The Dictionary of Human Geography

to a network of global cities that spanned
the globe as the skeleton of the globalecon-
omy. They suggested that ‘[t]he world city
‘‘approach’’ is, in the first instance, a method-
ology, a point of departure, an initial hypoth-
esis. It is a way of asking questions and
of bringing footloose facts into relation’
(Friedmann and Wolff, 1982, p. 320). Observ-
ing the emerging globalized world economy
with its central actors, thetransnational cor-
porations, Friedmann and Wolff put forth the
hypothesis that there would be a hierarchical
system of urban regions, in which this world
economic system would find its most typical
socio-spatial expression. They assumed that ‘a
small number of massive urban regions that we
shall call world cities’ would be at the apex of
this hierarchy (Friedmann and Wolff, 1982).
They present the world cities as a flexible and
ever-changing group of command centres of
the world economy. The extent and nature of
theirintegrationinto that economy can only
be determined through empirical research in
each city. The rapid changes that these urban
regions are going through can specifically be
studied in the areas of economic, social and
physicalrestructuring. Political conflict at
variousscalesof the formation of the world
city can be expected and is itself productive of
the world city. In particular, the gulf between
the globalized ‘citadel’ of the elite and the
‘ghetto’ of the popular classes will continue
to widen and create tension in the political
landscape of the global city. In 1986, John
Friedmann added a more precise taxonomy
of global city development, as he presented
seven interrelated theses that added up the
‘world city hypothesis’:

(1) The form and extent of a city’s integra-
tion with the world economy, and the
functions assigned to the city in the new
spatialdivision of labour, will be de-
cisive for any structural changes occur-
ring within it.
(2) Key cities throughout the world are
used byglobalcapital as ‘basing points’
in the spatial organization and articula-
tion of production andmarkets.
(3) The global control functions of world cit-
ies are reflected in the structure and dy-
namics of their production sectors and
employment.
(4) World cities are major sites for the con-
centration andaccumulationof inter-
national capital.
(5) World cities are points of destination
for large numbers of both domestic

and/or international migrants (see

migration).

(6) World city formation brings into focus the

major contradictions of industrialcapit-

alism– among them spatial andclass

polarization.

(7) World city growth generates social costs

at rates that tend to exceed the fiscal

capacity of the state.

Friedmann also impacted the way in which

from now on world cities would be viewed by

proposing a powerful image of networked

interconnectedness showing the articulation

of primary and secondary world cities in the

core and the semi-periphery. The tremendous

impact of the ‘world city hypothesis’ was sub-

ject to an international conference in 1993,

from which the first multidisciplinary collec-

tion of global city essays was drawn (Knox and

Taylor, 1995). In a review of the empirical

and theoretical work done since his methodo-

logical intervention from 1982, Friedmann

detected a livelyparadigm that had grown

from the original propositions (1995).

In the meantime, Saskia Sassen had

publishedThe global city: New York, London,

Tokyo(2001 [1991]), which made her instantly

the most prominent scholar in the rapidly

expanding field. In this and subsequent publi-

cations, Sassen drew attention to the global city

as a production site of the kind of internation-

ally oriented business services that pushed for

dominance in the global economy. These pro-

ducer services (finances, law, marketing, ad-

vertising etc.) relied on regional production

complexes, which remained tangible and led

to more metropolitanization and urbanization

despite the increased availability of networked

electronic means ofcommunication, which

suggestedthe growing independence from fixed

spatial arrangements. WhileThe global cityfo-

cused on the cities at the top of the global hie-

rarchy – New York, London, Tokyo – Sassen

expanded her argument in a short but incisive

bookCities in a world economy(2006 [2000]),

which identified and isolated specific strategic

places where the globalized economy is taking

shape: export processing zones, offshore

banking centres, high-tech districts and global

cities. Sassen insists on the interdependence

of these disparate spaces as much as on the

regional economy being the basis of the global

city. Scott (2001, p. 4) similarly suggests

that global city-regions serve ‘as territorial

platforms for much of thepost-fordistecon-

omy that constitutes the dominant leading

edge of contemporary capitalistdevelopment,

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GLOBAL CITIES/WORLD CITIES