
monopoly of place).
to market competition; by the time the latter arrives, capitalists will have long since
gone. One analogy is to think of monopolies as leaking ships. Capitalists are those
very big and very intelligent rats who have found themselves a new home long
before the leak becomes a serious danger to life.
Obviously, this list of nexuses is pregnant with many political geography stories
to tell. As already indicated, I am interested here in contemporary world cities which
are a special case of the regionalism anti-market nexus (Storper, 1997). Although the
new distance-shrinking technologies have reduced the scope of ‘primitive geography’
monopolies, they most certainly do not signify ‘the end of geography’ as a critical
component of capitalist strategy. Geography remains implicated in monopoly formation, but in different ways. For Michael Storper, globalization has coincided with a
new reflexive capitalism where regionally-specific knowledge complexes are sites of
continual learning to keep ahead of the market. Production is geared to quality rather
than quantity, so that instead of the usual market ‘economy of scale’, monopoly
‘economy of variety’ is created. In this way regional assets are reproduced and not
easily imitated elsewhere, which Scott (1997, p. 325) has called “the monopoly powers of place”. World cities are key concentrations of such monopoly powers based
upon economic reflexivity. In particular, Saskia Sassen (1991, 1994), in her explanation of why world cities have prospered under conditions of potential economic
decentralization through distance-shrinking technologies, identifies advanced producer services as the distinguishing characteristic of contemporary global cities. In
services such as finance, accountancy and corporate law, practitioners are not just
servicing ‘global capital’, they are creating new products based upon their unique
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P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
knowledge collectivities. In other words, they do not aim to operate in a price-setting
market, but rather develop multiple monopolies of quality knowledge products to
reap appropriately large profits. Hence, unlike services in general, which operate in
markets which keep prices down, advanced producer services are above economics;
they concentrate in world/global cities where they enjoy the benefits of capitalism.
This is the capitalism — the geographical monopolies — I am concerned with here;
but how do you study their locus, the world cities?
Doing global research
If you are at the apocryphal party and answer the question “What do you do?”
with the words “global research”, you will probably not get the usual stunned silence
expected for such an ‘academic’ response. Rather, the quiz will continue about what
you know of the ozone layer and things getting warmer. Global means climate in
the public mind and despite all the globalization hype there seems little notion that
there might be global social research. It may be understood that we do international
research, but that is a rather different thing. The annual reports and statistics put
together by the UN and its agencies from information supplied by their members
provides the basic data bank for such international research. It describes states and
therefore has enabled comparative analysis of states to proceed as a research boom
area since the 1950s. But it has provided little or nothing for researching trans-state
processes. In the world of state-istics, those social scientists wishing to do global
research are largely on their own when it comes to information availability. Hence,
the penchant in globalization debates for speculation and assertion over facts, quite
simply, for trans-state processes, these facts are in very short supply.
Global social research as a major empirical project really began in the 1970s, with
studies of multinational corporations. Building on the finding that some of the new
corporations were financially larger than many small countries, a new subject was
found which had ‘global reach’. In practical research terms, however, corporations
and countries are like chalk and cheese. This new subject was a private player in the
world-economy: most information which is necessary to understand its behaviours is
simply not publicly available. Empirical research proceeded by case study, which
allows for good comparative analysis, but there is no sense in which such global
research is as empirically grounded as international research drawing on the UN data
base. For the latter, there is agreement on the subjects — the list of sovereign states
at a given time — and on the information to be collected on each subject. This
standardization allows for relatively easy comparison over time and space for very
many important and relevant topics. Now consider the equivalent for global research
using corporations as subjects: the nearest counterpart at the level of a simple roster
of subjects is a magazine list (the Fortune 500 — see Ikeda (1996) for use of this
list to relate corporations to states). We have, of course, learned a vast amount on
the strategies of corporations on the back of large numbers of case studies and comparisons allied to international statistical analyses (Dicken, 1998), but we have no
overall empirical handle on global changes in the private corporate world.
At Loughborough we have taken a different tack on the problem of doing global
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
11
social research. Although corporations remain the subjects of our research, the
objects of concern are world cities. Following Sassen’s argument presented above,
we focus on advanced producer services corporations, where their global reach is
part of their product. This reach is centred upon their networks of offices and it is
this which our preliminary research has targeted. It is these offices which are in
world cities and make the latter worthy of their name. We have constructed a data
bank on office geographies covering 69 corporations over 263 cities. Corporations
are from four sectors, accountancy, advertising, banking/finance and law, and the
information for each of the cities ranges from simple presence/absence of a firm
through to numbers of practitioners a corporation has located in each city. Notice
that we have gone beyond banking in this data collection: we do not focus just upon
‘international financial centres’; we adopt the broader, original concept of world city
in which financial services play only a part, albeit a very important part, in world
city formation. We think this is a unique trans-state set of data and which, therefore,
enables us to begin some original global empirical research on world city network
formation.
Cities and states in a single world-economy
Because of the state-centric nature of data, the world-economy is commonly
equated with the construct ‘international economy’, which describes economic
relations between states. In contrast, I will focus upon inter-city relations as a model
of the world-economy. Of course, there is only one world-economy and all models
and constructs are partial representations. In this empirical section, I begin by exploring basic questions for the neglected cities model, but then bring states back in to
provide some initial assessments of cities and states in a single world-economy. All
of this should be seen as preliminary results to illustrate the global research we are
doing. I am going to push the data probably further than is warranted, because I am
more interested in potentials than findings in this initial foray. I tell a story of tails,
rosters, surpluses, regions, and conclude with ‘ins and outs’.
Tails: are there world cities?
