Introduction

From the moment the term was initially coined, world cities have been associated with the concentration of power and wealth within a global context (Geddes 1968; Hall 1966). Such centres; ‘cities with international destinies’, have always been at the core of the world economy (Braudel 1984). During the tumultuous decades following 1960, changes in the organization of international economic activity and in the nature of advanced corporate and financial services have prompted scholars to identify a system of world cities that appear to operate as global nodes for international business decision-making and corporate strategy formulation (Cohen 1981). This international urban system has been recognized in the world city hypothesis as a hierarchy of urban places ranked on the basis of their integration with the world economy. At the apex of the hierarchy are the global cities: sites of rapidly increasing concentrations of corporate power, international finance, and higher-order producer services (Friedmann 1986).

Although its principal exponents have always insisted that the world city concept was not a theory but a hypothesis in need of empirical verification, the world city idea, and its associated assumptions about the nature of urban development, has been absorbed rapidly into the lexicon of urban studies. This in itself should occasion little surprise; the concept has provided a useful heuristic for those struggling to conceptualize the complex linkages of the new global economy.