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This paper is motivated by the observation that our understanding of global cities in Germany and beyond is limited because the practices through which producer service firms (PSFs) are involved in managing and governing their clients’ global commodity chains (GCCs) have barely been studied. Based on interviews with representatives of PSFs in the secondary global city of Hamburg, the paper scrutinises whether and how service professionals contribute to the functioning and the control of their clients’ cross-border operations. It also analyses why clients choose global PSFs located in Hamburg, and it discusses which place Hamburg occupies in the network of German global cities. The paper concludes that because PSFs fulfil management functions for their clients’ global operations Hamburg is, beyond the role of its port, a critical node in many GCCs. Secondly, PSFs influence their clients’ decision-making processes. They are part of economic governance processes, though this impact cannot be straightforwardly equated with ‘command and control’. The paper also confirms that (and explains why) the world city network is the spatial correlate of a globalising economy. Finally, there is no such a thing as a ‘global city hierarchy’ because the division of labour between the offices of PSFs is functional. As regards further research, a first task is to verify this paper’s findings through interviews with clients of PSFs to consolidate our knowledge on the role of PSFs in GCCs. Secondly, the contention that the world city network is flat has to be re-examined against the backdrop of an evident clustering of PSFs in specific cities. Finally, the discussion of whether and how PSFs are involved in the governance of their clients‘ GCCs needs to be continued and deepened.

Global city research links the expansion of advanced producer services in major cities to the internationalisation of real estate markets as well as to the spread of (mainly) high-rise office complexes. This research, however, has based its findings mainly on cases of the Global North. This paper examines, based on Grant and Nijman’s (2002) suggestion that the “internal spatial organisation of gateway cities in the less-developed world” reflects “the city’s role in the global political economy”, which patterns occur in two metropoles of the Global South. In addition to this, the analysis focuses especially on the driving forces behind the changes in corporate geographies. The analysis is placed in Mexico City and Johannesburg and based on real estate market data (offices) as well as background documents on urban development. The outcome shows that in these cities, local transformation processes of the real estate market and office space location are indeed considerably shaped by global market dynamics. However, the findings also indicate that there is no clear scale dependence of the territorial form. In order to comprehensively understand the changes in the corporate geographies therefore, it is necessary to direct more attention to local and national dynamics. The restructuring of the built environment in both cities can only be grasped fully by considering the particular role of local and national governments. This additional entry point to an understanding of shifting corporate geographies helps to put recent dynamics of global capitalism and politics of urban neoliberalism in perspective.

This article provides the first comprehensive empirical analysis of global profit repatriation as a mechanism of uneven development, thereby challenging the development model of Foreign Direct Investment. Between 2005 and 2020, transnational corporations repatriated an annual average of one trillion USD, corresponding each year to 4.2% of the global FDI stock. Net profit flows take on a centripetal form: the biggest net losers are middle‐income countries such as the Russian Federation, Brazil, and Nigeria; the winners are a few high‐income countries, above all the United States. By analysing the impact of profit repatriation on accumulation dynamics in net profit exporting and importing countries, and by examining the exploitative conditions under which profits are generated in the former, we situate our findings in current theoretical debates on uneven development and geographical transfer of value, as well as on the intertwining of capitalism's class and geographical antagonisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Departing from Storper's (2013) notion of a 'genius of cities' but extending the concept from agglomeration economies to inter-city networks and the built environment as foundations of cities' genius, I argue that cities' genius is Janus-faced. My contention is that cities' specific environments not only breed all the 'good' innovations that drive innovation and growth but they also generate the 'bad' ones, which allow for the development of the means of exploitation. Cities are, as a result of their very properties, key places for the organisation of uneven development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Donald Trump's presidency and his motto "America First!" against the backdrop of the notion of a declining U.S. hegemony. For that purpose, conceptualizations of hegemony by word-system scholars, namely Immanuel Wallerstein and Giovanni Arrighi, are being contrasted with John Agnew's account in political geography. The main difference refers to the geographies of hegemony: For Agnew, a stateless hegemony is conceivable, while for Wallerstein and Arrighi hegemony in the capitalist world-system requires a state to exercise it. The paper than goes on to argue that in order to operate successfully capitalism needs the cooperation of political and economic power and hence the bringing together of the spaces of places of the former and the spaces of flows of the latter. Against this backdrop I contend that Trump's nationalist rhetoric and (so far conceivable) politics embody and communicate the loss of U.S. hegemony both inwards and outwards. While Trump's geographical imaginations of power are downscaled to the national, U.S. big business is ever more moving in and using global commodity chains. The fusion of the political spaces of territory and the economic spaces of flows are drifting apart. Moreover, hegemony in the capitalist world-system is global by definition. In the paper's conclusion, the notion of a stateless hegemony is questioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]