This is an empirical paper that measures and interprets changes in intercity relations at the global scale in the period 2000-08. It draws on the network model devised by the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) research group to measure global connectivities for 132 cities across the world in...

The business connections between Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai and other major world cities are investigated using the interlocking network model based upon the location strategies of advanced producer service firms. This approach emphasises non-hierarchical relations between cities. A key new...

The research constitutes the first effort to test the claim found in the world city theoretical literature that, as world cities strengthen ties with each other, their linkages with their countries’ hinterlands and national urban systems will weaken. This research offers a more nuanced...

This paper reports results from an analysis of the relationship between the structure of the city-to-city network of global airline passenger flows and the interstate world system. While many scholars suggest that the broader parameters of the world system structure the urban hierarchy embedded...

For the past 20 years, researches using the lens of world system theory (and other global political economy perspectives) have come to a better understanding of many of the anomalies in urbanisation patterns across more and less developed countries that had befuddled researchers whose...

The world's leading cities are linked to one another by the flow of commodities, information and people to form part of the fabric of the world system. They are linked hierarchically, with some cities occupying more prominent positions than others in this global network of urban places. While...

This article presents an analysis of the determinants of connectivity change in the world city network (WCN). Drawing on the theoretical research of Saskia Sassen and the subsequent empirical research of the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) group, connectivity in the WCN is measured through...

A number of researchers have recently tried to map the contours of a transnational urban network. Although these empirical studies have great merits in making a closer connection to theoretical ideas on a genuine urban network, they sometimes fail to recognise that the whole idea of cities as...