A central location for the leading industries of globalization; specifically financial and specialist business services, with their own forms of production as ‘control centres’ of the world economy (Knox in P. Knox and P. Taylor, eds 1995; S. Stassen 2000; see also Cochrane and Passmore (2001) Area 33, 4). Examples include London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo. Scholz (2000) Zeitschrift 1 calls these acting global cities, which differ from globalized places that house only branches/offshoots of the decision-making structures concentrated in the acting global cities (see also Brade and Rudolph (2004) Area 36, 1). Transnational elites have long been associated with the global city (Beaverstock (2002) Geoforum 33, 4). Yeung and Olds’s 2001 paper for the IRFD World Forum on Habitat labelled Shanghai an ‘emerging global city’ as opposed to ‘hyper global cities’ such as New York and London.

Wei and Leung (2005) Growth & Change 36, 1 argue that the literature on global cities is too dependent upon a perspective based on major Western cities. Global cities are marked by large-scale in-migration: Wong et al. (2005) J. Housing & Built Env. 20 highlight the significance of a temporary migrant labour force in the moulding of Shanghai into a global city, and Beaverstock (2002) Geoforum 33, 4 observes that transnational elites have long been associated with the global city. S. Stassen (1991) has linked global cities with increasing social polarization—a thesis rejected by Nørgaard (2003, Geografiska B 85, 2), who prefers ‘inequality’ to ‘social polarization’.

http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/geoywc/publication/Habitat_2001.pdf Yeung and Olds on the global city.