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The paper argues that the global economy has produced changes in the hierarchical configuration of urban systems. The emerging organization tends to be more open and set up more horizontal relations among cities. There are some evidences that indicate the relative insertion of the main Latin-American cities in global networks. The paper shows the empirical evidence available to Latin-American cities and, specially, related to the Argentine case. It evaluates the tension between the historically forged trend toward geographic concentration of population and economic activities in the metropolis of Buenos Aires and other somewhat more recent trends towards dispersion, emphasizing the role of intermediate cities. The paper concludes reflecting on the importance of flows between cities, the patterns of spatial dependency between them and the role of public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]