ABSTRACT
The prime purpose of this chapter is to investigate cities as strategic places in contemporary globalization using the methodology developed as world city network analysis (Taylor, 2001; Taylor & Derudder, 2016). To this end, we draw on the work of Sassen (1991, pp. 3–4), who in her classic book The Global City identified processes of globalization that had ‘created a new strategic role for major cities’ resulting in a ‘new type of city’. Our approach deals with many more cities than Sassen considers: here we ask the question, which of these numerous cities can be reasonably identified as strategic places? We deploy world city network analysis findings to answer this question quantitatively, so that amongst the cities thus identified we can measure degrees of ‘strategic-ness’. From this we explore different ways in which cities are being strategic, drawing on the literature dealing with selected individual cities.
