World City Typologies and National City System Deterritorialisation: USA, China and Japan

The research constitutes the first effort to test the claim found in the world city theoretical literature that, as world cities strengthen ties with each other, their linkages with their countries’ hinterlands and national urban systems will weaken. This research offers a more nuanced exploration of this hypothesis by taking into account variation in the nature of the state across countries in which world cities are located as well as the source of global capital in the world cities. Specifically, the research reported here suggests that three types of world cities—market-centred bourgeois world cities (MWC), state-centred political bureaucratic world cities (SWC) and dual-role world cities (DWC)—entail different deterritorialisation outcomes. Three countries that have prototypical global cities—Japan (SWC), China (DWC) and the US (MWC) are compared, applying longitudinal network modelling to relational data on national city networks. From 1993 to 2007, more globally connected MWCs weakened their national ties. In contrast, higher global status has no significant effect on the integration of SWCs or DWCs with their national urban systems. This indicates that the type of state, but not the source of capital, conditions whether the world city will deterritorialise vis-à -vis its national city system.