Michiel van Meeteren

World cities under conditions of financialized globalization Towards an augmented world city hypothesis

This paper interrogates the enduring yet changing role of world cities as centers of capitalist ‘command and control’ amidst deepening uneven development. By incorporating financialization processes in Friedmann’s (1986) world city hypothesis, we hypothesize that the world city archipelago remains an obligatory passage point for the relatively assured realization of capital. The advanced producer services complex appropriates superprofits as producers of co-constitutive knowledge on operational and financial firm restructuring, the creation of new circuits of value, and capital switching. Geographically, beyond the international financial center shortlist, the wider world city archipelago inserts finance capital (logics) in contemporary economies and societies.

Pacifying Babel’s Tower: A scientometric analysis of polycentricity in urban research

It is sometimes claimed that the degree of polycentricity of an urban region influences that region’s competitiveness. However, because of widespread use and policy relevance, the underlying concept of polycentricity has become a ‘stretched concept’ in urban studies. As a result, academic debate on the topic leads to situations reminiscent of Babel’s Tower. This meta-study of the scientific literature in urban studies traces the conceptual stretching of polycentricity using scientometric methods and content analysis. All published studies that either apply the concept directly or cite a work that does, were collected from the Scopus bibliographic database. This resulted in a citation network with over 9000 works and more than 20,000 citations between them. Network analysis and clustering algorithms were used to define the most influential papers in different citation clusters within the network. Subsequently, we employed content analysis to systematically assess the mechanisms associated with the formation of polycentric urban systems in each of these papers. Based on this meta-analysis, we argue that the common categorisation of polycentricity research in intra-urban, inter-urban and inter-regional polycentricity is somewhat misleading. More apt categorisations to understand the origins of polycentricity’s conceptual ambiguity relate to different methodological traditions and geographical contexts in which the research is conducted. Nonetheless, we observe a firm relation across clusters between assessments of polycentricity and different kinds of agglomeration economies. We conclude by proposing a re-conceptualisation of polycentricity based on explicitly acknowledging the variable spatial impact of these different kinds of agglomeration economies.

Can the straw man speak? An engagement with postcolonial critiques of ‘global cities research’:

This paper engages with postcolonial critiques of global cities research (GCR). We argue that such criticisms tend to be hampered by their tendency to be polemical rather than engaging, as evidenced by both the quasi-systematic misrepresentation of the core objectives of GCR and the skating over of its internal diversity. We present a genealogy of postcolonial critiques starting from Robinson’s (2002) agenda-setting discussion of GCR, followed by an analysis of how her legitimate concerns have subsequently morphed into a set of apparent truisms. These misrepresentations are then contrasted with the purposes, diversity, and critical character of GCR as actually practiced. We interpret this discrepancy to be part of a gradually routinized straw man rhetoric that emerged as an unfortunate rallying point for postcolonial urban scholars. The consequence is that GCR tends to be casually invoked to distinguish one’s own position. We conclude by advocating practices of ‘engaged pluralism’ rather than ‘polemical pluralism’ when doing global urban research and propose that critical realism can provide an important epistemological bridge to make different positions communicate.

No more credit to Europe? Cross-border bank lending, financial integration, and the rebirth of the national scale as a credit scorecard

The Eurozone crisis that erupted in 2008 has raised sincere doubts about the durability of political and financial linkages among its member states. This paper associates the resulting political–economic stasis of the Eurozone with the coevolution of the financial and monetary system at the European scale. The argument builds on insights from financial geography, cultural political economy, and sociology of finance. It focuses on the idea that financial market rationalities, which fluctuate over time and space, are socially constructed through an interplay of acts of ‘bricolage’ by state and market actors. We relate these rationalities to the main European initiatives regarding financial and monetary integration since the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. By tracing the geographical patterns of cross-border lending of European banks in the period 2003–10 we observe that two radically different rationalities of ‘sound investment’ have dominated before and after the crisis. In the precrisis conjuncture of convergence, the Eurozone seemed to develop ‘according to plan’ where the financial system appeared beneficial in terms of equalizing development. However, since the crisis there has been a conjuncture of ‘contagion’ in which country-level specificities increasingly determine creditworthiness. Meanwhile, we observe that European policy makers try to refit the monetary system to this new market rationality to make the European scale ‘perform’ again.

Doing global urban studies: On the need for engaged pluralism, frame switching, and methodological cross-fertilization

By way of rejoinder to commentaries by members of the invisible college of postcolonial urbanism, we further develop issues of praxis regarding engaged pluralism and plead for its usefulness. Engaged pluralism when doing global urban studies depends on a research culture where both deconstructive and reconstructive moments are encouraged. Deconstruction benefits from the provincialization of all knowledge. Reconstruction can occur when we bracket ontological and epistemological incommensurability and focus on the cognitively enriching research praxis of frame switching, where research perspectives constitute nonexclusive, temporary, or alternating entries for research.