Let us start at the beginning: is there a general process of world city formation
operating across the world-economy? Kevin Cox (1996, p. 1) seems to doubt the
existence of such a process by referring to “the rise of so-called world cities”. Obviously this question has to be carefully specified. Of course, there are large cities
which dominate flows in the world-economy, but this is not necessarily world city
formation, as previously defined. For instance, a central place-like global process
with firms servicing the needs of global capital, with other firms servicing regional
capitals, others national capitals, and so on, in hierarchical fashion, is not what world
city formation implies. Such a global to local hierarchy is a market model with
central places as the loci for bringing together service providers and users. The result
is some form of spatial equilibrium reflecting an integrated urban hierarchy as postu-
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P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
lated at the national level many years ago by Berry & Horton (1970). With world
city formation no such spatial equilibrium is expected. Rather, a class of cities is
defined which is qualitatively different from other cities. World cities are the loci,
not just of services in the central place sense, but of unique knowledge complexes
as previously discussed. These monopoly conditions are relatively rare; they are not
distributed in varying degrees across all cities.
Now that we have global scale data on advanced producer services, we can test
whether these firms are indeed operating to create world cities or whether they represent merely the latest reshuffling of services in a traditional, albeit extended, hierarchy of cities. In Fig. 1, the distributions of presences of our 69 firms across the
263 cities are shown separately for the four service sectors. The distribution for
advertising, banking/finance and law are very similar: each display a lumpy and very
enhanced tail. In any equilibrium process as postulated by the central place/market
model, the distribution would show a smooth and regular decline from the mode;
here, in contrast, we have distinct evidence of concentration processes, specific cities
being singled out for office location. This is entirely consistent with the world
city/monopoly position.
The distribution of accountancy offices is completely different from the other three
and requires separate discussion. Accountancy has the most monopolistic attributes
of all the advanced producer services and has recently gone through a period of
mergers and take-overs reducing the major players from nine to five — there were
six during our data collection, for five of whom we obtained global data. The result
is huge multi-billion dollar corporations with many more offices than other producer
services. Hence, they are located in far more cities, as the distribution in Fig. 1
shows. Clearly, this illustrates the monopolistic tendencies in this sector, as reflected
in carving out market shares, but not the world city formation I am concerned with
here. We do have more than presence data on the levels of accountancy service in
our data bank and this is used in the next section to identify world city processes.
In conclusion: world city formation is in operation — in the three service sectors
where the frequency distribution shows a reasonable range of city presences, the
common pattern of an enhanced tail implies a process of locational concentration
rather than equilibrium.
Rosters: where are the world cities?
Having agreed that there are world city formation processes, we can now move
on to the second question: where are the world cities? It is indicative of the poverty
of global empirical research that there is no generally agreed roster of world cities.
For sovereign states, we have the generally accepted roster listed for any year in
UN publications. How can we begin to compare the network of cities with the mosaic
of states, if we have no agreement on the members of the former? London and New
York yes, Frankfurt and Sao Paulo yes, but what about Manchester and Cape Town?
Where do you draw the line? The easy answer is to use a given population size as
a threshold, but this defines ‘mega-cities’ as a size category, rather than world cities
as a functional category. As arbitrary as the Fortune 500 list of corporations, it is
Fig. 1.
The distribution of cities in terms of numbers of firms present
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
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P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
like including California and North Rhine-Westphalia in the roster of states at the
expense of Ecuador and Portugal, just because they have larger populations and/or
economies. That would be wrong; it is not a matter of size but sovereignty which
matters in international economic relations, which is what the latter two have and
the former two do not have. Similarly Amsterdam and Zurich are not mega-cities,
but are certainly world cities; Calcutta and Lagos are mega-cities, but not world
cities. Clearly, before we can begin looking at the relations between world cities and
territorial states we have to produce an empirically sound roster of world cities.
The most widely used list of world cities is that originally produced by John
Friedmann (1986, 1995), which he has subsequently revised. Unfortunately, it is not
entirely clear how his world cities are identified and ordered. In his original list we
are told “selection criteria include”, which implies an incomplete enumeration, followed by a collection of functions (e.g. corporate headquarters), processes (e.g.
growth of business services) and measures (e.g. population size). How these are
combined is not made clear. I am reluctant to make the point yet again, but the
widespread reporting and use of such a preliminary taxonomy does encapsulate the
poverty of contemporary global social research. Here I report on an exercise which
uses the data bank of 69 firms over 263 cities to identify a roster of 55 world cities.
For each of the four service sectors, we go beyond simple office presences in cities
by using quantitative measures of the size of offices and the status of an office in
the firm’s organization, where that is available (for details of the procedures see
Beaverstock, Smith & Taylor, 1999). The first results of this exercise are to identify
three levels of global service — prime, major and minor centres — for each of the
four sectors. For instance, we identify 13 cities as prime global accountancy service
centres, 37 as major accountancy global service centres and 27 as minor accountancy
global service centres. This information is combined across all four sectors to provide
measures of the global capacity in terms of these advanced producer services, what
we can call ‘world city-ness’. Scoring 3/2/1 for prime/major/minor in each sector,
when summed all cities are arrayed from 0 to 12. Cities which score at least one
point are listed in the ‘Inventory of world cities’ in Table 2. The question of where
to draw the line to define world cities must be arbitrary to some extent. The score
of four was chosen partly because of the distribution of scores, but also because to
score four a city must be a centre for at least two of the services. The 55 cities
scoring four or more are designated world cities and these are our main concern in
the discussion from this point on (Fig. 2). It is important to note that while this
methodology orders cities and this has been used to identify three levels of world
city, this does not designate a hierarchy. Ranking cities by size, even if it is a global
capacity measure, does not define an urban hierarchy; that requires evidence of intercity relations (Taylor, 1997) of which more later.
Given a roster of cities, we can begin to contemplate new forms of analysis. For
the simplest of illustrations, the cities can be cross-tabulated against the roster of
states (Table 3). In fact only 33 of the world’s states house world cities and of these
24 have just a single city. These include many medium-sized states, but also highly
centralized UK and France, where historical concentrations on the capital city are
today reflected in just one dominant world city in each state, where we might expect
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
15
Table 2
An inventory of world cities. Cities are ordered in terms of world city-ness values ranging from 1 to 12.
