Cities and globalization: An international cities perspective

This paper adopts an international cities perspective for the study of major cities in the world, using data on 100 service firms in 314 cities provided by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network (GaWC). Firms and cities have different degrees of internationalization, with many firms, for example, having only a regional focus with modest global coverage. Many international cities, in turn, also show only partial evidence of internationalization; only a few qualify as truly "world cities" that function as dominant command centers of the world economy. There is a good correspondence between regional firms and regional clusters of cities (e.g., Asia-oriented firms and Asian open cities).