The cliquishness of world cities

Abstract

Through an exploratory analysis of the world city network, we confront the dearth of studies on inter-urban networks on a global scale. In the first section, we outline how a formal theoretical specification of the world city network as a social network has guided an extensive data gathering effort. Through this specification it becomes possible to apply standard techniques of network analysis to world cities. In the second section we outline a framework within which to explore the complex patterns that arise from the formal specification of the world city network. The conjectural use of connectivity, world city cliques and clique-by-clique comembership is then used in the third section as the input to an exploratory analysis of the measures of connectivity at different thresholds. The main findings are the twocity dominance of the New York-London dyad, and the observation that inter-city links at the global level retain an important regional dimension. Exemplary cases are the thorough interrelatedness of North American, Pacific Asian and European world cities.