World city-ness values produced by scoring 3 for prime centre status, 2 for major centre status, and 1
for minor centre status for each of the four services. For rationale of divisions into classes of city, see text
A. ALPHA WORLD CITIES
12: London, Paris, New York, Tokyo
10: Chicago, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan, Singapore
B. BETA WORLD CITIES
9: San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, Zurich
8: Brussels, Madrid, Mexico City, Sao Paulo
7: Moscow, Seoul
C. GAMMA WORLD CITIES
6: Amsterdam, Boston, Caracas, Dallas, Dusseldorf, Geneva, Houston, Jakarta, Johannesburg,
Melbourne, Osaka, Prague, Santiago, Taipei, Washington
5: Bangkok, Beijing, Montreal, Rome, Shanghai, Stockholm, Warsaw
4: Atlanta, Barcelona, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Budapest, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur,
Manila, Miami, Minneapolis, Munich
C. EVIDENCE OF WORLD CITY FORMATION
Ci Relatively strong evidence
3: Athens, Auckland, Dublin, Helsinki, Ho Chi Ming City, Luxembourg, Lyon, Mumbai, New Delhi,
Philadelphia, Rio de Janeiro, Tel Aviv, Vienna
Cii Some evidence
2: Abu Dhabi, Almaty, Birmingham, Bogota, Bratislava, Brisbane, Bucharest, Cairo, Cleveland,
Cologne, Detroit, Dubai, Guangzhou, Kiev, Lima, Lisbon, Manchester, Montevideo, Oslo, Rotterdam,
Riyadh, Seattle, Stuttgart, The Hague, Vancouver
Ciii Minimal evidence
1: Adelaide, Antwerp, Arhus, Baltimore, Bangalore, Bologna, Brazilia, Calgary, Cape Town, Colombo,
Colombus, Dresden, Edinburgh, Genoa, Glasgow, Gothenburg, Hanoi, Kansas City, Leeds, Lille,
Marseille, Richmond, St Petersburg, Tashkent, Tehran, Tijuana, Turin, Utrecht, Wellington
more. In contrast, the USA has 11 world cities and Germany five, reflecting the
combination of decentralized federal polities with large national economies. In
between, China has three world cities (counting Hong Kong) and another six countries have a brace each: Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland, all
are decentralized polities, except Japan whose very large economy can obviously
accommodate more than one world city.
For the reasons detailed earlier, even as elementary an empirical exercise as that
above has never before been carried out. Of course, now we have global data on
world city formation we do not have to stay at that level. In Table 4, levels of world
city formation are related to the size of national economies as measured by gross
domestic product. There is obviously a positive relationship between the size of
national economies and the distribution and levels of world city formation processes.
For instance, eight of the ten alpha world cities are located in the big six economies.
As usual, it is the exceptions which are particularly interesting — Hong Kong and
Singapore as ‘world city states’. We will look at their regional roles below. All but
two (India and Austria) of the next 21 ranked economies have world cities in their
territories. The smallest two economies incorporating world cities are Hungary and
the Czech Republic and there are only two countries above them with no evidence
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Fig. 2.
The roster of world cities
of world city formation (Pakistan and Nigeria). These examples show that, beyond
size of economy, what are important are the economic opportunities that exist in a
country. Hence, the massive privatization potentials in the former communist and
Soviet republics has attracted advanced producer services, so that their cities are
generally over-represented in world city formation processes in Table 4.
In conclusion: we can identify a roster of 55 world cities which is the necessary
first step for studying global social change through the network of cities and for
comparing the latter with the mosaic of states.
Surpluses: where are the trans-state processes?
In John Friedmann’s “world city hypothesis”, he designates a majority of the cities
as articulators of national economies into the world-economy. This process seems
to be born out by the analyses of Tables 3 and 4 above. In the theoretical framework
being used here, we would say that these world cities have a particular monopoly
of the knowledge nexus combining their national with the global. For instance, a
law firm will combine professional and commercial knowledge of the local jurisdiction with abilities to work in English and/or New York State commercial law (the
two law codes governing inter-jurisdictional business). Hence, the 24 world cities
which are the only world city in their own country, each have constellations of
knowledge which are unique to their localities. Certainly, this is an important process,
but where are the trans-state processes which indicate globalization?
To begin with, we can note that there are a majority of countries which do not
possess world cities. Hence, their access to the specialized knowledges of advanced
producer services will have to be trans-state in character. This is illustrated in Table
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
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Table 3
World cities and sovereign states
States
No. of
World cities
world cities
USA
11
Germany
China
Australia
Canada
Italy
Japan
Spain
Switzerland
Argentina
Belgium
Brazil
Chile
Czech R
Denmark
France
Hungary
Indonesia
Malaysia
Mexico
Netherlands
Philippines
Poland
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sweden
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
UK
Venezuela
5
3
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami,
Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco, Washington, DC
Berlin, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich
Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai
Melbourne, Sydney
Montreal, Toronto
Milan, Rome
Osaka, Tokyo
Barcelona, Madrid
Geneva, Zurich
Buenos Aires
Brussels
San Paulo
Santiago
Prague
Copenhagen
Paris
Budapest
Jakarta
Kualo Lumpur
Mexico City
Amsterdam
Manila
Warsaw
Moscow
Singapore
Johannesburg
Seoul
Stockholm
Taipei
Bangkok
Istanbul
London
Caracas
5 for a firm which gives details of who to contact in countries where they have no
offices. This represents an articulation of small countries into the world economy:
clearly three world cities dominate, Miami for central America, Paris for francophone
Africa, and London for a range of Asian and African countries. However, this is not
a major trans-state process: in general we can note that since all the major national
economies possess world cities, the non-world city countries actually account for
only a small proportion of the world gross domestic product — 12.7% to be precise.
There are, of course, trans-state relations among states with world cities, so that
12.7% represents the minimum estimate of trans-state processes. But how can you
measure trans-state services above and beyond simple national articulations?
