Globalization and world cities: some measurement methodologies

Applied Geography 20 (2000) 43–63 www.elsevier.com/locate/apgeog

Globalization and world cities: some measurement methodologies J.V. Beaverstock a,*, R.G. Smith b, P.J. Taylor a, D.R.F. Walker a, H. Lorimer c a

Department of Geography, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK b Department of Geography, Leicester University, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK c Department of Geography, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB9 3UF, UK

Received 30 June 1998; received in revised form 18 June 1999; accepted 7 July 1999

Abstract An Achilles heel of world city research is the lack of available data that quantifies the changing positions of cities in the world city system and hierarchy. This paper begins to address this poverty of data by showing that appropriate data can be identified and analysed to study relations between world cities. The paper contains three distinct sections which deal with the practicalities of the generation, collection and storage of relational data. First, the necessity of standardization, to make comparisons between world cities’ relations credible, is advanced. Secondly, three different measurement methodologies (of increasing power, but with specific functions) are advanced (surrogate, labour and organizational), and illustrated through three pieces of research, to specify a world city’s external relations. Thirdly, both practical ways of organizing research to obtain relational data, and a World Wide Web initiative designed to store and make available data across the globe, are outlined.  2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: GaWC; Globalization; Global observatory; Producer services; World cities

Introduction ...the relationship between economic globalization and urban development is complex, and quite difficult to trace and to validate empirically. (Shacker, 1997: 22) * Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-1509-223930; fax: +44-1509-223930. E-mail address: [email protected] (J.V. Beaverstock) 0143-6228/00/$ - see front matter  2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 1 4 3 - 6 2 2 8 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 1 6 - 8

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...few of the available data reveal anything about the flows and interdependencies that are at the heart of the idea of world cities as basing points for transnational capitalism. (Knox, 1998: 26)

As we shall have cause to regret in the course of this analysis [on London as a world city], international comparative data are often extremely difficult or even impossible to obtain. Statistical information is normally designed, collated and presented to serve national rather than international comparative purposes. (HMSO, 1991: 12) This paper describes an applied geography project concerned with measurement and data. This focus is perhaps surprising, given applied geography’s many sophisticated contributions to problem-solving via systematic analytical modelling since the 1960s. However, we will argue that in the context of contemporary large-scale social change, measurement of trends, and thus the resulting data, have not kept abreast of the social changes they purport to describe. The key problem is that current tendencies towards globalization in many socio-economic activities transcend the states that have been the prime generators of statistics. Whereas in the recent past, data for countries, as collected together in United Nations publications, provided an adequate evidential basis for studying ‘international’ changes, such data are simply inadequate for describing trans-state processes. One obvious area of research where this is the case is the study of world cities. Our applied geography project addresses this data problem for world cities by proposing a collective solution to measuring the relations between the class of cities that have been identified as either ‘world’ or ‘global’ in the literature. The paucity of relevant data for studying world cities was recognized at the outset of this research in the initial critique by Korff (1987: 491) of the seminal paper by Friedmann (1986). More recently, Short and his colleagues (Short, Kim, Kuss & Wells, 1996: 698) have again highlighted the problem, asserting that ‘the study of the global urban system is hampered by lack of available data’, thus suggesting that, despite the plethora of writing on world cities, little or no progress has been made to confront this crucial issue. In fact, they describe this data deficiency as ‘the dirty little secret of world cities research’. The result is that, without the subjects of this research adequately specified, the work of applied geographers and others to suggest policy solutions to the effects of globalization on cities (see part three of Knox & Taylor, 1995) is certainly hampered and may be viewed, academically, as somewhat premature. It is the purpose of this paper to begin the necessary task of solving the world city data problem so that the evidential basis of this research area can catch up with the exciting theoretical contributions it has made to understanding contemporary social change. Short et al. (1996) suggest a range of new data sources to aid in the task of describing the changing positions of cities in the world-system. We differ from their approach by concentrating on the generation of data rather than relying on existing sources. In the next section, we highlight the dearth of relational studies in world

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cities research which we consider to be a major consequence of the data problem. Secondly, we argue for the necessity of standardization to make data comparisons credible across and between world city research groups and researchers. Thirdly, we present three different measurement methodologies (surrogate, labour and organizational) to specify a world city’s external relations. In each case we propose the use of standard social science methods—content analysis, semi-structured interviews and organizational analysis of firms, respectively—and illustrate their application through examples drawn from our own research. Finally, we turn to the practical question of building up a database for both storing data and making it easily accessible to researchers and other users around the world. Thus, this paper is primarily about data and the methodological practicalities of how to get it, how to apply it and how to store it in order to begin to resolve the neglect of relational studies between world cities.

