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This paper reviews the formidable but selective influence of Castells' analysis of the network society and the information revolution. First, the paper argues that the theorization and the style of writing this type of grand theory have both contributed to the success of those papers but also limited their long‐term influence. Second, it argues that Castells decisively contributed to identify the importance of global networks. However, his systematic use of this social form to explain the transformations proved in part misleading. Third, his analysis of spatial transformations is particularly interesting. As an urban sociologist, he has developed a sophisticated framework to articulate cities and urbanization processes in relation to global networks, neither reifying cities nor abandoning the concept contrasting European cities with metropolitan regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the current relevance of Anssi Paasi's 2002 paper Bounded Spaces in the Mobile World: Deconstructing 'Regional Identity'. Using Paasi's conceptual tools to analyse the cultivation of a thin regional identity discourse of the metropolitan region Amsterdam, it is shown how the construction of a large upmarket housing estate in the small town of Muiden near Amsterdam is legitimised. Paasi's conceptual tools also help to analyse the use of a traditional thick local identity discourse by the local population. This illustrates the growing importance of thickening resistance identities in reaction to the neoliberal policies promoting globalisation. When Paasi wrote this paper at the turn of the century, the world was opening up, which challenged established identities. Today, we see a revival of thickening identities again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically reviews the urban systems literature adopting graph‐theoretical conceptions of 'network analysis'. A network‐analytical approach allows specifying and measuring how cities interact, the importance and roles of cities in these interactions, and some of the key characteristics of the urban system as a whole. Throughout the paper, the focus is on 'world city network' research. After an overview of how network analysis first entered this literature and subsequently developed into a vibrant research agenda, the paper clarifies the use of network analysis by comparing two different network approaches. This is then used to discuss the potential and challenges/pitfalls associated with the use of network analysis, respectively. It is argued that the combination of careful abstraction and the methodological opportunities offered by network analysis offers geographers a powerful methodological toolkit. At the same time, a permanent appraisal of the real versus the alleged potential of network analysis is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2024 TESG Forum revisits Anssi Paasi's 2001 article Bounded Spaces in the Mobile World: Deconstructing 'Regional Identity'. This work expanded Paasi's ideas on the institutionalisation of regions by highlighting the interplay between the social construction of regions and the changing regional identities of individuals and communities in the context of Europeanisation. The article places Paasi's theoretical work on how regions emerge as bounded spaces in the whirlwind of a rapidly globalising world. In exploring the relation between regions and identity, Bounded Spaces in the Mobile World reveals tensions between fixity and mobility. Revisiting this important paper 20 years later makes us realise how the world around us has changed. The tension between mobility and fixity remains but in different imaginaries and power constellations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper begins with an introduction into the interlocking network model (INM) initially specified by Peter Taylor in the context of the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) research network. For that purpose, the intellectual background, purpose, key principles and subsequent applications of the INM are presented. Since the overall purpose of the Special Issue is to take research inspired by the INM further, this paper gives, second, an overview of some of the main critiques raised against the INM. Third, the relevance of the different papers of the Special Issue is framed within these critiques. The papers in the Special Issue can be divided in two groups: while the first set discusses the measurement framework, the second focuses on the conceptual remit of the INM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's domestic mobile gaming firms, such as Tencent, which has developed into the world's biggest gaming firm by revenues in a short span, have outweighed the leading counterparts in the Western advanced economies. Despite an increasing attention has been paid to the global investment of Chinese gaming firms, this paper argues that their market expansion has focused on the selected Southeast Asian countries. This arguement is developed through the aurthors' extensive field investigation and personal interviews with games developers and publishers in Shenzhen, where Tencent is located, during the early 2017 and late 2019. We showcase that the protective multi‐scalar institutions in which the Chinese gaming firms have dominated in the domestic market, have prevented the overseas market expansion of these firms. Although the government‐designated extra‐local inter‐firm collaboration has helped narrow the technological gaps and articulate China's firms into the global production networks, the market gaps between the domestic and western economies have not been overcome in the expansion to overseas markets. This study sheds light on that the market expansion of Chinese gaming firms has stucked in a dilemma between globalization and regionalization. While China's domestic gaming firms, particularly Tencent, have been evolving into lead firms in the global games production networks, their market power has been confined at domestic and regional levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of knowledge spillovers from neighbouring regions on regional industrial diversification should not be overlooked. Here we are referring to not only intra‐industry knowledge spillovers from neighbouring regions, but also the spread of knowledge from related industries in neighbouring regions. This paper also develops an analytical framework that pays more attention to the role of institutional proximity between regions and how it is associated with geographical and cognitive proximity, and acknowledges that institutional proximity may generate asymmetric effects in the process of inter‐regional knowledge spillovers. Using the Chinese custom database during 2002–11, we confirm that knowledge