18
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
Table 4
World cities and national economies. States with alpha world cities are bold capitals, states with other
world cities are in bold, states with no evidence of world city formation are in italics
No. of cities
State
GDP
Alpha
Beta
USA
JAPAN
GERMANY
FRANCE
ITALY
UK
Brazil
Canada
China
Spain
Mexico
Russia
South Korea
Australia
Netherlands
India
Argentina
Switzerland
Belgium
Austria
Sweden
Indonesia
Denmark
Thailand
HONG KONG
Turkey
South Africa
South Arabia
Norway
Finland
Poland
Ukraine
Portugal
Greece
Israel
Malaysia
SINGAPORE
Colombia
Philippines
Venezuela
Chile
6648
4591
2046
1330
1025
1017
555
543
522
483
377
377
377
332
330
294
282
260
228
197
196
175
146
143
132
131
122
117
110
98
93
91
87
78
78
71
69
67
64
58
52
3
1
1
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
1
1
1
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Gamma
7
1
4
0
1
0
0
1
2
1
0
0
0
1
1
0
1
1
0
0
1
1
1
1
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
1
1
(continued
Evidence
9
0
3
2
2
5
2
2
1
0
1
1
0
2
3
3
0
0
1
1
1
0
1
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
0
1
1
1
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
on next page)
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
19
continued
No. of cities
State
GDP
Alpha
Beta
Gamma
Evidence
Iran
Ireland
Pakistan
New Zealand
Peru
Egypt
Algeria
Hungary
Czech Republic
Nigeria
United Arab Emirates
Morocco
Romania
Bangladesh
Kuwait
Usbekistan
Belarus
Kazakastan
Ecuador
Tunisia
Uraguay
Vietnam
Luxembourg
Croatia
Slovenia
Guatemala
Oman
Slovakia
Sri Lanka
Bulgaria
Dominican Republic
64
52
52
51
50
43
42
41
36
35
35
31
30
26
24
22
20
18
17
16
16
16
15
14
14
13
12
12
12
10
10
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
2
1
1
0
0
0
0
2
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
1
2
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
In our data bank we have information on firm’s offices at different levels of
measurement. The only level which gives a full quantitative measure of degrees of
differences in provision of services between cities are the interval level measures.
This is information on sizes of offices, either numbers of practitioners or numbers
of fax connections. Unfortunately, such information is relatively scarce: we have it
for two accountancy firms, for seven banking/finance firms and for US law firms.
With no such information for advertising firms, this sector does not figure in the
subsequent analysis. In addition, to make the law data comparable with the other
two sectors, we use only the largest 10 firms in this analysis. Obviously numbers
of firms are drastically reduced from our original analyses and therefore results are
20
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
Table 5
Trans-state linkages of cities: the case of Coopers and Lybrand
I. MAJOR WORLD CITIES
London:
Direct: Afganistan; Armenia; Azerbaijan; Belarus; Bosnia; Georgia; Iraq; Kirghiz; Lesotho; Saudi
Arabia; Syria; Tadjikistan; Turkmenistan; Yemen
Indirect: Cape Verde; The Gambia; Guinea-Bissau; Mongolia; Sao Tomé & Principe; Sierra Leone
Paris:
Direct: Algeria*; Benin; Burkina; Malagasy Republic; Mali; Mauritania; Niger; Togo; Tunisia
Indirect: Central African Republic; Chad; Congo (Brazzaville); Gabon
(*at Saint-Quentin)
Miami:
Direct: Belize; Cuba; El Salvador; French Guiana; Guyana; Haiti; Honduras; Nicaragua
II. LOCAL NETWORKS
Port Louis:
Djibouti; Eritria; The Gambia*; Liberia; Rwanda; Seychelles; Sierra Leone*; Somalia
(*copy to London)
Douala:
Central African Republic; Chad; Congo(Brazzaville); Gabon
(all require copies to Paris)
Suva:
Kiribati; Nauru; Tonga; Tuvalu
Bridgetown:
St Christopher, Nevis and Anguilla; Montserrat
III. LOCAL NEIGHBOURS
Auckland: Cook Islands; Beijing: Mongolia*; Bologna: Albania; Bucharest: Moldova; Calcutta:
Bhutan; Hong Kong: Macau; Melbourne: Western Samoa; Milan: San Marino; Seoul: North Korea;
Sydney: Vanuatu; Tokyo: Guam and Mariana Islands; Toulouse: Andorra
(*shared with London)
IV. MINOR IMPERIAL VESTIGES
Lisbon*: Cape Verde; Guinea-Bassau; Sao Tomé & Principe
(*all copy to London)
Madrid: Equitorial Guinea
that much less reliable: think of them as suggestive rather than indicative in what follows.
Using our interval data, in Table 6 each world city is measured in terms of its
level of service provision for each of the three sectors relative to the top scoring
city (London once, New York twice). Summing these scores and rescaling them in
relation to the top sum (New York) produces a scale from 0 to 100 as estimates of
world city formation for each city. We can compare these measures to our original
inventory (Table 2), remembering that this listing does not include advertising and
only a proportion of the other sector firms. At the top, the main difference is Hong
Kong and Frankfurt marginally overtaking Paris and Tokyo in this analysis. Elsewhere, the main anomaly is Madrid, which is particularly boosted by a bank headquartered in that city appearing in the data. Conversely, there are no Japanese banks
in this data set. However, we will treat this scale as reasonable estimates of localized
world city formation.
