The world urban system from a multifunctional and multiscalar perspective: a gridded cartogram as a model of spatial representation.

This paper aims to show the current spatial organization that characterizes world urban system from a multifunctional and multiscalar perspective. Methodology, the assessment of the urban system was economic in nature traditionally, taking into consideration some of the most important events, such as transnational corporations, financial flows and advanced services, among others. However, it is now more common to see those approaches that interpret globalization from a more holistic perspective, where many evidences have a place: on the one hand, cultural services because of the development and consolidation of the ‘cultural economy’, ‘consumption society’ and leisure time; on the other hand, air transportation as statistic parameter of global air flows in the presence of the new mobilities paradigm. In addition to these functional approaches, the result of the analysis seeks to describe a world urban system from a scalar perspective. It means that the goal is not only to determine the major cities, but those other ones that undergo parallel processes of globalization with respect to the global cities, characterized by their more functional specialization. World urban system is mapped using a gridded cartogram which shows its unbalanced and hierarchical organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]