spillovers from neighbouring regions play a key role in regional industrial diversification. More importantly, inter‐regional knowledge spillovers are likely to occur more efficiently if two regions have similar institutional contexts. It is also shown that institutional proximity could generate asymmetric effects in inter‐regional knowledge spillovers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Windows on the Netherlands addresses the economic geography of commodity trade by providing insights from two Dutch port cities: Rotterdam and Amsterdam. It is argued that commodity traders provide an empirical site for uncovering the missing links between research on world cities on the one hand, and global commodity chains on the other. Commodity trading is compelling as it is linked both with the financial sector (financing and paper trade) and with the production and distribution of commodities (storage and transportation). However, these two activities do not necessarily need to be in geographical proximity. Rotterdam and Amsterdam handle large volumes of commodities flowing through their ports, but the trading desks of the large commodity houses handle the trade transactions. There is a strong presence of the world's largest commodity traders in the Netherlands, which include not only the port-based physicaloperational functions but also the trading desks, treasuries and holding companies. The paper concludes with an overview of avenues for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on a suite of research studies examining the metamorphosis in industry organisation, as Penrose calls it, regarding the centrality of firm capabilities in biosciences. Whereas knowledge leadership capabilities used to be inside global corporations now they have given way to university laboratories and dedicated biotechnology firm networks to access innovative research. The basic argument is that research centre and small firm knowledge capabilities have generally outstripped those of the multinationals in knowledge-intensive industry, a consequence of which is a re-alignment in cause-and-effect outcomes shaping economic geography. This is particularly pronounced in biosciences and pharmaceuticals. The paper mobilises a new theoretical framework and new data that support the thesis that a realignment of industry organisation around knowledge capabilities was pioneered in biosciences, is active in other industries, and biosciences is now entering a new phase. This mirrors a rise in systems biology that re-asserts the dominance of key nodes in global bioeconomy hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1980s there has been a renewed interest in regional inequality, fuelled by the concern over the effects of globalisation and liberalisation, and facilitated by theoretical and methodological developments in geography and economics. In essence, the new convergence theory, like the old convergence theory, is another theory devoid of space and time. Research on China has unfolded a complex landscape of regional development, the existence of distinct models of regional development, and the significant role of institutions. This paper examines regional inequality in China, especially Zhejiang Province, and attempts to uncover the trend and driving forces of regional inequality. It adopts a top-down and bottom-up strategy and employs recent developments in exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) and geographically weighted regression (GWR). We have found that regional inequality is sensitive to geographic scales and spatial organisation, and that conventional approaches mask spatial agglomeration and the significance of regions in shaping trends of regional inequality. Overall, regional inequality in Zhejiang rose during the reform period and a division between coastal and interior Zhejiang formed, additionally sustained by weak linkages between the two regions and the significance of location and nonstate enterprises in development. This paper further reveals the emergence of Wenzhou, and discusses its effect on regional inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration has been a significant and controversial part of Australian history since 1947, but the nature and composition of Australian immigration and the policies and philosophies of immigrant settlement have changed considerably over that time, particularly in the last few decades of globalisation. The aim of this paper is to assess the changing political economy of Australian immigration in two senses. First, the paper presents an overview of the major changes to the dynamics of the Australian immigration experience that have accompanied globalisation. Second, the paper investigates how the political economy of Australian immigration developed in the 1970s differs from a political economy of contemporary Australian immigration. The paper argues that the traditional political economy emphasis on immigration as providing a reserve army of unskilled migrant labour must be replaced by a version of political economy that not only includes labour across all permanent and temporary categories but that also has a stronger focus on immigrant settlement and migrant lives, including debates about national identity. In order to do this, the paper argues, it is important for traditional political economy to draw on new sensibilities and insights about the contemporary immigration experience that emerge from interdisciplinary insights drawn from disciplines outside the traditional political economy foundations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper refers to the establishment of the Great Limpopo on the South Africa-Mozambique-Zimbabwe border and the Kgalagadi on the South Africa-Botswana border to illuminate the involvement of actors under conditions that cannot more appropriately be captured by analyses that place emphasis on particular scales. It reaffirms the view that the global-local infusion involves actors at multiple levels. To that end, the paper uses the debate about global-local connections as an interpretative framework for understanding various actors involved in the creation of transfrontier parks in southern Africa. Drawing from case study material in the Great Limpopo and Kgalagadi Transfrontier Parks, the paper shows that changing conservation philosophies, the socio-political environment, economic imperatives and conditions in and around national parks combined to make the region favourable to the new nature conservation schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational grocery retailers increasingly dispose of their foreign subsidiaries. The existing literature on this development mainly focuses on the perspective of transnational retailers on their own divestments, and neglects the view of the actors in the remaining