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
21
Table 6
World cities: relative service provisions and world city formation
Services (% of top score)
City
Accountancy Banking/finance
Law
Sum of
scores
Amsterdam
Atlanta
Bangkok
Barcelona
Beijing
Berlin
Boston
Brussels
Budapest
Buenos Aires
Caracus
Chicago
Copenhagen
Dallas
Dusseldorf
Frankfurt
Geneva
Hamburg
Hong Kong
Houston
Istanbul
Jakarta
Johannesburg
Kuala Lumpur
London
Los Angeles
Madrid
Manila
Melbourne
Mexico City
Miami
Milan
Minneapolis
Montreal
Moscow
Munich
New York
Osaka
Paris
Prague
31
15
4
4
2
12
20
14
6
8
6
28
36
13
24
13
1
5
8
6
1
4
11
5
100
8
4
2
13
6
5
6
5
9
4
6
35
2
27
2
8
0
6
2
1
1
0
3
2
4
7
44
0
7
1
5
1
0
16
5
1
4
0
0
23
7
2
4
2
5
6
2
0
0
3
0
100
0
10
3
41
15
17
13
4
14
21
17
9
14
14
74
36
21
27
91
12
37
95
21
6
17
31
21
200
33
61
13
38
29
16
30
12
19
14
16
235
13
91
12
2
0
7
7
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
2
0
1
2
73
10
32
71
10
4
9
20
16
77
18
55
7
23
18
5
22
7
10
7
10
100
11
54
7
World city formation
(% of top sum)
18
6
7
6
2
6
7
7
4
6
6
31
6
9
11
39
5
16
40
9
3
7
13
9
85
14
26
6
16
12
7
13
5
8
6
7
100
6
39
5
(continued on next page)
22
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
continued
Services (% of top score)
City
Accountancy Banking/finance
Law
Sum of
scores
World city formation
(% of top sum)
Rome
San Francisco
Sao Paulo
Santiago
Seoul
Singapore
Shanghai
Stockholm
Sydney
Taipei
Tokyo
Toronto
Warsaw
Washington
Zurich
2
8
6
1
5
6
5
12
17
6
10
35
2
15
7
1
7
4
2
0
5
0
3
8
3
5
5
5
21
2
8
38
26
12
20
52
11
38
68
21
87
78
14
67
26
3
16
11
5
9
22
5
16
29
9
37
33
6
29
11
5
23
16
9
15
41
6
23
43
12
72
38
7
31
17
Given such measures we can compare world city formation within a country to
the size of its economy. In Table 7 percentages of global gross domestic product
and of global world city formation are listed. From this information, surpluses and
deficits of world city formation relative to national demand for the services are computed for each country. It is these numbers which imply trans-state processes. Thus
by far the biggest surplus is for the UK, implying that London provides services for
much more than just its own country. Hong Kong comes next in size of surplus and
Singapore also features high in surpluses, reflecting the raison d’être of each city as
trans-state service centres. In contrast, Japan has a massive deficit in this analysis,
showing that Tokyo and Osaka have advanced producer services which fall far short
of what would be expected for the second largest economy in the world. The absolute
size of this deficit may be due to the data limitation concerning Japanese banks
mentioned above, but the relative position of Japan as the highest deficit is consistent
with other analyses which have used international data on service exports and which
show that Japan’s world share is only about half that of the UK (Enderwick, 1989).
The USA pretty well breaks even in this comparison, which is surprising given the
role of New York as the leading world city. It would seem that New York’s global
pre-eminence is countered by a relative underdevelopment of other US world cities,
given the huge size of the US economy.
In conclusion: trans-state processes can be inferred from comparing new measures
of world city formations with standard measures of national economy sizes to show
service surpluses and deficits.
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
23
Table 7
Deficits and surpluses in world city formation by states
State
USA
JAPAN
GERMANY
FRANCE
ITALY
UK
Brazil
Canada
China
Spain
Mexico
Russia
South Korea
Australia
Netherlands
India
Argentina
Switzerland
Belgium
Austria
Sweden
Indonesia
Denmark
Thailand
HONG KONG
Turkey
South Africa
South Arabia
Norway
Finland
Poland
Ukraine
Portugal
Greece
Israel
Malaysia
SINGAPORE
Colombia
Iran
Philippines
Venezuela
Chile
Ireland
Pakistan
New Zealand
Peru
Egypt
Algeria
Hungary
Czech Republic
GDP
6648
4591
2046
1330
1025
1017
555
543
522
483
377
377
377
332
330
294
282
260
228
197
196
175
146
143
132
131
122
117
110
98
93
91
87
78
78
71
69
67
64
64
58
52
52
52
51
50
43
42
41
36
%W
26.6
18.3
8.2
5.3
4.1
4.1
2.2
2.2
2.1
1.9
1.5
1.5
1.5
1.3
1.3
1.2
1.1
1.0
0.9
0.8
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.6
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.4
0.4
0.4
0.4
0.3
0.3
0.3
0.3
0.3
0.3
0.3
0.3
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.2
0.1
WCF
233
43
79
39
16
85
11
41
7
32
12
6
9
45
18
0
6
16
7
0
16
7
16
7
40
3
13
0
0
0
6
0
0
0
0
9
22
0
0
6
6
5
0
0
0
0
0
0
4
5
%W
26.5
4.9
9.0
4.4
1.8
9.7
1.3
4.7
0.8
3.6
1.4
0.7
1.0
5.1
2.0
0
0.7
1.8
0.8
0
1.8
0.8
1.8
0.8
4.6
0.3
1.5
0
0
0
0.7
0
0
0
0
1.0
2.5
0
0
0.7
0.7
0.6
0
0
0
0
0
0
0.5
0.6
Def/sur
ⴚ0.1
ⴚ13.4
+0.8
⫺0.9
⫺2.3
+5.6
⫺0.9
+2.5
⫺1.3
+1.7
⫺0.1
⫺0.8
⫺0.5
+3.8
+0.7
⫺1.2
⫺0.4
+0.8
⫺0.1
⫺0.8
+1.0
+0.1
+1.2
+0.2
+4.1
⫺0.2
+1.0
⫺0.5
⫺0.4
⫺0.4
+0.3
⫺0.4
⫺0.3
⫺0.3
⫺0.3
+0.7
+2.2
⫺0.3
⫺0.3
+0.4
+0.5
+0.4
⫺0.2
⫺0.2
⫺0.2
⫺0.2
⫺0.2
⫺0.2
+0.3
+0.5
24
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
Regions: where are the regional centres?
