THE OTHER NATURE OF CITIES Peter J Taylor Department of Geography, Loughborough University, UK and M

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THE OTHER NATURE OF CITIESPeter J
TaylorDepartment of Geography, Loughborough
University, UKand Metropolitan Institute,
Virginia Tech, USAFounder of the Globalization
and World Cities (GaWC) Study Group and Network
(www.lboro.ac.uk)
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Introduction

• My starting point is that understanding cities
  requires TWO sets of knowledge
• What goes on inside cities (cities as places)
• And the external relations of cities (cities as
  networks).
• My argument in this talk is that the latter is
  the neglected element in urban studies this is
  my other nature of cities.
• In the process of developing this argument, I
  introduce a research program to help rectify the
  situation.

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A neglect of the external

• I will illustrate this assertion in a quite
  arrogant manner (which I hope you will forgive, I
  use it merely for effect).
• As someone from outside, I can make the following
  statement with a reasonable degree of confidence
• There is something quite major that we do NOT
  know about Mexico City - we do not know the
  answer to the question
• What are Mexico Citys inter-city relations with
  other major cities across the world?
• I am assuming that there is no research project
  that is designed to explicitly answer this VERY
  basic question.

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Mexico Citys Hinterworld

• I will provide a preliminary answer to this
  question with this hinterworld map of Mexico
  City.
• We may wish to discuss the details of this
  pattern later (they are interesting) but my point
  here is that this is an unusual (unique?)
  portrayal of the nature of Mexico City

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The Nature of Cities

• I draw the idea of the nature of cities from
  Harris and Ullmans 1945 classic article of that
  name. (Urban theory is internal)
• They identify two sides to this nature - an
  internal structure and external relations. This
  started a tradition of urban studies that treated
  cities and towns in this dual form
• the INTERNAL tends to be SOCIAL
• the EXTERNAL tends to be ECONOMIC.
• However, whether you are studying the internal
  or the external it is still the same city. This
  argument was famously expressed by Berry in his
  1964 article Cities as Systems within Systems
  of Cities

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The National Urban Systems School

• The external in Berrys neat phrase developed
  into the National Urban Systems school of
  research
• This school was dominated by the idea of
  national urban hierarchies
• either the RANK SIZE RULE indicating a
  sophisticated national economy
• or the PRIMATE CITY PATTERN indicating a simple
  national economy).
• This research grew in the 1960s, flowered in the
  1970s, and severely declined in the 1980s.
• By the end of the 1980s there was a definite
  internalist turn in urban studies which led to
  a widespread neglect of external relations.

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The World City School

• Seemingly countering the internalist turn, the
  world city school of research was spawned in the
  1980s and flowered in the 1990s.
• This produced three main core ideas
• Friedmanns command and control in a world city
  hierarchy (1986)
• Sassens advanced producer services at the global
  city trinity apex of the urban hierarchy (1991)
• Castells space of flows with the global city as
  network process (1996)
• Strangely, despite these externalist frameworks,
  most research in this school has been
  internalist! There are two problems.

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Non-hierarchical city theory

• There is one urban theorist who does not use a
  hierarchical framework
• Jane Jacobs Cities and the Wealth of Nations
• She makes 5 key points
• The myth of national economies
• Dynamic cities
• The import replacement process
• City network development
• The mutuality of cities

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Data Deficiency

• The basic problem has been a data deficiency
  situation.
• Quite simply there is little or no data on
  inter-city relations even within countries.
• At the global level, there is virtually nothing
  beyond infra-structure descriptions.
• My conclusion is that you have to produce your
  own data.
• The result is GaWC, wherein we focus on
  inter-city relations at a global scale and to do
  this we have to produce the necessary data.

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Firms are the Key Actors

• But you just cant go out and collect data.
• You have to have a conceptual framework to direct
  data collection.
• For this research, this means precise
  SPECIFICATION of the world city network based on
  theory.
• For me, the personal breakthrough was to
  understand city networks as INTERLOCKING
  NETWORKS.
• In this specification, cities are NOT the key
  actors
• World city network formation is largely the
  product of global service firms attending to the
  needs of their global clients.
• Thus, we avoid reification of cities.

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The GaWC 100

• The results I produce here are based upon the
  global location strategies of 100 global service
  firms
• 18 in accountancy
• 15 in advertising
• 23 in banking/finance
• 11 in insurance
• 16 in law
• 17 in management consultancy.
• Each of these GaWC 100 firms has offices in at
  least 15 cities across the world. The office
  network of each firm has been numerically coded
  across 315 cities world wide.
• The result is a 100 firms x 315 cities matrix (
  31,500 pieces of information).

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World City Connectivities

• From the data collected we have computed global
  network connectivities. The top 123 cities are
  shown here
• You may be surprised by how high Mexico City
  ranks as a connected world city. In fact, Mexico
  City, with a score of 0.49, is not well served by
  this map. In fact it is ranked 18th overall
  between San Francisco and Zurich and well above
  the likes of Washington DC, Moscow, Shanghai, etc.

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The Top 25
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Concluding Remarks

• Finally, what does this sort of research mean? I
  think it is more exciting for its theoretical
  potential than its empirical surprises.
• We are producing a new world geography.
• It is a geography of a global space of flows.
• A fascinating question is how does it relate to
  old geographies that continue to be important
  spaces of places notably the world mosaic of
  states and world-system economic zones?

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THE OTHER NATURE OF CITIESPeter J
TaylorDepartment of Geography, Loughborough
University, UKand Metropolitan Institute,
Virginia Tech, USAFounder of the Globalization
and World Cities (GaWC) Study Group and Network
(www.lboro.ac.uk)