The neglect of relations in world city research A paradox in the literature on world cities is that while the essence of world cities is their relations to one another, this has not been a major component of the world city literature (Smith & Timberlake, 1995a,b; Taylor, 1997). The seminal works of both Friedmann (1986, 1995), who first proposed the ‘world city hypothesis’, and Sassen (1991, 1994a,b), who asserted a triad of ‘global cities’ (i.e. London, New York and Tokyo), are indicative of this fundamental defect in the literature. Friedmann’s ‘world city hypotheses’ The ‘hypotheses’ given by Friedmann (1986) argue that the ‘new international division of labour’ is organized through ‘world cities’. These cities are unique because they act as ‘control centres’ for world capital accumulation and consequently gain specific internal economic and social structures. Friedmann asserts a hierarchy amongst his list of ‘world cities’ which, while being widely quoted for its pedagogic and heuristic value, is particularly weak because it lacks any evidential basis. While admitting that the hierarchy is ‘complex’ because of the tendency for many world cities to have particular biases in specialized functions, he nevertheless goes on to create a subjective a priori typology of levels. The data problems become even clearer when considering the changes he makes to the hierarchy over time because he relies on what can be called ‘casual empiricism’ (see Friedmann, 1995). The central problem with Friedmann’s data has not been tackled in subsequent research, which has often just measured the attributes of world cities and then ranked them in numerous tables (e.g. London Planning Advisory Committee, 1991; Daniels, 1993; Sassen, 1994a,b, 1995; Brotchie, Batty, Blakely, Hall & Newton, 1995; Lyons & Salmon, 1995; Drennan, 1996; Nijman, 1996; Llewelyn-Davies, 1997). The problem with this, as Taylor (1997) has argued, is that to rank with data on attributes says nothing about interrelations and yet, by definition, a hierarchy is the outcome of relations between constituent elements.

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Another key problem with the Friedmann (1986) hierarchy is that it glosses over the complexity of the European system of cities, where several relatively small cities (e.g. Amsterdam and Zu¨rich) have a disproportionate influence in the world (see Meijer, 1993; Shacker, 1994). Unlike the unified political space of the USA, in which Friedmann writes, European city specializations combined with numerous national capitals produce an urban pattern that is not obviously hierarchical at all. On most indicators London is the most important city in Europe, but in relational terms how is it connected to other European cities and does that place it at the apex of a hierarchy? With the data sources currently available we simply do not and cannot know the answer. Sassen’s triad of world cities Sassen’s (1991, 1994a, 1996) work is particularly important for her careful specification of the nature of global cities. Although she identifies changes in international banking and finance as vital in the emergence of her triad, she contends that world cities are more than just financial centres. For Sassen (1991), finance is just one of a series of advanced producer services that serve to define global cities as postindustrial production sites. This contrasts with Friedmann’s (1986) original idea of world cities as general ‘command centres’ because a concentration of corporate headquarters is not identified by Sassen as an essential component of a city if it is to be classified as a world city. The crucial difference is that for Sassen a world city is the locus for the critical servicing of global capital, not just its specific management. However, the power of Sassen’s analysis is weakened when she considers the question of a global hierarchy. Although much of her discussion is about transactions between cities, her data consist of attributes that simply do not reveal whether the triad really does constitute the apex of a new global hierarchy. Overall, she provides a valuable comparative study of global cities, with notable findings on parallel changes between New York, London and Tokyo. However, like Friedmann’s, her analysis does very little to advance our understanding of relations between cities, a fault that is particularly serious when considering the role of London in a European system of cities. We have concentrated our literature critique on the seminal works (those that have set the tone of world city research) of Friedmann and Sassen because these exemplify, and have unwittingly concealed, the empirical deficit of relational data in the study of world cities. The remainder of this paper introduces a research programme that begins the task of rectifying this crucial weakness in our understanding of world cities.

Theory, measurement and standardization All measurement and data are the products of theory: from the vast realm of possible information on a topic, selections are made based on how a problem is theoretically conceptualized. In the research reported below, as well as reading world

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cities in the Freidmann (1986, 1995) or Sassen (1991, 1994a,b) sense, as ‘basing points’ or ‘global service production’ centres, they can be read more fundamentally as process. Here, of course, we are drawing our relational theoretical stance from the more general theory of Manual Castells’s (1996) The Rise of the Network Society, wherein world cities are constitutive of a broad societal transformation. For Castells (1996), world cities accumulate and hold onto their wealth and power because of the process ‘that connects advanced services, producer centers, and markets in a global network’ (Castells, 1996: 380). Put succinctly, world cities are produced and reproduced by what flows through them (information, knowledge, money and cultural practices, for example), rather than what is fixed within them (i.e. their forms and functions) (see Allen, 1999). We follow Castells in his assessment that world cities are processes, ‘by which centres of production and consumption of advanced services, and their ancillary local societies, are connected in a global network (Castells, 1996: 38). If we wish to take forward Castells’s (1996) view of world city as process, (re)produced by global networking and connectivity, however, it is vital that relational data are sought to describe his space of flows.1 Moreover, if we return to the research agendas set by Friedmann and Sassen, the main reason why world city researchers have neglected the relations and linkages between world cities is because of both the abundance of data on city attributes and the unavailability of relevant relational data. Most data collection agencies focus upon attribute data, both because they are easy to collect and because most demands seem to favour information in this format. Furthermore, where relational data are available, they are inadequate for our needs because they primarily cover states—the prime generators of data—and not cities. Thus, there are data on flows between countries, but little on flows between cities located in different countries. Expressing concerns analogous to ours, Smith and Timberlake (1995a,b) have constructed a typology of inter-city linkages based upon the form (human, information, material) and function (cultural, economic, political and social) of flows. In this way, 12 types of linkage are identified, but as the authors point out, this ‘wish list’ for world city research only emphasizes just how poor existing data sources are in this research field. Generally, data on flows between cities are conspicuous by their absence. There are some major exceptions to this rule. For instance, air traffic flows between cities can be obtained from timetables and a hierarchy produced (Keeling, 1995; O’Connor, 1995; Kunzmann, 1998; Rimmer, 1998), and data on postal flows, telephone calls and internet linkages are also available (Marek, 1992; Warf, 1995; International Telecommunication Union (ITU) World Telecommunication Indicators Database) and can be used to explore city hierarchies. However, there is a basic problem with all such data in that they measure general patterns of flow without differentiating the specific flows within those patterns. For example, a measure of