market. Addressing this bias, this paper analyses the dynamics and drivers of foreign divestment from the host market perspective. It is based on data from qualitative interviews with host market competitors and sold subsidiaries of transnational retailers in Turkey. The research reveals that, while home market actors present their divestments as strategic decisions, for the host market's actors the TNCs' divestments are stories of failure. We propose a holistic framework of the foreign divestment decision process showing that a divestment decision is not just the inverse of an investment decision. This framework incorporates pull factors (reasons to reallocate resources), push factors (host market hurdles) and foreign retailers' possibilities to take on the challenges in foreign markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we aim to understand the internationalisation strategies of companies from India and China. In particular we focus on two external organisational modes: mergers and acquisitions ( M& As) and strategic technology alliances. Using a large longitudinal data set we show that Greater China and India are emerging as important players in worldwide M& As and alliances whereas the traditional dominance of the US in both these activities is on the decline. Our analysis of the patterns of M& As and alliances revealed important similarities and differences between the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses in a personal appreciation of the literature whether the 'interlocking world city network model' (IWCNM) has contributed to overcoming the evidential crisis of world or global city research. After a brief summary of the main arguments made by John Friedmann and Saskia Sassen, the paper deduces methodological implications that follow from their economicgeographical conceptualisation of global cities. In the third and fourth sections of the paper I recapitulate the rationale(s) given by Peter Taylor for the IWCNM and assess the model's contribution to empirically corroborating the global city concept. The paper's main claim is that the IWCNM bypasses the theoretical core of the global city paradigm, for which reason an evidential crisis continues to undermine the strength of the global city argument. Accordingly, in the last section of the paper a research strategy is proposed that is apt to take global city studies a step forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the late 1990s, the establishment of a new relational 'turn' in the study of world city connectedness in globalisation has run parallel to the wider relational turn occurring in economic geography. Early work, built firmly upon a qualitative approach to the collection and analyses of new intercity datasets, considered cities as being constituted by their relations with other cities. Subsequent research, however, would take a strong quantitative turn, best demonstrated through the articulation of the inter-locking world city network (ILWCN) 'model' for measuring relations between cities. In this paper, we develop a critique of research based around the ILWCN model, arguing that this 'top down' quantitative approach has now reached a theoretical impasse. To address this impasse, we argue for a move away from structural approaches in which the firm is the main unit of analysis, towards qualitative approaches in which individual agency and practice are afforded greater importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Logistics services providers present similarities with main advanced producer services as, besides their operational functions, they manage highly elaborated informational flows in order to run supply chains. Thanks to detailed information on employees provided by the social network LinkedIn, this paper proposes a World City Network analysis applied to main logistics providers operating in Italy, that focus only on knowledge and management activities. LinkedIn also allows decomposing firms' value chains and permits to develop interlocking networks dedicated to firms divisions. Italian advanced logistics appears to be primarily attracted by knowledge rich environments, rather than infrastructural nodes. The Italian network is centralised in Milan. Though, rather than an exclusive command centre, Milan acts as a hub, where part of the information and power are distributed in certain secondary cities, depending on their sectorial and geographical specificities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regions have gained importance over the last decades. Old regions have picked up momentum while novel forms of municipal co-operation and multi-level governance have generated new regions. This paper examines the extent to which some new regions in the Netherlands have become familiar to the population, based on evidence from an analysis of newspaper articles. The study focused on the reports about several old and new regions within the borders of the traditional region of Noord-Brabant, a Dutch province with a well-established identity. In the dynamic constellation of Noord-Brabant, news reports hinted at the institutionalisation of some of the new regions that have become meaningful places outside the administrative context in which they were originally created. The institutionalisation of some new regions did not result in a de-institutionalisation of older regions in the same area but in a more complex layering of the identities of these regions with respect to each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mediatised public sphere in Europe seems to be put at risk by the growing importance attached to commercial values in the Media. At the same time, the Westphalian framework of political publicity is said to be diminishing in scale due to globalisation. However, both affirmations are not necessarily true in cross-border metropolitan regions. As suggested in this paper, based on a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of a free daily publication located in the cross-border urban region of Luxembourg, commercial media can help to reconfigure a neo-Westphalian and territorial public sphere made of linear and network-like borders. It is not so much the source of income of the media and the functional dynamics of international urban areas which determine the future of the mediatised public sphere and its territorial background in borderlands Europe but the values of plural reporters in a changing economic and cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Processes of globalisation create flows of goods and information and lead to the phenomenon of transnational cultural processes. The culture of food consumption is a distinct example for this. The paper aims to unravel the way tribal farmers of Kerala are integrated into the global economy. This is linked to the question how