Showing surpluses locates trans-state process sources, but does not specify the
actual processes themselves: where exactly is London’s surplus provision employed?
To answer such questions fully requires a different methodology than that used to
create our data bank. However, we can explore one aspect of trans-state processes
through analysis of office geographies by looking at the regional organizations of
firms.
Because of the central place heritage of urban studies, it seems that when
researchers consider systems of cities they think automatically in terms of hierarchies. I have previously suggested that world city formation is distinct and different
from central place processes but, nevertheless, hierarchies seem to feature prominently in the world city literature. This is largely due to Friedmann’s original specification of world cities, which he portrayed as a global hierarchy. For instance, his
work shows that the European cities on his diagram (Milan, Vienna and Madrid) all
link to Paris, while only Madrid links to London. In Pacific Asia, Tokyo is specified
as the ‘primary city’ and Singapore is particularly well linked compared to Hong
Kong. However, it is not clear what the evidence is for such specific hierarchical
linkages. They are reproduced in part and embellished in the classic text of Peter
Dicken (1998, p. 210), Global Shift. Here we have such detail as Zurich and Geneva
linking only to Milan, which this time links direct to London, while Paris fields links
from Frankfurt and Dusseldorf, the latter via Brussels. As with Friedmann, Tokyo
dominates Pacific Asia followed by Singapore. Again the evidence for these specificities is not clear. Both studies deal with trans-national corporations in general,
rather than just advanced producer services and this should be kept in mind in what
follows. Nevertheless, the imposing of empirical evidence on this hierarchical speculation is surely overdue.
We have good regional organization data for just 11 firms across all four sectors:
caveats of quantity of evidence apply as before. In Table 8 these firms are listed
with cities which have more than one regional office. The first point to make is the
low number of such cities. In fact, unlike the complicated diagrams reviewed above,
there seem to be in reality just five major regional centres: Hong Kong, London,
Miami, New York and Singapore. The regional responsibilities of the four other
cities in the table are quite limited. Tokyo is only a centre for the region called
‘Japan’, Paris for francophone Africa (see also Table 5), Johannesburg for Africa,
and although Brussels features as a European headquarters in one of its cases, most
of the personnel for this office are actually located in London. This is indicative of
London’s dominance amongst European world cities: as well as having regional
offices for Europe, London also has more Africa offices than Johannesburg and is
also a Middle East office centre. Hong Kong and Singapore share Pacific Asia office
headquarters, which are often split between them as north east and south east Asia,
respectively. The relationship between New York and Miami is less equal: where
the region is the Americas, New York is the centre, but where Latin America is a
designated region then Miami is the centre.
This pattern of regional relations is shown in Fig. 3, which contrasts sharply with
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
25
Table 8
Regional responsibilities
City
Firm
NY
Coopers and Lybrand
KPMG
Dentsu
Young & Rubicon
Bankers Trust
Barclays
Credit Suisse Group
Standard Chartered
UBS
Baker & MacKenzie
White & Case
Total
Fig. 3.
M1
LO
PA
BR
JB
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
5
x
x
x
6
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
9
2
2
HK
SG
TK
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
2
x
x
6
6
3
x
Regional world cities and their spheres of influence
the complex hierarchies in the literature. It is, in fact, in keeping with our dispensing
of central place thinking in the theoretical introduction. For instance, two of the main
regional centres are not in regions they organise (Miami, London for Africa and
Middle East). Furthermore, Miami is a major regional centre, while not being a
particularly important world city in its own right (only a gamma world city in Table
2). Unlike hierarchies in the literature, neither Tokyo nor Paris feature as important
26
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
regional centres here, which is compatible with the deficits for Japan and France in
Table 7. Given the paucity of regional centres, it may be that in current globalization
circumstances world cities focusing upon national articulations do not require an
organization tier above them. If this is the case, this would be bad news for Hong
Kong, Miami and Singapore, in particular. Whatever the regional–national relations,
it is clear that there is no integrated hierarchy, rather we have a few specific cities
developing monopolies of knowledge for given regions.
In conclusion: although our data is limited in scope, this is an area of world
city formation where application of real evidence does seem to suggest overturning
current ideas.
Ins and outs: who is where?
In the last section, I concentrated upon regional centres rather than firm’s actual
headquarters because, strangely, the latter is of rather less importance to our analysis.
Headquarters are usually a product of history, the origin city of a firm. This may be
of interest for studying initial conditions leading to a global scale firm, but when it
reaches the latter status it chooses its regional centres as part of its global strategy.
A term used to indicate the relative unimportance of headquarter locations is Wimbledonization. This refers to the situation in the City of London, where the fact that
only three of the top 50 banks have headquarters there is not detrimental to its overall
status as a global financial centre. All top 50 banks (and many more) find it necessary
to have offices in London — it is an essential place to be for banking/finance. Hence,
like the tennis tournament, London provides a premier site for foreigners to play
and win in. But, of course, London wins as well as it is reproduced as a global city.
This question of who is where can be neatly illustrated by a selective regional
look at law firms in and out of London. In Table 9 western European countries
outside the UK are divided into two groups: large countries (France, Germany, Italy,
Spain) and small countries (Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal,
Sweden, Switzerland — Belgium is not included because of the special case of
Brussels as ‘capital’ of the EU). The number of law firms which have branches in
London are roughly the same for these two groups. Although cities within these
countries have local monopoly knowledges, it seems they benefit by joining in London’s knowledge complex to boost the global side of their national–global articuTable 9
Branch offices of Western European law firms in London compared to top 30 London law firms offices
in Western Europe
Country group
In-out
Large
Small
In: W. European branches in London
Out: London branches in W. Europe
17
31
18
3
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
27
lations. In contrast, when it comes to London firms locating in western Europe, they
focus almost entirely on the big four countries. Paris, Milan, Madrid and Frankfurt
are part of the global network of London law firms in a way that Helsinki, Stockholm,
Amsterdam and Lisbon are not. The latter’s law firms need London, but this is not
reciprocated. This example could hardly be further from central place expectations,
but it is explicable in world city/monopoly terms with law firms selectively joining
knowledge complexes to further their global strategies.
