Cities and nested hierarchies.

We need a more nuanced way of looking at the relationship between globalisation and the city; a framework that can accommodate substantial differences as well as growing similarities among world metropolises and give both global integration and local distinctiveness their rightful due. I propose and illustrate one such framework in this paper, based upon the principle of nested hierarchy. In the view espoused here, cities are lodged within an interdependent world order divided among differently organised regional formations and national systems. The economic base, spatial organisation and social structure of the world's major cities are determined by the entire multi-level configuration– global niche, regional formation, national development model, and local historical context– in which each city participates. Growing interdependence in the global whole is perfectly consistent with differentiationwithin and amongregional, national, and city levels of the system. As constituent elements of the global order, cities both facilitate the globalisation process and follow their own, relatively autonomous trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]