Divergence of the world city system from national economies

Abstract

This study shows that the position of cities in the world economy has diverged from national economies. Using data from 2016, we evaluate a network of 12,802 cities formed by the location decisions of 24,355 firms in terms of their point centrality, and show that the inter-city and inter-national systems have measurably decoupled, disrupting the previously-observed pattern in which the most powerful cities in the world city system were located in core countries, "mid-level" cities were in the semi-periphery,and the least powerful cities were in peripheral countries. Our findings support predictions that globalizing cities would diverge from national economies and that globalization would generate a new global geography that transects long-standing cleavages in the world system.