1 In his empirical treatment of his space of flows, Castells (1996) does fall prey to the data limitations highlighted in this paper—see Taylor (1999).

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general flows into Miami, say telephone calls or airline flights, confuses Miami’s role as a world city link between the USA and Latin America with its roles as a retirement centre and as a major holiday destination. In short, such general data on flows are of limited value because they conflate world city formation with other and distinctly separate processes. We need data on world city relations that include measures of world city functions alone. The problems we have identified with UN publications or other such sources of available data means that to find relational data, and to build up a data bank sufficient to address the crucial need for information on inter-city relations, specific measurements have to be made on a city-by-city basis. However, the scale of this task, which requires numerous people to collect data on a number of different cities from across the world, is a recipe for informational chaos unless there is a standard approach. The Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Research Group and Network 2 has been set up at Loughborough University with the express mission of encouraging and organizing such standardized data collection. As well as performing the necessary task of providing a central focus for this work, GaWC is concerned to ensure that data are collected in a manner that allows precise comparisons to be made between different cities’ relations. This means that measurement methodologies have to be standardized to ensure we do not produce a plethora of separate studies across which data cannot be matched. Our relational theoretical standpoint for measurement and standardization, therefore, is derived not only from Castells’s (1996) idea of world city as process (space of flows), but also from Friedmann’s (1986) ‘world city hypothesis’ within a changing world-economy and Sassen’s (1991, 1994a,b) analysis of the intensity and centrality of global city producer-service complexes. Drawing upon these three related theoretical approaches, in our research we have experimented with different ways of measuring world city relations and have found three methodologies to be particularly useful. First, building upon Friedmann’s (1986) ideas about the world city and the new international division of labour, we illustrate the generation of largescale relational data to partly address his casual empiricism, through a ‘content analysis’ of ‘business news’ which serves as a ‘surrogate’ measure of relations. Secondly, by drawing upon both Freidmann’s (1986) readings of (im)migration, and Castells’s (1996) specific ideas concerning the flow of knowledge and intelligence (embodied within individuals) between world cities, we illustrate the generation of inter-city migration data through ‘practitioner interviewing’ which serves as a ‘labour’ measure of relations. Thirdly, by focusing upon Sassen’s (1991, 1994a,b) analysis of world cities as production sites for advanced producer service activities, we illustrate the generation of relational data through detailed analysis of producer-service office locations, which serves as a powerful ‘organizational’ measure of relations between world cities. Each methodology has its own advantages and disadvantages, but in

2 Information about GaWC is available at: ⬍http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/gy/research/gawc.html⬎. This site also contains GaWC Research Bulletins (papers about world cities) and Briefings (guides to GaWC methodologies).

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combination they complement each other to provide an overall picture of world city relations. We do not suggest that these are the only methodologies suitable for this task and we invite other researchers to make further suggestions and contributions. However, if we are to make progress in generating comparable data on world city relations it is imperative that we start with projects that can be brought together in the way suggested here. Despite the value of our different and distinctive research on world cities, the time has come to act as a collective team in at least the measurement part of our work.

Three methodologies for measuring relations The aim of these methodologies is to facilitate a reorientation of the study of world cities from comparative studies of internal similarities and differences within cities to a study of the relations between cities. A surrogate measure of relations: content analysis of business news As already stated, the original ‘world city hypothesis’ was proposed as an outcome of the identification of the ‘new international division of labour’ in the 1970s. However, the dilemma is that any attempt to empirically link the rise of world cities to such trends in the world-economy requires longitudinal data on a large scale. Without a tradition of ‘official data’ in this field, longitudinal analysis will entail the collection of new data over a number of years. Hence, we have searched for a measurement methodology that enables large amounts of relational data to be collected from easily accessible, long-term sources. Our solution is a surrogate measure which indicates the economic linkages of a city. Daily business news as reported by a city’s newspapers provides a continuous source of information on what a given editor thinks are the salient news stories of the day for a given readership—the city’s business community. Thus, by recording place mentions in a sample of business news stories one can derive a surrogate measure of a city’s external relations. Content analysis of city newspapers was used by Pred (1980) in his classic study of changing hierarchical patterns amongst 19thcentury US cities and the credibility of such analysis for contemporary US cities has been affirmed by Taylor (1997). The key point for our concerns here is that back issues of newspapers serving world cities are available in libraries, so that we have a potential source for monitoring changes in inter-city relations in terms of relative place mentions as a quantitative estimate of business salience. It must be emphasized that this is only a surrogate measure; it does not record actual salience but only importance of places as reflected in number and size of news stories. As with all surrogate measures, there will inevitably be some measurement error: for instance, in the subjectivity of editorial choice. Of course, this is not a free choice; newspapers have to provide information relevant to their readers in order to be successful and we can fairly assume that business readers will be particularly cognizant of how well business news sections meet their needs. Given this rationale,

