Global cities are linked to the current phenomenon of globalization; their hierarchy is therefore based on economic criteria. The gross urban product (P.U.B) is the same as P.I.B but it applies to cities. The ranking of cities according to this criterion is the following…
Global Cities ranking
There are many ways to measure the economic importance of a city. While the largest cities in the world are generally the most populous, economists generally retain the criterion of wealth production (the PUB). The sociologist Saskia Sassen (The Global City, Descartes and Co., 1998) proposed to classify cities according to their functions of steering the global economic activity. The map above crosses these last two criteria for 75 cities.
Gross urban product (GDP) is the equivalent for cities of gross domestic product (GDP) for the states. It measures the value of wealth produced within a given metropolis. The MasterCard ranking of global cities associates each of the 75 cities considered with a composite index. This summarizes the score of each city on more than 70 different indicators, grouped into 7 areas: the legal and political environment; macroeconomic stability; the ease of undertaking; financial flows; flows of people and goods; knowledge creation and information flows; life quality.
Ranking of GaWC cities
The GaWC (Study Group on Globalization and Global Cities, University of Loughborough, UK) locates the top 100 global service firms in 315 global cities. The rank of a city depends on the number of service firms that operate there and the size of the offices that these firms have. The larger the local offices of a firm, the more likely they are to interact with the offices the firm has in other cities. The rank of a city thus reflects “connectivity” in global business service networks.
The global power city index 2017
The Global Power City Index is an indicator of integration of metropolises with globalization proposed by the Institute for Urban Strategies of the Mori Memorial Foundation. Among the members of the committee in charge of this work are Saskia Sassen and three recipients of the Vautrin Lud Award: Peter Hall (2001), Allen J. Scott (2003) and Michael Batty (2013). The classification is made on the basis of 70 indicators divided into 5 sectors. As is often the case in this type of work, it is less the result and the classification of the cities in itself that are interesting than the method used, the discussion that this method may raise, and the discourse that this produces around the world cities: The testimonies of mayors from the cities concerned (Amsterdam, Vienna) are thus reproduced on the webpage of the report.
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