Defining the role of cities within economic networks has been a key theoretical challenge, particularly as nuanced understandings of positionality are increasingly championed over hierarchical notions of influence or power in the World City Network (WCN). This paper applies social network analysis (SNA) to identify the critical role that a wide range of cities plays in the Australian economic system. Drawing upon the set of Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) listed firms, four distinct sub-networks are compared against the overall urban network. Each of the materials, energy, industrials, and financials sector sub-networks are found to have unique configurations of inter-urban relations, which are articulated through institutional and industry-specific factors, grounded in diverse histories and path-dependent trajectories. This analysis applies five different centrality measures to understand how positionality within the overall network and respective sub-networks might better inform policymakers formulating ‘globalizing’ urban policy. This addresses the long-standing theoretical debate regarding territorially articulated hierarchies of urban/corporate power, extricating WCN research from the core-periphery assumptions tied to its world-systems theory lineage. Understanding how, rather than if, cities are global provides contextual knowledge about how cities are situated within broader circuits of production, and the exogenous relations that shape urban economies around the world, providing a framework for research in other global contexts.

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The authors explore energy as an alternative but important landscape of globalisation, where spatial geometries of global power and control are defined by particular historic and contemporary geopolitical and territorial forces. From the application of a social network analysis to energy corporate locations, it is argued that network geographic, relational, and hierarchical perspectives are all critical in enhancing understandings of the world city network. Some similarities with advanced producer services networks are noted, as well as important differences which are shaped by a combination of resource production and consumption, and geopolitical and economic power relations. The outcome is a dynamic set of interlocking local, regional, and global city globalisations.

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