Finally, there is one very interesting feature of law firms which is particularly
relevant to globalization debates: the concept of the ‘homeless firm’. In recent years,
some US law firms have declined to specify a headquarters in their organization.
They argue that as global firms, all their offices are global offices linked together
electronically in a single network. This is the case with the largest law firm in the
world, Baker and MacKenzie, who describe Chicago as their origin city and although
it remains their largest office they are emphatic that it is not their headquarters.
Rather they operate as a global partnership, with all partners of equal status and with
equal say in the running of the firm. Table 10 shows the world regional distribution
of partners and it is certainly impressive in its scope. Although the Chicago office
has the most partners (70 to London’s 40 in second place), there are more partners,
and cities with partners, in western Europe than the USA. In his critique of the
‘global firm’ concept, Dicken (1998) argues that however wide a firm’s global links,
it always maintains the business culture of its origins. Is Baker and MacKenzie a
US firm? Table 10 must cast doubt upon this and therefore suggests, in this case at
least, a global firm has been developed. This is suggestive of further research.
In conclusion: relations between cities across countries can be quite complex in
form; the one thing all the evidence does point to is that there is no global urban
hierarchy in the manner predicted by the central place model.
Continuing practice and theory
What I have presented is a glimpse, and only a glimpse, of what a political geography for the 21st century might look like. The limitations of the analyses are obvious:
despite great effort, data remains sparse, hinting at rather than definitely describing
Table 10
The international partners of Baker & MacKenzie by major world regions
World region
No. of partners
No. of cities with partners
Western Europe
Northern America (of which USA)
Pacific Asia (inc. Australia)
Latin America
Eastern Europe
Rest of world
206
172 (153)
105
69
14
5
15
10 (9)
9
12
8
2
28
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
city/state relations. But it is much more than a question of information. We still have
problems theorizing in a trans-state manner. As I have argued elsewhere, the social
sciences have developed as both creations and creatures of the states, so that statecentrism became embedded in their concepts and theories (Taylor, 1996). Political
geography, by taking the territorial state as its prime subject, found its own particular
niche in this state-centric thinking. To break free, we do not have to lessen our
concern for states, but rather to see them as one important element in a nexus of
power which straddles geographical scales. In fact, appreciation of the importance
of interlocking scales is an important general mode of dismantling state-centric
social sciences.
But we are right at the beginning of trans-state research in both practice and theory.
This is an on-going project to keep political geography, in particular, and social
sciences, in general, relevant to social changes under conditions of globalization. In
this final section I consider briefly what I believe to be two critical challenges for
practice and theory respectively. First, I return to the data question. I began by arguing that globalization should be interpreted as a tendency within contemporary social
change. All I have presented is data for a cross-sectional analysis of aspects of this
tendency at one point in time. Studying social change demands more than a single
cross-sectional trench of information. Second, we have followed the idea of territorial
concentrations of specialized knowledge in world cities, but have not confronted the
issue of knowledge between cities which has been called ‘global learning’. As well
as the territorial reflexivity, there would seem to be a need for a network reflexivity
under conditions of globalization.
GaWC as embryo
Whatever the reader’s opinion of the empirical analyses reported above, and I
have conceded limitations as I have proceeded, it is the best there is for studying
the whole global network of cities. This claim is not as immodest as it may seem:
these analyses are unique, they are the best of one. All the work reported derives
from a research project which is part of the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC)
Research Group and Network centred at Loughborough University. GaWC is also a
metageographical crusade, an evangelical movement to promote research on the
space of flows to counter the state-istics biases in social research. Clearly, the data
I have presented here can be greatly improved upon in both quantity and quality: I
offer an invitation to all to join in our attempts to create trans-state data sets which
will enable globalization to be put truly in its place. The web address is:
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/gy/research/gawc/.html. A visit will provide
details about GaWC, here I will just highlight two aspects.
It is not, of course, as if there has been no data collected on trans-state processes
since global social research began some quarter of a century ago; it is that the production of such data has been immensely dispersed and unco-ordinated. Without a
data collection agency overseeing trans-state data production, it is not just a matter
of this information not being brought together, it is not in a form where this is
possible. With a myriad of researchers measuring different aspects of different prac-
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
29
tices and institutions, there has been no possibility of comparability over cases or
over time. Hence any collection of existing data would likely be of limited utility.
At GaWC we have chosen to focus upon world cities to give us a simple empirical
hook in an interesting theoretical area. Given this focus, we are going back to basics
as will have become obvious. The first step is to have some standardization in what
is measured and how. Only then will an accumulation of data on world cities be
possible. Ways of achieving this goal are given in GaWC Briefing Papers on the
web site.
Standardization is, however, a dangerous research procedure for studying social
change. Providing common measures over time freezes our concepts in a world of
rapid change. GaWC must also, therefore, be a site for on-going debates about what
is measured, what the results mean, and how they can be improved. One way in
which this may be achieved is through the GaWC Research Bulletins, which use the
electronic medium in the way it is best suited: to make public research findings much
quicker than the slow process of traditional journal publication. These can be
accessed on the web site given above.
At present GaWC is only an embryo, please help us bring it to full term.
Network reflexivity?
The study of networks has traditionally been quite restricted in its scale of analysis.
There are numerous empirical analyses and much theorizing about small group interactions and linkages, but relatively little at larger scales. When we come to the worldeconomy as a whole, we have reached the Cinderella of understanding of networks.
