Spatial hierarchy and emerging typologies inside world city network

Abstract

The first part of the paper provides a new approach to measuring a spatial structure of world city network (WCN). Based upon the results of media-popular 'global city rankings' produced by several international think tanks, our calculation allowed to reveal global urban hierarchy and identify several subnetworks inside of world cities. The second part of the paper devotes to recent discussions on nature of globalization and urban macrosystems, bearing in mind ranking results. It is shown that a typological approach can provide more insights to a role of city as part of WCN from functional and relationships prospective.