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and the pioneering success of Pred’s longitudinal study, we regard this data source as the answer to the empirical problem of studying medium-term trends in world city relations. This measurement methodology is illustrated by re-analysing part of the data originally presented by Taylor (1997). For each of six selected US cities, the front page of the business section of the city’s leading newspaper was surveyed for a sample of 24 days in 1 year (1990).3 Over 4000 references to places were recorded; we focus here on the 990 references to the six selected cities themselves. The result is a unique citation matrix showing which cities were deemed to be important to which other cities in terms of the stories editors judged substantial enough for their leading page (Table 1). Once in matrix form there are many possibilities for analysis; here we simply scrutinize the data through row and column percentage analyses (Table 2), reporting three results for each analysis for each city. Overall, nearly half the references in Table 1 are self-citations (a city’s paper referring to its own city) and these can be measured either as percentages of the newspaper’s total references (row analysis) or as percentages of the total references to that city (column analysis). Relations with New York, the dominant city in the dataset, and with the other four cities are similarly expressed in row and column analyses. We provide a preliminary interpretation of this data by focusing on New York and Miami. The most obvious feature is the sheer dominance of New York in these information flows between US cities. As America’s premier world city, we would be surprised if this were not the case but we can now put a quantitative measure on this to Table 1 Inter-city citations: selected US cities, 1990 Business Section front page

Boston Globe Chicago Tribune Los Angeles Times Miami Herald New York Times San Francisco Chronicle Total

Number of references to selected cities Boston

Chicago LA

Miami

New York

San Total Francisco

108 1 1 0 26 3 139

3 131 15 12 5 4 170

5 3 2 27 0 0 37

31 58 40 43 57 94 323

2 2 20 10 13 93 140

1 8 85 26 33 28 181

150 203 163 118 134 222 990

3 Acknowledgement is made to Travis R. Longcore and Carmen McWilliams, who collected the original data. Subsequently, we have experimented with the use of specialist business newspapers (London’s Financial Times and New York’s Wall Street Journal). These have the problem of mixing up non-business stories with business stories, since they also carry general news items for their readers. The result is that the data collector has to make subjective decisions on what stories to include in the sampling, whereas dedicated business sections only cover business news. Hence we do not recommend the use of specialist newspapers for this exercise.

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Table 2 Information flows based upon city citations to selected US cities, 1990 (%)

A. Row analysis of Table 1: from a city newspaper Self-citation New York citations Citations to other foura B. Column analysis of Table 1: from all selected newspapers Self-citation Citations from New York Citations from other foura a

Boston

Chicago

LA

Miami

New York

San Francisco

72.0 20.7

64.5 28.6

52.1 24.5

22.9 36.4

42.5 (42.5)

41.9 42.3

7.3

6.9

23.3

40.7

57.5

15.8

77.7

77.1

47.0

73.0

17.6

66.4

18.7

2.9

18.2

0.0

(17.6)

9.3

3.6

20.0

34.8

27.0

82.4

24.3

From other five in the case of New York.

facilitate comparison. Despite a modest level of self-referrals from the New York Times, this city has by far the largest number of citations. All other newspapers give between a fifth and a half of their city citations to New York: the highest level in two cases and second only to self-referrals in the other three. In terms of other cities referred to by the Times, only Boston and Los Angeles stand out, the former reflecting common regional interests. (We did not set out to find such ‘regional’ linkages but they are also discernible in Los Angeles–San Francisco relations.) Much more subtle, but equally clear cut, is the contradictory role of Miami as a world city. Although it has by far the fewest place references (only 37) in newspapers from other cities, the Miami Herald is second only to the New York Times in references to other cities, suggesting that Miami’s business community is interested in what goes on in other cities but other business communities are less interested in Miami. This asymmetry implies two things. First, Miami has a relatively low hierarchical position within the US urban system (low interest from other cities), but, secondly, it has a particular role as a gateway city (high interest about other cities). This is, of course, consistent with other studies of Miami, which emphasize its Latin American links (e.g. Nijman, 1996). Although this example deals with just six cities in one country for one year, it should be clear that there is the potential for a much larger study. The basic advantage of the methodology has already been mentioned: it can produce results from easily accessible sources over the long or medium term. For instance, it is feasible to study a set of all world cities from before the rise of the new international division of labour (c. 1970–80) to the present to see if there is evidence for an intensification

