Christof Parnreiter

Ciudad de México: el camino hacia una ciudad global

This article analyzes Ciudad de Mexico in its way to a global city. It is explored that ¾ due to globalization, and as part of its process¾ Mexican capital c...

Tendencias de desarrollo en las metrópolis latinoamericanas en la era de la globalización: los casos de Ciudad de México y Santiago de Chile

In this article, researches on the impacts of globalization processes on the development of Latin American metropolises are presented. Firstly, as to the increase or reduction of urban primacy, no consistent trend can be observed, obviously urban primacy may rise or fall depending on the specific conditions of globalization. Secondly, research shows that the major cities in Latin America take on global city functions. They increasingly serve as a sort of hinges between regional and national production and the world market. Thirdly, the debate on the socio-spatial structure of Latin American cities is continued. Detailed empirical evidence proves that Mexico City is quite heterogeneous rather than being polarized into rich and poor sectors.

Commentary Toward the Making of a Transnational Urban Policy

A key aspect of how globalization and planning are tied together is that the traveling of planning ideas across nation-states has sped up and gained intensity. Such transnationality echoes similar conceptualization in economic geography, migration studies, and in the literature on “transnational urbanism.” Using the example of the transnational flow of strategic planning ideas and practices, this article highlights the rising role of policy tourism, the important function of city-networks and multilateral institutions (particularly UN-HABITAT), and the uneven processes of transnational norm-making.A key aspect of how globalization and planning are tied together is that the traveling of planning ideas across nation-states has sped up and gained intensity. Such transnationality echoes similar conceptualization in economic geography, migration studies, and in the literature on “transnational urbanism.” Using the example of the transnational flow of strategic planning ideas and practices, this article highlights the rising role of policy tourism, the important function of city-networks and multilateral institutions (particularly UN-HABITAT), and the uneven processes of transnational norm-making.

El enlace faltante entre cadenas globales de producción y ciudades globales: el servicio financiero en Ciudad de México y Santiago de Chile

Since the 1980s, the economies of Mexico and Chile have passed through a profound process of globalisation. The result has been a nodalisation of the cities’ economies, documented by their high concentration of command and control functions essential for economic globalization. In order to specify the relationship between global city formation and the deepening of global integration we draw on the findings of the global city and global commodity chain literature. Since advanced producer services have been identified as key actors in interlocking de-centralized production sites and urban networks we have analyzed the involvement of financial institutions in bond and share issues of the 50 top ranked Mexican and Chilean enterprises. Based on this initial empirical investigation we take a first step to specify how the two firm-based, trans-state networks – global city- and global production networks – relate.

The Global City Tradition

For an opening chapter of a book titled Global City Challenges, it seems to be appropriate to begin with a terminological clarification. Today, many authors use the terms ‘global’ and ‘world city’ either interchangeably or, if they opt for one of the two terms, do not provide a rationale for their choice. Both implys that no significant conceptual differences are being attached to the terms. This view has been challenged by Derudder (2006, 2034) who claims that ‘world’ and ‘global city’, as employed by Friedmann and Sassen, refer to ‘very different analytical frameworks’, namely the spatial distribution of economic power more generally in the case of Friedmann and the geography of the production of the inputs that constitute the capability for global economic control in the case of Sassen. Though I agree that there are important differences between the concepts of Friedmann and Sassen (most significantly Sassen’s exclusive focus on producer service firms and hence her disregard of multi- or transnational corporations), I disagree with Derudder’s notion that the two have ‘very different’ (ibid.) takes on the role of cities in economic globalization. In fact, I see Friedmann’s world cities closer to Sassen’s global cities than to earlier notions of world cities as capitals of empires or as the top of the global power hierarchy, because both are, as I shall argue, concerned with networked cities engaged in the articulation and governance of cross-border economic activities.

Global cities and the geographical transfer of value

The central argument of this article is that global cities are, due to their clustering of producer service firms, critical governance nodes in global production networks. More in particular, the article scrutinises the role of producer service firms in uneven development and, especially, in the geographical transfer of value (Hadjimichalis, 1984). Because the direct as well as the indirect mechanisms through which value is transferred geographically require the intervention of producer service firms, global cities can be theorised as governance nodes for centripetal wealth transfers along global commodity chains. Moreover, and in the context of the persisting criticism that the global city concept has a bias towards Northern/Western cities, the article argues that the claim that global cities are critical places for the organisation of uneven development also holds for cities beyond ‘the usual suspects’. Referring to cases of how producer service firms in Hamburg and Mexico City erect entry barriers to protect their clients from competition and of how they shape labour relations at the expense of employees, I have maintained that governance is, as Sassen (2010: 158) has argued, indeed ‘embedded’ into the services provided. From that follows that even ‘minor’ global cities are strategic governance places from where the transfer of wealth towards the centres of the world economy is organised.

America first! Donald Trump, the demise of the U.S. hegemony and chaos in the capitalist world-system

Abstract This paper discusses Donald Trump’s presidency and his motto “America First!” against the backdrop of the notion of a declining U.S. hegemony. For that purpose, conceptualizations of hegemony by word-system scholars, namely Immanuel Wallerstein and Giovanni Arrighi, are being contrasted with John Agnew’s account in political geography. The main difference refers to the geographies of hegemony: For Agnew, a stateless hegemony is conceivable, while for Wallerstein and Arrighi hegemony in the capitalist world-system requires a state to exercise it. The paper than goes on to argue that in order to operate successfully capitalism needs the cooperation of political and economic power and hence the bringing together of the spaces of places of the former and the spaces of flows of the latter. Against this backdrop I contend that Trump’s nationalist rhetoric and (so far conceivable) politics embody and communicate the loss of U.S. hegemony both inwards and outwards. While Trump’s geographical imaginations of power are downscaled to the national, U.S. big business is ever more moving in and using global commodity chains. The fusion of the political spaces of territory and the economic spaces of flows are drifting apart. Moreover, hegemony in the capitalist world-system is global by definition. In the paper’s conclusion, the notion of a stateless hegemony is questioned.

Global Cities and the Governance of Commodity Chains: A Case Study From Latin America

Analysis of contemporary globalisation processes has generated two major strands of literatures that focus on the spatial organization of the world economy. In the global commodity chains literature (see, for example, Gereffi and Korzeniewicz 1994; Dicken et al. 2001; Gereffi et al. 2005) attention is paid (a) to the creation and distribution of value within transnational chains or networks of production, and (b) to the control of value creation and distribution along the different nodes of a commodity chain - from raw material exploitation through stages of trade, services and manufacturing processes to final consumption.