Measuring Globalization in the World-System?s City System: A Research Agenda.

This research moves the world?s great cities to the center of contemporary debates about globalization. We use a social network approach, viewing cities as important nodes in a worldwide web of exchanges. Our central questions include: Which cities are more central in the network of world cities? Which are peripheral? Is the network of cities growing more tightly integrated over recent time? Do cities? roles in the global network reflect those of the nations in which they are located, or are they becoming independent of national trajectories? Finally, how is social life within cities influenced by their role in the global network? The research will use formal network techniques to analyze data on flows of airline passengers and air cargo between all pairs of some 150-200 cities, comparing patterns in 1990 to those in 2000. The study will evaluate untested theoretical claims about the social consequences of global positioning of cities on social structural change within them. It will contribute to scholarly as well as popular debates about globalization. At the same time, it will begin to build a world city network database that will be available to other scholars. We also hope to contribute to a number of important public policies debates, as well. The data and results should be relevant to discussions of and nation-based strategies for global economic competitiveness, the role for ?the state? in promoting development, possible trade offs between growth and polarization/ inequality, and long-term challenges presented by emergent patterns and processes of globalization at the beginning of the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]