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of global linkages, as Friedmann (1986) originally hypothesized. However, we must reiterate the limitations of using a surrogate measure: it is not measuring actual relations. Although the assumption that the place-based information being supplied to a city business community will represent the pattern of economic relations at that time and place is reasonable, it is nevertheless subject to error, as previously noted. Some errors can be partially smoothed out by employing a large enough sample to ‘hide’ particular editorial quirks. However, the important point is that, as in other areas where direct measurement is difficult or impossible, surrogates are necessary to advance our understanding and therefore useful provided they are treated with special critical care. A labour measure of relations: skilled inter-city migration Studying flows of skilled, or elite, migration, between world cites is an extremely pertinent measurement for generating relational data to empirically ground both Friedmann’s (1986) and Castells’s (1996) theoretical arguments. Migration was identified as an important factor in the original formulation of the world city hypothesis (Friedmann & Wolff, 1982; Friedmann, 1986). World city formation is a product of migration: ...transnational elites are the dominant class in the world city, and the city is arranged to cater to their lifestyle and occupational necessities ... Immigrant workers give to many world cities a distinctly ‘third world’ aspect. (Friedmann & Wolff, 1982: 322–323)

... the world city hypothesis is about the spatial organization of the new international division of labour ... World cities are points of destination for large numbers of both domestic and/or international migrants. (Friedmann, 1986: 75) Our ‘network society’, as Castells (1996) terms it, is very difficult to research in terms of the flows themselves. The materials constituting the network are often commercially sensitive and it is unlikely, as we have already indicated, that researchers will be able to get below aggregate information flows for communications. However, there is one exception to this situation because information in terms of specific skills and knowledge is quite literally embodied in key employees who move both within and between firms but also, and crucially, between world cities as part of their career trajectories. Information on such movements constitutes a second way by which relations between world cities can be researched. Here we focus upon skilled inter-city migration, rather than low or unskilled migration (which of course is an element of both Friedmann’s and Sassen’s argument for world city formation), because the elite are the major facilitators of Castells’s (1996) spaces of flows. The corporate nature of the world city means that cities like London, New York, Singapore and Tokyo are the principal repositories for skilled international labour

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migration within the global economy (Beaverstock, 1994; Sassen, 1994a; Hamnett, 1995; Beaverstock & Smith, 1996; Findlay, Li, Jowett & Skelton, 1996). The concentration, and circulation, of skilled international labour within transnational corporations’ (TNCs) office networks have contributed significantly to world city functional primacy, particularly within the advanced producer-service sector (Sassen, 1988, 1994a; Beaverstock, 1996a). Skilled international labour migration is now not only a vital ingredient to, and outcome of, being a world city, but it is also a significant factor responsible for globalizing and restructuring world city labour markets in situ (Beaverstock, 1994). Accordingly, as skilled international migration is an important functional capacity in which a world city’s producer-service complex operationalizes its global reach, surveys of such migration flows will provide relational data that can help us construct a measure of world city relations. Official data on migration flows measures inter-nation (i.e. between states) rather than inter-city flows (Findlay, 1988; Beaverstock, 1990a). Therefore, the only way in which data on the latter can be obtained is through a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods focused at either the firm (Johnson & Salt, 1990; Beaverstock, 1996a), or at the migrants themselves (Beaverstock, 1996b). The two main techniques that have been employed to study skilled international labour migration within advanced producer-service world city office networks are postal questionnaires and interview surveys with TNC ‘Directors of Human Resources’. Each of these two methodologies are reviewed in turn. The use of postal questionnaires in this area of research has the same advantages and disadvantages as elsewhere. In particular, low response rates and lack of control over the practice of answering lead to concerns over the quality of the resulting data. For example, after eliminating replies with numerous incomplete answers, Beaverstock and Smith (1996) achieved only a 23% response rate with a postal questionnaire to record the magnitude of international emigration and immigration of staff employed in foreign banks and securities houses in the City of London. Nevertheless, questionnaires can provide a relatively simple means of collecting basic data to investigate inter-city relations and have been a very successful research tool in measuring labour world city relations in other sectors (e.g. Findlay, Li, Jowett, Brown & Skelton, 1994 on Hong Kong’s migrant doctors). Most producer-survey labour analyses have used case study interview surveys. Since the mid-1980s, in-depth research undertaken in the advanced producer service sector has been obtained from interview surveys with individual firms, which are then aggregated together into specific sectoral case studies (e.g. Daniels, Leyshon and Thrift’s (1988) work on accountancy, and McDowell and Court’s (1994) analysis of gender relations in merchant banking). With respect to world city office networks, Beaverstock (1990b, 1991, 1994, 1996, 1996) and Beaverstock and Smith, 1996 have used the same methodological approach to collect data on skilled international migration within advanced producer service firms. Beaverstock and Smith (1996) carried out semi-structured interviews with City-of-London-based British and foreign investment banks because ‘face-to-face’ contact with a bank’s ‘Director of Human Resources’ can provide the in-depth information necessary to begin to understand the complex processes that involve migration between that bank’s world city offices.

