Pathways of growth and decline: connectivity changes in the world city network, 2000-2008

In this paper, the network model devised by the globalization and World Cities (GaWC) research group and network is used to assess the nature of change in inter-city relations from 2000 to 2008. Data are collected for 2008 on the office networks of a similar set of global service firms that were used to describe global connectivities for 315 cities in 2000 (Taylor et al., 2002). This allows a new cross-sectional geography of connectivities to be produced for 2008, and for changes in connectivities between 2000 and 2008 to be computed. A range of simple visualisation and statistical techniques is used to explore the data. The most notable changes are the general loss of global connectivity of U.S. cities with the exception of New York (exemplified by the decline of cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago), and the general gain of global connectivity of Chinese cities (most notably Shanghai and Beijing, but also Taipei, Shenzhen and Guangzhou). The rise of Chinese cities in the world city network is also reflected in the reinforcement of the relational position of cities that were already previously well-connected to Chinese cities (exemplified by the rise of cities such as Sydney and Seoul)