Looking back and thinking ahead: On the enduring potential of the global city concept for critical research

Abstract

The global city concept has economic geographic origins: the work of Friedmann, Sassen, and others in the 1980s and early 1990s set out to develop a theory of a “citified” geography of the organization of uneven development (Cohen 1981; Friedmann 1986; Sassen 1991). With the popularity that the concept soon, however, this concern was pushed into the background, with several detrimental effects: First, empirical evidence for the claimed “command-and-control” function of certain cities remained scarce (Short et al. 1996); second, the urban theoretical foundations of the global city concept were not sufficiently developed (Smith/Doel 2011); and third, the reorientation of global city research to aspects in these cities (from social polarization to megaprojects to migration) and the discussion of “ordinary cities” failed to exploit the potential to a critical analysis of the geographies of unequal development (Parnreiter 2014). Against this background, I argue that global city researchers should go “back to the roots” of the concept in order to regain the analytical sharpness that Friedmann and Sassen had in mind. This is timely, because the renewed interest in uneven development in economic geography and beyond suggests a more thorough examination of its geographies – and the geographies of its production. However, the “back to the roots” must be combined with a deeper elaboration of the global city concept and, in particular, of its urban theoretical foundations. Although global city research has increasingly become a matter of urban studies (rather than of economic geography), the of urban theoretical underpinnings remain weak. In particular, our knowledge of what enables economic elites in certain cities to exercise “command-and-control” over others is insufficient. I propose to draw attention to the role specific urban properties, namely agglomeration economies, the embeddedness in networks across space, and the massive built environments, play for the development and the use of weapons of exploitation and domination.