The facts assembled by the map here permits one to
examine zone-by-zone the impact of advanced services, that is to
say the number of world cities that they include and their total
and average score per city, to which is added an evaluation of GDP
per capita. Expressed in dollars this is a very modest instrument
of international comparison. On the other hand, appropriate
qualifying statistics permit one to measure it (for the year 1998)
in dollar purchasing power parities. The data used for this
purpose is generally of a suitable quality, the main exception
being those from China whose statistical apparatus is ill-equipped
to evaluate GDP, and is shakier still regarding the prices
necessary for the calculation of the purchasing power parities.
Zones 1 to 4 which come under the ‘centre’ have quite
homogeneous average scores, as do the zones a notch below where
the American (Zone 5) or Western European (Zone 6) influence is
clear, however, for the latter, the Russian economic collapse of
1998 throws some doubt on the figures . After several years of a
very large presence of advanced services, they have taken part in
the division of a Russian cake which has so far disappointed the
multinationals. Except for these well-characterised zones, the
geography of world cities reveals that their growth is far from a
direct function of local prosperity, very much to the contrary,
their distribution bears witness to a profound contradiction
between the growth of multinational firms and the viscosities of
the societies they penetrate.
Amongst the ‘old tigers’ of Japan, Korea and Taiwan
(Zone 4), average scores per city are comparable to those of the
American or European ‘centres’ but few cities are
involved from those societies judged by the USA as not being
sufficiently welcoming. The situation is clearer still amongst the
‘young tigers’ of South East Asia where Singapore
attracts many of the advanced services saving the neighbouring
states from giving them too accommodating a welcome.
The events of the ‘Asian Crisis’ of 1997 and the
rejection of the purges that the IMF believed necessary (in
particular in rich Malaysia and huge Indonesia) attest to the
obstinate refusal of an open-door policy. There is only an
apparent contrast with China (Zone 8) where the average score is
admittedly close to that of Latin America, because Hong Kong
counts for even more than Singapore does in the South East. In
fact, China is still only partially opened-up. Moreover, the
inclusion of cities where in 1997-1998 there only existed some
traces of globalisation (scores below 4) hardly includes any from
the immense Afro-Asian wilderness. Thus India sees itself credited
with two modestly promising cities whilst the five cities of the
same type spotted in the Near and Middle East are all located near
to the oil producing Arab nations, except for Teheran. There
remains the poor nations of Africa (outside of Johannesburg
belonging to Zone 2) where there are only two cities showing
slight potential.
Admittedly, the brief comparisons sketched out above, will be
considerably enriched when the field of enquiry of GaWC is
expanded to several successive periods and perhaps also, as has
been desired, takes in a broader sample, getting ever closer to
the core of multinational firms. However, they (the comparisons)
are sufficient – it seems to me – to suggest that the
study of world cities as a network of advanced services, would
gain in being coupled with a control study of ‘regional’
viscosities. In other words the marriage of a geography of
networks and flows to a geography still aware of the clear
capacities of states and to a history which gives to their
interlacing the depth of field in which one can see cultural
inertias, would permit one – I hope – to spare geography
from the theological wars between the proponents of the
international as inter-state and the apostles of a transnational
irrigated by flows which have no frontiers. Then there would be a
new possibility of creating a ‘problematic shared by all the
social sciences’ that Braudel hoped for half a century
ago.
One comes to see the world system losing its elephantine figure
when the capillarity that the network of world cities establishes
in it becomes clear, it being understood that this network of
advanced service cities is itself only a prototype, which can be
enhanced by the study of other vascularisations; state, military,
stock-exchange, IT, informational, associative (in the way of
non-governmental organizations) and of a thousand other networks
still. In other words, when the world system begins to lose the
economic posture that Braudel has perhaps taken by his
overvaluation of the ‘world economy’ (or
Weltwirtschaft) that he analysed so well in his sphere.
When Moscow outclasses Washington amongst world cities,
evidently it is because the implosion of state socialism has led
to a horde of advanced services establishing themselves in Moscow,
however, also because Washington, a world city above all others in
the military-political order, only functions in the economic order
as a catalyst for interest groups. The observation is of a general
nature. The fact that the structural transformations of the
economy seem to be the main characteristic of the present world
system, does not signify that the formation of a truly world
market is the ultima ratio of our history, nor even the main
motivation of medium and long term events and movements which are
going to give emphasis to it in the following decades. There is no
guarantee that world cities in a political sense – including
the enormous military bases spread throughout the world will not
be of greater importance. There is no guarantee either that the
centre of gravity of the present mutations is not to be looked for
in ‘ideological’ world cities whether they be in the
marketplace such as the centres of cinema or television production
from Hollywood to Atlanta and from Cairo to Bombay and Hong Kong
or whether they be religious, like all the present day Jerusalems,
either those fought over or antagonistic, or those of an educative
nature or of some other construction still, in a world where
Huntington has believed he can predict a ‘clash of
civilisations’8 , but
where, in any case, a less simplistic observation shows that the
development of the world market seems to have met more and more
resistance, even to the extent of political-cultural
counter-offensives: the unequal viscosity of the zones previously
examined bears witness to this. It is a good and prudent method
that pays equal attention to the economic, political and to the
ideological (or cultural).
World
Cities and ‘regional’ systems