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Data were collected from nine investment banks (from a sample of 20) by conducting taped semi-structured interviews lasting 1–2 hours. These were returned to the interviewees for extra comment and editorial control. By adopting a standard interview schedule for each bank, covering topics such as global organization, migration flows, migration policies and future business strategies, the researchers were able to aggregate interview material and begin to construct an overall picture of migration within the investment bank sector. Using research findings drawn from two surveys of skilled international labour migration within the world city office networks of commercial, merchant and investment banks, management consultancies and advertising agencies in 1988 (Beaverstock, 1990a, 1994) and merchant and investment banks in 1993 (Beaverstock, 1996c; Beaverstock & Smith, 1996), this section of the paper illustrates relations between world cities on the basis of elite migration. Table 3 shows the major cities receiving the flow of skilled migrant labour from advanced producerTable 3 Skilled international migration from London-based advanced producer-service international office networks, 1988 and 1993 1988a

1993b

City

London migrants

City

London migrants

New York Hong Kong Sydney Tokyo Paris Singapore Othersc Total

313 67 58 41 30 26 189 724

New York Tokyo Hong Kong Paris Sydney Madrid Othersd Total

63 23 20 16 11 11 49 193

Sources: 1988 data from Beaverstock (1990a); 1993 data from Beaverstock (1996c) and Beaverstock and Smith (1996). a Complete data derived from: Barclays de Zoete Wedd; Barings and Co.; Brown Shipleys; Citicorp; County NatWest Bank; Goldman Sachs; Guiness Mahon; Hambros; Hill Samuel; Kleinwort Benson; Lazards; Nomura International; Robert Flemings; Rothschilds; Schroders; SG Warburg; Lloyds Bank Plc; National Westminster Bank Plc; The Midland Bank Plc; TSB Group Plc; Arthur Andersen Consulting; Arthur D. Little; P.A. International; The Mercer Group; Young and Rubicam; DMB Bowles; J. Walter Thompson; and Saatchi and Saatchi. b Incomplete data derived from these investment and merchant banks: Hambros; HSBC Investment Bank; Kleinwort Benson; NatWest Markets Bank; Nomura International; Paribas; Rothschilds; SG Warburg; Standard Chartered. c Others include: Montreal (21 migrants); Gibraltar (16); Frankfurt (14); Luxemburg City (12); Madrid (11); Brussels and Laos (10 each); Seoul, Rome and Auckland (9 each); Athens and Sharjah (8 each); Rio de Janeiro (7); Bahrain (6); Cairo (5); Taiwan, Geneva and Kuala Lumpur (4 each); Douglas and Amsterdam (3 each); Moscow, Buenos Aires, Abu Dhabi and Oslo (2 each); and Santiago, Stockholm, Calcutta, Beijing, Montevideo, Mexico City, Caracus and St. Helier (1 each). d Others include: Frankfurt, Zurich, Munich and Kuala Lumpur (10 migrants each); St. Helier (2); Lisbon, Athens and Gibraltar (1 each); and 4 from other unspecified European cities.

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service London headquarters, and major front-office locations, in 1988 and 1993. Several conclusions can be drawn from this relational world city data. First, there is an overriding concentration of flows from London to New York in both datasets, representing 43 and 33% of flows in 1988 and 1993, respectively. Secondly (and linked to the first point when we begin to explore the nature of hierarchical relations), it is clear that the magnitude of flows for both datasets begins to decrease rapidly as we move further down the urban hierarchy. Thus, for these datasets, we can identify very strong relations between London and New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney, Paris and Madrid, but very tenuous relations with other European and East Asian cities (e.g. Frankfurt, Zurich, Lisbon, Athens, Singapore and Seoul). Thirdly, the data indicate the relative insignificance of relations between London and other North American (e.g. Toronto, Los Angeles and Chicago), African (e.g. Johannesburg) and Latin American (e.g. Mexico City and Sa˜o Paulo) cities. The principal explanatory factor accounting for this pattern of labour flows, and therefore the uneven hierarchical relationships between London and other cities, is the spatial organization of the international financial system and the disproportionate concentration of ancillary producer service (advertising, management consultancy) needed to support it, rather than the more general functional characteristics of the world cities themselves. London, New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo are the major global international financial centres (Reed, 1981, 1983; Thrift, 1987). Hence, as these cities maintain their financial markets with high concentrations of foreign banks, securities houses and other associated producer services, it is logical that high concentrations of migrant labour will flow between them (Beaverstock, 1994b, 1996c). The main advantage of this method of analysing inter-city relations is that very detailed material on the patterns and processes of globalization may be obtained. However, considerable time and effort has to be invested to obtain data for a relatively small sample of firms. This leaves the results vulnerable to the problem of being too unrepresentative to serve as a measure of general trends and patterns. However, this problem of depth without breadth only emerges where semi-structured interviews are used alone, rather than as part of a suite of methodologies, some of which measure broader patterns of inter-city relations. An organizational measure of relations: the geographical scope of producer services Our final methodology for gathering relational data focuses upon how advanced producer services have organized themselves to meet the challenge of their globally orientated clientele. This research relates to the new economic geography of services which has focused on the recent growth of producer services and, within them, financial services (see Daniels, 1991, 1993, 1996; Corbridge, Martin & Thrift, 1994; Thrift & Leyshon, 1994). Different sectors of producer services, and the firms within them, have different organizational approaches to inter-city linkages. These can be investigated empirically by analysing the structure of head- and branch-office locations. Although not providing data on the companies’ actual transactions, this