intermediaries construct global production networks (GPN) and play a bridging role in the diffusion of information. This includes, for example, information on the circumstances of production as well as the distinctive life-style consumption of consumers. Based on the case of organic pepper, grown by indigenous Mannan people, it will show how the embeddedness of the production of pepper is marketed in another cultural surrounding. The paper combines the GPN approach with elements from the global value chain and the commodity cultures literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalisation and its consequent economic restructuring have implications at the local level. At the same time historical paths and traditions, embeddedness of local actors and institutional factors have all become significant in explaining different neighbourhood trajectories and, particularly, the patterns of urban segregation that emerge following economic restructuring. Given the unusual nature of the Spanish housing model and the massive arrival of immigrants since the end of the 1990s, this paper explores the urban effects of immigration settlement patterns in the context of a market dominated by owner-occupation and a unique framework of social housing policy. Purchase of permanent residences is an essential step in the housing careers of the Spanish population but also for immigrants to Spain. The paper analyses the extent to which this influences urban segregation patterns and neighbourhood characteristics in Spain. Barcelona is referred to as a case study, to illustrate the influence of the existing housing system in the process of the accommodation of newcomers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate around neoliberal globalisation and its impacts on economically peripheral countries has been waged by partisan forces to the right and left since the early 1990s. Much of this debate focuses at the scale of the nation-state, or of the whole globe, and, while often sophisticated in an ideological sense, is scant in terms of consideration of the ‘grounded’ outcomes of the processes and discourses of globalisation. This paper argues that an appreciation of the contingent economic geography and political economy of any given local and regional transformation is essential for understanding the outcomes of economic globalisation. In order to illustrate this, the paper analyses two regional non-traditional agricultural export (NTAX) complexes in the highly globalised Chilean economy. By focusing on ‘hotspots’ or ‘globalised spaces’ at the regional and local scales we are able to cut through the rhetoric associated with generalised arguments for and against economic globalisation and illustrate that both the roots and impacts of the insertion into global commodity complexes are highly geographically contingent. Our analysis concludes that NTAX development in Chile over the past 25 years has radically restructured local and regional economies, has concentrated wealth ‘extra-regionally’, has exacerbated social differentiation, and threatens environmental sustainability. We argue that policy that seeks to address these trends requires more grounded consideration of the complex and uneven geography of economic globalisation that does not privilege analysis at any one scale and that seeks to elucidate the links between the ‘global’ and the ‘local’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent theoretical advances point to the dynamic and plural nature of processes of identity formation. Moreover, the ascendance of the globalisation paradigm implies a greater emphasis on their geographical dimension in terms of place and mobility. Illustrated with the case of Miami, this paper presents a theoretical argument about place, mobility and identity in contemporary global cities. The need to go beyond conventional and singular categories of identity is argued, with special reference to the impact of rapid increases in spatial mobility. In this paper, the role of Miami's different populations is framed in the context of their geographical identities and the ways they identify with Miami as locals, exiles and cosmopolitans. The high mobility of Miami's population and the small number of locals pose some major challenges, with implications for this city's civil society. The case of Miami also sheds a different, and less idealistic, light on the meaning of cosmopolitanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question that drives this paper is: When can we expect firm upgrading by developing-country suppliers in global value chains will lead to improvements in labour conditions? To deal with this question we, (a) position firm upgrading in the global value chain approach, (b) investigate existing evidence and conceptualisations on how economic globalisation impacts on labour, and (c) develop some hypotheses on when we can expect firm upgrading and improvements in labour conditions to go together. We conclude that firm upgrading in developing-country suppliers in global value chains as a rule does not lead to improvements in labour conditions. Instead, the much broader and more forceful process of immiserising growth makes it very unlikely that workers in such relatively low-skilled production activities will enjoy improvements in labour conditions. Ethical sourcing may lead to improvements in labour conditions of core workers in final product manufacturers and key supplier firms, but it is as yet unclear to what extent such a business model can and will be disseminated. More generally, even though economic globalisation does selectively create new jobs, even labour conditions of core workers may be under pressure while the overall proportion of core workers appears to be declining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper shows how the control over land and resources in rural Thailand in the present phase of globalisation is a struggle between economic, social and political powers at the global, national and local level. Ever since Thailand was integrated into the world market by signing the Bowring Treaty in 1855 and especially after it embarked on rapid development in the late 1950s economic growth has changed the rural (and urban) landscapes. Since the mid 1980s, export-oriented manufacturing industry has led Thailand into the present phase of globalisation by further liberalising its economy and increasingly leaving natural resources open to be exploited. Two socio-political tendencies have been competing in influencing territorialisation of rural Thailand. However, decentralisation and devolution of power promote local institutions that emphasise various degrees of self-reliance and sustainable utilisation of natural resources opposed to further liberalisation on the world market as promoted by national and transnational