Manning circuits of value: Lebanese professionals and expatriate world-city formation in Beirut

Advanced producer services firms and the highly skilled labour they employ are important indicators for world-city formation, as their activities allegedly grant cities the capabilities to exert command and control over global accumulation processes. To ‘stress test’ this central assumption of global city theory, we apply Burawoy’s extended case method to probe world-city formation in Beirut, Lebanon. Observing a tendency in the literature to superimpose distinctions between high- and low-skilled labour and between North and South, the study marshals a more plural conceptualization of ‘professionals’ to include expatriate or transnational Lebanese service workers. The study’s key finding is that Euro-American professionals play a relatively marginal role in Beirut’s human resource base, complicating North–South distinctions. By contrast, domestic and expat Beiruti professionals are far more crucial in manning circuits of value leading to and from the city. These professionals act as intermediaries in unlocking Gulf markets for clients, contribute to institutional change in their host countries and help build command and control functions elsewhere. Relatedly, Beirut has become susceptible to processes of ‘expatriate world-city formation’, where real estate development and the attraction of bank deposits are partly the result of these APS-professionals repatriating their management fees into Beirut’s built environment and Lebanon’s domestic banking sector. Witnessing the growth of Beiruts expatriate world-city functions in absence of financial centre redevelopment, the paper proposes to be sensitive to potential disconnects between the function and location of command and control in global cities more generally.

Flemish Diamond or ABC-Axis? The spatial structure of the Belgian metropolitan area

ABSTRACT This contribution traces the evolution of the Belgian urban system by adopting a historical taxonomy of agglomeration-economy regimes, and poses the question whether a new centralizing agglomeration-economy regime based on renewed ‘metropolization’ can be observed. Belgium has federalized into three regions during the last decades and different spatial perspectives emerged about how the central metropolitan area crosscuts the regional borders. After placing Belgian metropolization in its historical context, we engage with its contemporary geography. We inquire if the metropolitan area of Belgium is more akin to the ‘Flemish Diamond’, with capital city Brussels as the southernmost node, or whether a spatial pattern reminiscent of the historical ‘Antwerp-Brussels-Charleroi (ABC)-Axis’ is a more adequate description. To answer these questions, we examine the spatial integration of the Belgian labour market utilizing the connectivity field method and a 2010 nationwide travel-to-work data set. Based on this analysis, inferences are drawn about labour market interdependencies between various parts of the urban system. The results indicate that contemporary metropolization in Belgium can be topographically expressed as an area that is more trans-regional than the Flemish Diamond yet more polycentric than an extension of Brussels, thus pointing to renewed economic centralization tendencies at the supra-regional level.

Christaller and “big data”: recalibrating central place theory via the geoweb

ABSTRACT This article utilizes central place theory (CPT) to navigate the “deluge” brought about by big data. While originating in the 1930s, CPT is a theoretical monument of 1960s spatial science. CPT aims to understand settlement geographies based on consumption behavior and is often presented as a singular, outdated, and rationalist theory. After critically reviewing the history of CPT, we assess the microfoundations of Christaller’s CPT – the threshold and range of goods – for various central functions in Louisville, Kentucky. The microfoundations are estimated through data from social media platforms Foursquare and Twitter. These sources alleviate many of the operationalization issues that traditionally hamper empirical use of CPT. The empirical application of CPT reveals that: (i) central functions have typical ranges and thresholds relating central places to population spread; (ii) central functions cluster based on an approximate hierarchical structure. The findings indicate the ongoing importance of CPT in shaping urban-economic geographies.

Social Network Analysis and the De Facto/De Jure Conundrum: Security Alliances and the Territorialization of State Authority in the Post-Cold War Great Lakes Region

Abstract This paper presents an alternative reading of the evolution of the territorialization of state authority and security alliances in Africas Great Lakes Region from that provided by Radil and Flint (2013). Rather than a general transformation in the direction of more territorially centralized states, patterns of state authority have remained variegated in the post-Cold War era, with continuing fracturing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is argued that Radil and Flints differing interpretation stems from an inappropriate application of social network analysis (SNA) to a context characterized by profound divergences between de facto and de jure phenomena and patchy data availability. These observations suggest scepticism regarding the extent to which SNA can help overcome the epistemological rifts that divide studies on the geography of politics.

On geography’s skewed transnationalization, anglophone hegemony, and qualified optimism toward an engaged pluralist future; A reply to Hassink, Gong and Marques

This reply to Hassink, Gong and Marques’ ‘Moving beyond Anglo-American economic geography’ raises several issues relevant to formulating a unified paradigm that escapes Anglo-American bias. First, ...ABSTRACT This reply to Hassink, Gong and Marques’ ‘Moving beyond Anglo-American economic geography’ raises several issues relevant to formulating a unified paradigm that escapes Anglo-American bias. First, the reply identifies different meanings of Anglo-American dominance that do not necessarily align. Remedying concerns that engage with the problems of anglophone hegemony do not necessarily solve institutional issues of Anglo-American dominance, exclusions of contributors, places and viewpoints, or postcolonial critiques. Second, the essay investigates the origins of anglophone dominance, how the skewed transnationalization of geographical practice came about, to excavate solutions from geography’s past. Based on these assessments, several epistemological issues are brought up that might hamper development of a unified paradigm. The reply concludes with encouragement to engage in the Sisyphean labour associated with the quest toward a unified paradigm for economic geography.