ABSTRACT

For Sassen (2005), world cities are entangled in the clashes of modernity; global cities, on the other hand, represent the emergence of transnational urban systems in the postmodern era, in which national sovereignty is diminished. However, the shrinking of nation-state regulatory capacities does not mean that the global materializes outside of it. In fact, “the global materializes by necessity in specific places, and institutional arrangements, a good number of which, if not most, are located in national territories” (Sassen, 2005, p. 32). The global, the national, and the local participate in a new global order, not necessarily through exclusion. Miami is a prime example of this process. As a hub of commercial, financial, and migratory flows between the US, Caribbean, and Central and South America, Miami has climbed 6 spots in the A.T. Kearney Global Cities Index since 2012, to its present rank as 30th among the world’s global cities in the prestigious firm’s 2018 report.