businesses and global institutions like the WTO Agreement on Agriculture. Territorialisation of rural Thailand and management of local natural resources is therefore contested space where institutions at the local level operate in a contextual framework of policies formulated at the global level and implemented through national government agencies. The conflicts inherent in the multi-layered process of local territorialisation are blurred by the different institutions at different geographical levels having different perceptions of the environment. Political ecology or political environmental geography – promoted by a ‘counter-coalition’ of potentially like-minded actors operates on various levels in developing alternative territorialisation premised on socially just and sustainable livelihoods. Such approaches, it is proposed, are crucial to the study of local development in the context of globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper explores new insights generated by livelihood research with respect to poverty problems in the world and how people deal with global challenges. Through the examination of the changing outlines of livelihood in the present era of globalisation, the authors unravel the fuzzy relationship between globalisation and local development from an actor point of view. First, the paper analyses the historical and theoretical context in which the modern livelihood approach developed, followed by a short explanation of its contemporary definition. Globalisation trends in livelihoods are then considered in order to determine the consequences for local development. The main issues reviewed are the decomposition of households, the increased diversification of livelihoods, and the emergence of multi-local livelihoods and livelihood networks. In the conclusion it is argued that the future agenda on local development in development geography should include the study of rooted and dispersed livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the systematic, though often unacknowledged, gendered nature of much of current globalisation discourse and argues for the need to give attention to the gendered dimensions of the transnational flows of people into global cities and, relatedly, the gendering of metropolitan space in the process. The paper focuses on Singapore, an aspiring global city, to investigate how global city spaces are transgressed by transnational migrants who may challenge, inflect or reaffirm the gendered spatial boundaries with which the city is scripted. In particular, it focuses on three groups of women — expatriate wives, wives of Singaporean men working overseas, and foreign domestic workers — to unmask the gendering at work as well as the gendered implications of transnationalism in Singapore's state-led drive to global city status; and to demonstrate that the production of the global city cannot be decoupled from ideas and assumptions about what constitutes the desirable Asian family and women's work within the household. For expatriate wives, often reduced to dependent spouse status by immigration laws, community work becomes the third space in which they renegotiate and extend the scope of their identities as mothers, wives and homemakers. Wives of Singaporean men working overseas, however, appear to accept more readily their socially expected role as the cultural defenders and carriers of their families and the nation. And it is clear that the transnational movement of foreign domestic workers rests on gender-stereotyped assumptions about women's role in the labour market vis-à-vis the household economy. The paper concludes by suggesting three interrelated starting points to address the need to incorporate gendered understandings in the burgeoning research on globalising cities: first, for women to be reinstated in analyses of transnational flows; second, for a stronger focus to be given to the social relations within households,... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time zones are an under researched topic in geography. In this paper, their political construction is examined, and the conflicts that can arise between biological temporalities on one hand and the interests of international business and state politics on the other are discussed. A detailed map of major deviations from theoretical time zones in China and Europe is presented. The geographically complex and uneven adoption of daylight saving time is also shown on a map. An extended case study of time zone politics in Iceland is then presented. Its current time zone allocation has been contested from two very different viewpoints, where business concerns and geographical position are in conflict. Finally, new challenges to the global time zone system, arising from the increased economic globalisation and opportunities for social interaction in the new reality of cyberspace, are discussed. The concept of 'time elasticity' is proposed for partially grappling with these conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of aquaculture in the fishery sector is increasing. The growth of aquaculture complements the stagnant growth of extractive fisheries. Many countries are now entering this emerging economic activity. This positive feature has some serious drawbacks when the country has no local institutions to ensure the environmental sustainability of aquaculture. The Chilean salmon farming industry has grown dramatically since the mid-1980s to become the leading exporter of farmed salmon after Norway. The sector, however, suffered decline due to the sanitary crisis in 2007. It is said that this crisis was caused by overexploitation and overconcentration of fish farms. This paper tries to explain the mechanisms of the sanitary crisis - a 'tragedy of the commons' - by paying attention to the role of endogenous factors such as local knowledge, capacity building, local ecological conditions and the emergence of local institutions, focusing on the case of salmon farming in Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue aims at advancing the debate about the interpretative power of evolutionary perspectives on economic development and institutional change. In the introduction, we argue that the interpretative power of the current evolutionary approach can be improved by elaborating an 'augmented' perspective to economic development, which explicitly integrates the role of institutions and the dynamics of natural resource sectors (e.g. agro-food) into the analysis. We maintain that such a theoretical and empirical advancement can help to define a conceptual framework that is more suitable to analyse innovation-driven change, differentiated development patterns, opportunities and constraints for developing countries in the globalised knowledge economy. A collection of papers that adopt this perspective