And yet the whole notion of such an economy rests upon there being myriad transactions and flows within and across the whole system. Put simply, the modern worldsystem is defined by its networks, despite being largely studied through its mosaic
of states. For any reasonable advance in our theorizing of the world-system, we need
to consider systemic networks much more seriously than hitherto. I will conclude
in a conventional world-systems analysis manner and trace systemic networks before
the advent of contemporary globalization: network reflexivity, or something resembling it, has a history. Furthermore, this history concludes with an important change
in network structures under contemporary conditions of globalization.
There are two major systemic networks which have operated through the halfmillennia history of the modern world-system: the diplomatic network linking
governments in states to one another, and the commercial network linking firms in
cities to one another. Although one is inter-state and the other, typically, trans-state,
structurally both have operated in quite similar ways. Both are based upon investment
in collecting information, generically termed ‘intelligence’, to convert into knowledge to gain advantage in a complex world which is often viewed as anarchic. The
latter implies unpredictability and the information, which begins as local, is converted
into systemic knowledge to order the ‘anarchy’. In the case of diplomacy surveillance, intelligence and opinion are collected at national and regional levels, relayed
to the home capital cities, where the appropriate part of the state apparatus combines
it into a continually updated geopolitical code, the geographical guide to foreign
30
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
policy. In the case of commercial networks, similar processes are set in motion:
agents in different cities relay information on prices and prospects to their home
firm, where the strategic arm plans its investment and growth. In this way, the diplomatic network attempts to overcome the problem of operating in an anarchy of states
and the commercial network attempts to overcome operating in an anarchy of markets. Recognizing that knowledge is power, both networks operate under conditions
of secrecy to create what they hope will be information monopolies.
Despite these synergies, there has been one important difference in the two networks. Historically, the commercial network has a tendency to be much more hierarchical than the diplomatic network. In a dispersed market, buyers and sellers will
soon exceed their marginal costs — paying for large numbers of agents — in seeking
information over long distances. A systemic network can only fully develop beyond
pure speculative behaviour through a pooling of information in a central informationhandling city. This specialized information exchange can facilitate long distance
transactions by selling its monopoly information. Smith (1984) describes how
Amsterdam provided such a role in the early modern world-system. This city stood
at the apex of a hierarchy, functionally above regional cities which all looked to
Amsterdam for systemic networking. This is the role of hegemonic cities and later
London and New York were to become systemic apexes of knowledge in the 19th
and 20th centuries, respectively (Lee & Pelizzon, 1991). In contrast, although the
United Provinces, Kingdom and States were consecutive hegemonic states, their positions in the diplomatic political network was never so dominant. The nominal
Westphalian equality of states ensured multiple capital cities as centres of political
intrigue even during high hegemony.
Both networks have changed appreciably in recent years. In diplomacy, the bilateral relations which had dominated the organization of the network are being
undermined by more multi-lateral diplomacy in numerous international institutions
and frequent conferences (Berridge, 1995). And this has been reinforced by what
Der Derian (1987) calls techno-diplomacy. New communication advances have produced a new speed in what had been traditionally a leisurely pursuit with now “time
replacing space as the significant medium of diplomacy” (p. 208). No longer fearing
that distant ambassadors would “go native” (Berridge, 1995, p. 10–11), Der Derian
suggests this may be the beginning of the end of diplomacy as a means of mediating
between states. However, I would argue that, whereas time replaces space for information, it does not do so for knowledge; while there are states with different interests
and cultures, there will be inter-state diplomacy.
It is in the commercial world that the new communication revolution may be
genuinely revolutionary. To begin with, it has created a situation where the simple
hierarchy of past systemic commercial networks no longer obtains: with instant communication there can be global organization. Although there is a tendency towards
a ‘big 2, 3 or 4’ ‘global cities’ as we have seen, there are over 50 other cities we
have identified which have world city credentials. What we have is a complex world
city network which is forming and interacting with the interstates system as previously illustrated. There can no longer be a single centre at the apex of a knowledge
hierarchy as in the past. Rather, there is a network world to master of ‘interlocal’
P.J. Taylor / Political Geography 19 (2000) 5–32
31
monopolies of knowledges. For as well as local complexes of knowledge, world
cities have the critical relational role of linking into a global network. Advanced
producer service firms create global service products. Baker and MacKenzie, the last
firm we dealt with above for instance, call themselves “the global law firm”
(Beaverstock, Smith & Taylor, 2000). But to keep ahead in ‘global law’ or any other
global knowledge-based product requires a ‘global reflexivity’. This is much more
than the ‘global knowledge’ any major corporation must now acquire: reflexivity
implies a process, in this case global learning practices to develop unique ‘service’
products. This is a new, or at least an enhanced, form of reflexivity and learning
which goes far beyond the practitioners’ need to “negotiating their way through a
variety of cultural barriers in different parts of the world”, as Scott (1997, p. 334)
describes it.
Operating in a widely separated network requires different means for translating
knowledge into power and thus monopoly: we do not know even if it is possible to
replicate anything like regional or city territorialism at a global network scale, in
whole or in part. We do know that these global relations are not simply electronic,
they are literally embodied in the thousands of business trips made between world
cities on every working day. Whether the resulting contacts and cultural interactions
can produce the required degree of reflexivity to be worth appropriate investment in
‘global learning’ in a ‘deep’ sense is a key question for the future of globalization.
If the answer is yes, and organizational studies are exploring this issue (Parker, 1996;
Weick & Westley, 1996) especially in the new area of “international human resource
management” (Scullion, 1995), then the current tendency towards globalization will
be able to flourish in the new century as never before: global network reflexivity
will constitute a new anti-market nexus to add to Table 1. On the other hand, if
there is an ‘inevitable’ shallowness to global reflexivity, this may well be the Achilles
Heel of globalization: as a firm grows more globally, diminishing returns may set
in as the quality of information (and hence knowledge and hence power) declines
to create only very leaky monopolies at best. The jury is still out on the future
efficacy of reflexive network knowledge monopolies and hence on the future possibilities of globalization.
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