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method does reveal their geographical strategies as prime agents in the making of contemporary world cities (see Coakley, 1992; Thrift & Leyshon, 1994; Budd, 1995; Pryke & Lee, 1995). Such data have been used by Meyer (1986) to show how Latin American cities have stronger ties to the USA than between each other; by Thrift (1987) to investigate how ‘international financial centres’ use foreign banks in London and selected London companies’ international networks; and by Daniels (1986) in his comparative analysis of foreign banks in New York and London. More recently, similar data have been used to explore hierarchical systems of cities. For example, Lynch and Meyer (1992) used law firm branching patterns to suggest a hierarchy among US world cities, and Daniels (1992) used consultancy services to construct an urban hierarchy in Western Europe. It is clear that this type of data provides a solution to the deficiency of relational studies in world city research (Beaverstock, Smith & Taylor, 1999, 2000; Taylor, Beaverstock & Walker, 2000). In contrast to their clients, whose need for commercial secrecy may inhibit open access to locational strategies, producer-service firms need to sell themselves in terms of geographical spread of services as a critical element of the marketing of their wares. Sometimes, therefore, information on networks of offices is relatively easy to obtain from promotional material and web sites. But in order to build up comprehensive databases of external office patterns of service sectors, research in this area takes on an investigative mode of operation using various trade sources to identify key players and then collect the requisite geographical information on company locational organization. However, such intensive research is time-consuming because the information can only be collected on a firm-by-firm basis, which may require several contacts before the right person is able to provide the right data. If a firm is not forthcoming with the information, the data gap may be filled by using more general information sources (which may be old, partial, and difficult to obtain or gain access to) such as business and professional directories, trade journals, specialist libraries, and a variety of internet sites. The end result is a variety of forms of data on individual firms. These different quantities of information translate into different scales of measurement. At the minimal end of the spectrum only presence/absence (nominal) data is obtained—the list of cities where a firm has a presence. At the other end of the spectrum, data are available on the number of practitioners a firm has in each city, thus providing for interval measurements. In between, there are various other types of information (e.g. specification of office regional responsibilities) which enable a firm’s presence amongst cities to be ranked (ordinal measurement). In this way information on the organizational links of producer services within a particular city can be accumulated across firms and services to provide invaluable data on the overall external relations of that city. We illustrate this with a study of London based upon 69 producer-service firms in accountancy, advertising, banking/finance and law. Our organizational method of measuring the relations between cities provides information at three levels of analysis. At the level of the firm, different locational strategies can be documented to inform our study of processes of globalization. At the level of the producer-service sector (i.e. aggregating firms by sector), the specific functional differences between cities can be explored. At the level of the city (i.e.

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aggregating the sectors), the global reach of the key sectors of world city formation can be charted and mapped. We focus upon the latter two below. This requires aggregating the various levels of measurement derived from the data on firms. In practice, this means operating at the level of ordinal measurement by converting interval scales to ranks and interpreting presence/absence as ordinal (for details see Beaverstock et al., 1999). Summing levels of office connections across firms shows that for each of the producer services covered by our data, New York is the city London is most linked to in terms of office connections. Using this (unsurprising) result, Table 4 lists all cities which have 80% or more of the level of New York’s London connections (Level A), and 60–79% (Level B), for each of the four producer services. It is here that the analysis begins to become interesting. First, at the service-sector level, large contrasts are picked up. Accountancy is the most globalized of the services, reflecting its corporate concentration with just six big firms dominating the sector (the data were collected in 1997/8, before the latest merger4); hence London’s high level of connections to 42 other cities. In contrast, law is the least globalized of the advanced producer services; there are only five cities that qualify above the 60% threshold. Banking and finance are highly globalized, of course, but in this case offices are geographically concentrated, thus resembling law. Finally, advertising is more like accountancy, featuring 21 cities: because of the national character of much of the media, capital cities are particularly featured. Secondly, in terms of cities, New York is clearly the place to be for firms located in London: none of New York’s closest rivals feature at Level A in all four sectors. In Table 5 the cities with major office connections to London are listed by geographical region—the three globalization arenas of North America, Western Europe and Pacific Asia (including Australasia) (see Beaverstock et al., 1999). Cities are scored by summing 2s for Level-A positions and 1s for Level-B positions. Hence New York scores the maximum 8 (2 each per sector), followed by Brussels with 6 and Hong Kong and Paris both with 5. Fourteen cities scoring 3 and above are featured in Table 5—all have at least one A and one B-level position in Table 4. The regional distribution illustrates the trans-continental scope of London, with the globalization arenas evenly represented among the 14 cities with the best office connections to London—with 4, 6 and 4 cities, respectively. This table also illustrates the geographical concentration of globalization, at least as indexed by London’s connections; only three Latin American cities and one African city feature in Table 4 and none qualify

4 On 1 July 1998 Price Waterhouse and Coopers and Lybrand merged to form PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). This reduction of the ‘Big Six’ to the ‘Big Five’ continues the historical trend of increasing concentration in this sector. At the time of writing the rumour circulating in the City was that in the future a merger between Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu International and Arthur Andersen was likely (personal source). However, in 1989, the attempt by Price Waterhouse and Arthur Andersen ‘to merge into the largest accounting firm in the world with 4,642 partners and annual revenues of $5038 billion failed because of conflicts of interest over clients and, especially important, cultural differences in organization’ (Flood, 1995: 157).