are discussed in order to prove the interpretative power of this approach in a variety of development contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper charts a personal research journey that begins with the specification of the interlocking network model for cities and concludes with interpretation of cities as truly extraordinary. Three products of this model are discussed. First, this very specific model has generated a mini-literature on cities in globalisation and this is briefly outlined. Second, the model has been interpreted as a generic description of inter-city relations - central flow theory - and this is illustrated using historical examples. Third, there is a discussion of criticisms of the model and the relevance of green networks of extraordinary cities for thinking about the future of humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature on world city networks, there has been a proliferation of both theories and measurement methodologies, but relatively little attention to the linkage between theory and measurement. In this paper, I review the interlocking world city network model (IWCNM) and three additional bipartite projection-based measures of the world city network, considering which theoretical conception of the 'world city network' construct each can validly measure. I introduce a new Stata command, onemode, to compute these four measures, and use them to produce world city networks from three publicly available datasets on advanced producer services, international organisations, and engineering and architecture firms. The results suggest that each projection-based measure is potentially valid, but only for a corresponding understanding of the world city network. Researchers are encouraged to clearly define what they mean when invoking the phrase 'the world city network,' and only then selecting a measurement that is valid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last few decades professional service firms have increasingly expanded their activities beyond national borders and established international offices throughout the world. This paper describes and analyses spatial patterns of internationalisation within the engineering consulting sector. By mapping expansion biographies of European engineering consulting firms and conducting dynamic Cox regression models, external factors influencing international market selection are examined. It is shown that current spatial patterns are only partly shaped by the declining importance of cross-national distance. Instead, market seeking motivations and the exploitation of time-critical opportunities appear to be of more significance. Further, changing patterns of market selection are observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The economic restructuring and the new economic conditions that arose out of the waves of globalisation has resulted in significant impacts on the labour markets, which in turn have led to social transformation. The characteristics of the new economic structure and the changes in demand for labour are important in the dispersal of the benefits of competitiveness among the different social groups. Several issues that shape the labour markets, such as education, gender, division of labour and the social organisation of work, are important in redefining the impacts of economic restructuring on the income and well-being of the different social groups. The aim of this paper is to discuss the role of social capital in the adaptation of individuals to the conditions imposed by the recent economic changes and restructuring while also revealing other impacts of this process on the people. In order to find out to what extent social capital contributes to the challenges posed by the ongoing economic transformation and the continuing economic crisis on the people and households, an empirical work based in Izmir (Turkey) is presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the changes in the Antwerp Schipperskwartier, one of the oldest and largest red light districts on the European continent. While the geography of sex work has received considerable scholarly attention since the 1970s, such analyses have focused upon the interplay between market pressures and sexual values in the production of sexual spaces. This paper takes a different stance, as it analyses the Schipperskwartier's restructuring in the light of the globalisation of the sex industry. This analysis reveals how more attention should be paid to globalisation's local mediation (glocalisation) in the analysis of the changing urban geographies of sex work. Such an approach not only supports the interpretation of local diversity in the urban geographies of sex work. It also conveys a more politicised understanding as it zooms in on the political struggles in which new urban geographies of sex work unfold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper inspects the territorial and state restructuring of the globalising city-region of Tangier. It argues that recent economic growth and transnational connections follow new forms of entrepreneurial development that aggravate social and spatial inequalities. The analysis shows that these forms of urban and regional management are embedded in the neoliberalised, yet monarch-centric Moroccan state. Analysis of local governance arrangements demonstrates the pivotal importance of an elite cadre of urban managers within the monarchic power structure. Fieldwork evidence documents the emergence of megaprojects as preferred vehicles for entrepreneurial development through site observations, indepth interviews and archival research. The Tanger City Center project presents a case that illustrates the social and spatial implications of a restructuring territorial economy and the effects of new polarities being overlaid on existing urban and regional geographies. The paper concludes with a reflection on the comparative and relational lessons that can be drawn from Tangier's restructuring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes the framework of the ‘economics of proximity’ to distinguish between territory-based and agent-based proximity approaches in dealing with the dynamic interaction between changes in the organisation of production on the one hand and the role of territory on the other. The paper sets out to determine which of these approaches works best to explain the main changes carried out in the most recent configuration of value chain in the European automotive industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of economic globalisation, there has been considerable academic interest in understanding the choice of location of foreign direct investment (FDI) firms. Generally, studies on the location of FDI firms focus on national and regional levels. There are only a limited number