Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
were generated by exports. However, as we have already seen, one of the
key features of the current phase of globalization is that there is now an
increasing premium associated with face-to-face contact. This implies that
the global engagement facilitated by international investment is becom-
ing far more important than exporting. As such, the relationship between
cities, countries, and globalization is changing, and the arguments in this
topic all point to the increasingly important role of multinational firms as
conduits and facilitators of such global engagement.
We therefore must return to our location theory principles discussed in
Chapter 3 in order to ask why multinational firms would want to locate in
particular cities in the first place. Larger cities are more expensive invest-
ment locations and, as we have seen here, we cannot simply assume that
agglomeration effects are the answer, because city productivity perform-
ance is not simply a matter of scale. Yet, combining these insights with
those of Chapters 4 and 5 - and in the light of the Hymer's legacy discussed
in Chapter 2 - the location behaviour of MNEs cannot be understood
without recourse to detailed considerations of organization, technology
and innovation and, most importantly of all, to the firm's ability to access
and exploit internal, local and global knowledge sources. Indeed, the argu-
ments in this topic actually go further than this in that they point to the
critical role which MNEs play in making cities highly productive by their
global connections which go well beyond the scale aspects of the local city
or urban region.
As such, following all of our previous arguments, the location behaviour
of MNEs would therefore appear to be critical in explaining why particu-
lar types of cities are knowledge centres. Indeed, in this vein, building on
interdisciplinary seminal studies on cities and economic growth (e.g., Hall
1966; Jacobs 1969; Hymer 1972; Friedmann and Wolff 1982; Friedmann
1986; Sassen 1991; Henderson et al. 1995), there is now substantial evi-
dence from the literature on 'global cities' that economic growth at the
international scale is being increasingly dominated by networks of particu-
lar major urban centres and regions (e.g. Borja et al. 1997; Sassen 2001;
Scott 2001; Scott et al. 2001; Derudder et al. 2003; Button et al. 2006).
Similarly, there is also much evidence which examines the role played by
these global cities as the principal location bases for globally connected
firms (e.g., Sassen 1994, 1995, 2002; Knox and Taylor 1995; Enright
2000a, b: Taylor 2004; Bel and Fageda 2008; Verbeke and Goerzen 2009).
The analysis of global cities suggests that in the current phase of globaliza-
tion, the links between a city and other parts of the global economy are a
key determinant of the city-region's performance.
In the global cities literature, which draws heavily on sociological
approaches, the importance and influence of a city in the global economic