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Table 4 Major office connections between London and other world cities Accountancy

Advertising

Banking/finance

Legal services

New York

New York

New York

New York

Brussels Madrid Sydney Toronto

Hong Kong Singapore Tokyo

Brussels Hong Kong Washington

Amsterdam Athens Auckland Copenhagen Dusseldorf Istanbul Lisbon Los Angeles Melbourne Milan Paris Prague San Francisco Singapore Stockholm Vienna Zurich

Frankfurt Paris Zurich

Paris

Level Aa Atlanta Brussels Chicago Dusseldorf b Frankfurt Milan Parisb San Francisco Sydney Tokyob Torontob Washington Level Bc Amsterdam Berlin Birmingham Boston Copenhagen Dallas Hamburg Hong Kong Jakarta Johannesburg Lyons Los Angeles Madrid Manchester Melbourme Mexico City Montreal Munich Osaka Philadelphia Rome Rotterdam Santiago Sa˜o Paulo Seoul Stockholm Stuttgart Vancouver Zurich a b c

80%+ of New York’s connections. Same level of connection as New York. 60–79% of New York’s connections.

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Table 5 Major world city office connections to London by globalization arenas Score

Northern America

8 6 5 4

New York

3

Western Europe

Brussels Paris Toronto Washington San Francisco

Dusseldorf Frankfurt Madrid Milan

Pacific Asia

Hong Kong Sydney Tokyo Singapore

for entry to Table 5. Furthermore, no Asian cities (treating Istanbul as European, just) outside Pacific Asia feature in Table 4. The advantage of this type of data is that they directly measures major investments by advanced producer-service firms in offices across other cities. Hence the organizational geographies mirror the pattern of business, either actual or expected, in one place and time. The main disadvantage of this method is that it only covers a proportion of company linkages: there are contacts used which fall short of the investment in setting up a new office. In the legal field, for instance, there are many examples of ‘indirect presence’ where law firms work within international associations or have strategic associations with firms in other cities. Of course, office network data should be used in conjunction with information on other linkages to build up a comprehensive picture of a city’s external relations through its advanced producer-service industries. Data storage: the Global Observatory internet archive The three types of measurement described here constitute an initial suite of methods to begin the urgent task of providing an evidential basis for world city relations. While each method has its own specific advantages and disadvantages, they all generate different forms of a relatively rare commodity: trans-state data. Although such data are produced for world cities and other features of globalization within research projects, unlike ‘official’ statistics, there is no automatic institutional arrangement for trans-state data to be collated, stored and made accessible for other users. Given the labour required to gather and collate trans-state data, this constitutes a massive waste of social science research work. In short, it is important that the fruits of labour-intensive data production in this area are not lost. The Global Observatory5 is a clearing house for such data, functioning both to 5 The Global Observatory internet archive is located at ⬍http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ gy/research/global.html⬎. The observatory has been designed to store trans-state data as a resource for research on global change.

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store data and point to where it can be found. It is divided into several major research fields where trans-state data are required, of which world cities is one example. It is here that GaWC is located. The basic idea behind GaWC is for it to operate as a network of researchers who use and develop the methods outlined in this paper for their own research projects and graduate teaching programmes, as appropriate. Working linkages within the GaWC network may take a variety of forms: 1. taught Masters projects and dissertations. Members of the network encourage their students to adopt GaWC methodologies as tools for their projects; 2. research Masters and PhDs. As above, although here we appreciate that GaWC methods would have to be part of a wider thesis, and in the case of a doctorate, would have to be significantly improved, refined and developed in an original context; 3. research assistants employed using funds from a member’s university. This would involve small-scale applications of GaWC methods as seed corn for future work; 4. external research funding. This is the prime goal for collaboration using GaWC methods and would be the basis for large-scale trans-state projects. This paper is an open invitation to join the network. Specific GaWC Research Briefings are available on the GaWC website, providing explicit instructions on using the methods described here to ensure standardization for comparability. All data collected through the network will be deposited on the Global Observatory, thus facilitating comparative relational work. The Global Observatory currently holds data as web pages in tabular form. This has the merit that all the data are there, unconstrained by any assumptions and allowing other researchers to examine them from any perspective. However, we recognize some serious drawbacks to this technology and propose to develop more user-friendly approaches to data storage and retrieval. The first problem is that of indexing. There are a number of tables that may be relevant to any particular problem. We are likely to index them with reference to our own research agenda and this may make it difficult for others to find them. The second problem is that the tables are one dimensional and most research needs data in more than one dimension. Sensible searches are going to need to identify where a particular city stands on a number of criteria, or how the scores on various criteria are related. We are therefore developing relational database structures which can be interrogated over the web. These will be organized around a key field defined as 263 cities which have been selected on the basis of current GaWC research. We are also experimenting with ways of mounting other quantitative and qualitative data. There is a voluntary protocol for use of the data stored on the website to protect the original data collector. Finally, our ultimate collective goal is the elimination of a ‘dirty little secret’ in world city research by the creation of an on-going trans-state data project. This will provide researchers with the evidence to make reasoned judgements on the nature of globalization through analysing world city relations and hierarchical tendencies.

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