of studies at the intra-urban level, especially for developing countries. This paper investigates where the industrial and service FDI firms are distributed within Istanbul, and how location-specific factors affect their decisions. This study is based on a sample of 100 companies surveyed in Istanbul at the end of 2002. The locational determinants of FDI firms in Istanbul have been analysed using factor analysis and logistic regression techniques. It was found that location-specific advantages influence the location of service and industrial FDI firms (between the central and suburban districts) in the Istanbul metropolitan area. The service and industrial FDI firms in Istanbul also chose different locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns over the effects of globalisation and liberalisation have intensified the debates over the trajectories and underlying sources of regional inequality. This paper attempts to link macro studies of regional inequality to micro studies of local development and to expand the research on intraprovincial inequality in China to Guangdong Province. First, substantial evidence has been provided to illustrate the extent of polarisation between the Pearl River Delta (PRD) and the periphery, especially since the early 1990s. Second, it has been found that new economic spaces centred on exoproduction centres, high-tech zones, university clusters, and entrepreneurial spaces driven by the domestication of globalisation and the growth of the knowledge economy have emerged as new engines of regional growth. The orthodox notion of the PRD development as externally driven has become obsolete, and a new conceptualisation centred on the knowledge economy and integrated development better explains regional development and polarisation in Guangdong. Finally, the theoretical and policy implications of the research are discussed. The emerging form of regional development in the PRD represents an effort to make the knowledge economy the new engine of regional development and indicates that developing countries such as China are attempting to move beyond being a manufacturing assembler. The emergence of the knowledge economy in the PRD also has important implications for the recent efforts to develop the Greater Pearl River Delta, which needs to pay more attention to global networks for innovation and creativity. Moreover, the emergence of the knowledge economy makes the development of the periphery even more challenging due to the effects of self-reinforcing agglomeration and the constraints of geographical barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of globalisation on income, the income distribution and other social indicators in China and India will be analysed in this paper. A comparison between the two countries is made on a large number of variables to determine how globalisation influences wages and labour conditions. The question asked is what explains the differences in competitiveness of information and communication technology (ICT) clusters in a Chinese and an Indian city. Labour cost and conditions turn out to be one of the factors influencing the competitiveness of the two countries and clusters. It is not so much the price of labour that explains the difference in performance, but rather the productiveness and the labour legislation. A number of other factors underlying the rapid economic growth of China are analysed to conclude that that country, more than India, has benefited from globalisation. The resulting income distribution is more unequal in China, however, there is also more employment created, poverty alleviated and wages are higher and have increased recently in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mexico is the leading mango-exporting country in the world. In this global commodity chain there is an important participation by small-scale farmers whose products end up in US supermarkets. This paper analyses the linkages between the agriculture sector in a developing country and the global agro-food system. Drawing on the development geography approach and the global commodity-chain perspective, the effects and responses of global processes on local development are analysed by examining the relations between fruit export companies, local growers and consumer markets. Our case study is of small farmers (ejidatarios) who grow mangos in one of Mexico's main export-oriented agricultural areas, the Bahía de Banderas Valley, and whose situation is similar to other small-scale producers of non-traditional products. The study examines the impact on the farmers of structural adjustment policies that have been implemented in Mexico since the mid-1980s. It also examines the main livelihood strategies thatejidatariosand their households have been adopting during the same period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the role of the Internet in global collective action through an analysis of the scale practices of the Indymedia network. Indymedia is a worldwide network of interlinked websites run by volunteers organised in local Independent Media Centres (IMCs). These websites, a global site atand over one hundred local sites, are meant to empower activists groups by providing them with a media platform. The case study focuses on the role of the Internet in four facets of collective action: grievances and alternatives, organisation, mobilisation and identities. The analysis deals more specifically with scales, examining scaling practices in the light of three scale metaphors (scale as level, scale as size, scale as relation). While scales are also framed as bounded areas (territorial communities to be served) and as levels when targeting specific government agencies, the prevailing scale frame is that of a network of scales in which the local and the global mutually constitute each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion that there is a European‘system of cities’ or‘urban hierarchy’ has been an attractive idea, since it appears to provide a coherent subset of cities to study within a regional context. Under conditions of contemporary globalisation, however, the spatial order of European cities can only be properly understood as a‘porous Europe’. That is, it is impossible to sensibly discuss European intercity relations separate from an encompassing world city network. This paper therefore analyses 88 European cities in the context of a global urban analysis of 234 cities around the world. The main conclusion is that leading European world cities are specifically distinguished through their forming of global urban arenas. They should therefore not be thought of as being un-European, but as a special kind of world city that is highly cosmopolitan in its intercity relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boundary issues are central