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Regionality in the world city network
Author(s) -
Taylor Peter J.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
international social science journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.237
H-Index - 43
eISSN - 1468-2451
pISSN - 0020-8701
DOI - 10.1111/j.0020-8701.2004.00499.x
Subject(s) - hierarchy , globalization , urban hierarchy , homogeneous , economic geography , world system , regional science , scale (ratio) , space (punctuation) , global network , geography , sociology , political science , politics , population , cartography , computer science , demography , computer network , physics , law , thermodynamics , operating system
Recent research on measuring world city network formation has shown a mixture of hierarchical and regional tendencies. Using specially created data, the relative importance of these tendencies, and different regional sets of world cities, are evaluated using a discriminant analysis research model. It is found that regionality is at least as important as hierarchy amongst world cities. This contradicts the world city literature where the concept of a “world city hierarchy” dominates and regional patterning of world cities is relatively neglected. As well as suggesting a reorientation in world cities research, these findings have wider implications for globalisation in general. The latter is not, and I argue cannot, produce a homogeneous global space, which is what a single global hierarchy implies. Rather, it is always the case that globalisation processes simultaneously create more than one large scale of social activity.