to globalisation – the expansion and time-space integration of human societies – and to both biological and cultural diversity. The latter are, in turn, intrinsically related in processes of coevolution that generate change in the patchwork quilt of cultural and natural landscapes. These processes are especially discernible in small island societies. This paper argues that island studies can enhance our understanding of globalisation processes and how these are involved in the displacement of boundaries and the historically unprecedented decline in both biological and cultural diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The blurring of rural and urban space in Sub-Saharan Africa has been a topical theme in recent years. Under economic duress, occupational distinctions between the two have tended to disappear. It is often inferred that burgeoning trade and service sector activities have encouraged greater personal mobility and rural-urban linkages as heightened movement of economic actors bridge the physical distance between town and countryside. Meanwhile, the theme of globalisation applied to Africa has tended to suggest that physical distances are contracting as cyberspace and mobile phones spread. But amid this debate, the fluctuating cost of oil as a key determinant of physical movement and distance perception has largely been overlooked. This paper examines Zimbabwe's rural and urban economies’ vulnerability to international oil price fluctuations. Possible future oil price trends and their effect on African development are probed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the extent to which firms are locally embedded in the developing country context of Fiji. Current thinking on local growth in the face of globalisation emphasises the significance of networked, trust-based relationships in either clusters or commodity chains as part of a broadly based institutionalist model of economic change. The changing relationships between sets of enterprises in Fiji are examined to assess whether the relationships of theory exist in this particular context. The relationships between ‘colonial’ transnational corporations (TNCs), other TNCs, Indo-Fijian family business networks, livelihood enterprises, the Fijian political elite and an emerging Fijian business elite are examined. It is concluded that the economic and social fractures in the small island developing country limit, if not preclude, the creation of the local social capital that might foster self-sustaining local economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic internationalisation and globalising processes have a dialectical appearance. The trend towards homogenisation in an economic, social, political and cultural sense will meet with regionally generated production, innovation and knowledge systems that, while responding to these external influences, develop their own manifestation of the global-local nexus. The developments in Mexico's North East, with the industrial city of Monterrey as its core centre, present an example of the impact of these forces. Until 1988 Monterrey industries were operating on a protected domestic market. This situation changed with the opening up of the Mexican economy in that year and the signing of the NAFTA agreement with the USA and Canada in 1993. This paper analyses this insertion in the world economy and the regional response, first on an institutional level where the special brand of family capitalism — as found in Monterrey — is confronting the exigencies of international competitiveness and the organisation of business practice it requires. Second, on a sub-regional level, we observe the reaffirmation of regional idiosyncracies in the social, political and cultural sphere. The interaction between these two processes has been creating a most interesting case of glocalisation within the context created by NAFTA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the work is to understand how the role of local externalities (agglomeration economies and related variety), as well as firm heterogeneity, have influenced the internationalisation strategies chosen by Italian manufacturing firms from 1998 to 2006. Based on the 10th survey of the corporate bank Unicredit-Capitalia, I construct an unbalanced panel data of 19,635 firms. As in Cainelli, Ganau and Iacobucci, I compute related variety as a measure of the input-output relationships between firms of different sectors: this procedure allows taking into account the vertical related variety as a proxy for diversification. The results of the econometric analysis, conducted with multinomial logistic regressions, show that vertically related variety and productivity positively influence both export and FDI strategies. The extant literature on firm heterogeneity has been confirmed, while important findings on local externalities enrich the already existing theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1990s, under the perception of increasing transformations brought about by globalisation, scholars started investigating what happened to the notion of place. Among others, the views of Manuel Castells, Robert Sack and Doreen Massey contributed to construct an opposition between a parochial, bounded, and reactionary notion of place versus a global, unbounded, and relation one. This latter view, under the label of 'progressive sense of place', has since become a dominant paradigm in geography. This paper aims to ground these theoretical arguments in relation to how people understand place today. Qualitative empirical information collected in four different regional contexts in Western Europe confirms the discursive existence of the above opposition. Yet, it also challenges the ways in which notions of thickness/thinness and boundedness/unboundedness relate to the regressive or progressive character of place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas the global networking of cities is commonly understood from a fiscal-economical and technological perspective explaining world economy and globalisation structures, this paper discusses another viewpoint of city networking in which the exchange of knowledge on urban management and policy-making is examined. It reviews the policy context and practice of Dutch cities in North-South city networking and their role in international development co-operation through the sharing of municipal knowledge and expertise with partner cities in developing countries. Against the background of shifts in development thinking leading to increased acknowledgement of the role of cities in development co-operation, past and current policies at the national as well as the municipal level are considered that shape the framework for Dutch city networking with the ‘global South’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]