What is space? What is spacing? And how does spacing itself hold together? The author pursues these questions, which continue to haunt and transfix geographers, by drawing upon the collaborative work of two exemplary thinkers: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. What emerges from such an encounter is a fundamental shift in the way space, place, and spacing are configured; a shift which will have enormous implications for anyone concerned with unfolding the relationship between society and space. Particular emphasis is placed on the radicalization of relations, of the spacing of relations, and of relational space. Such a radicalization effectively deconstructs the field of geography as we know it, and demands that we reconfigure both the world and our theoretical-practices ‘from the middle’. This yields a world of continuous variation, becoming, and chance, rather than one of constancy, being, and predictability; and it is populated solely by hæcceities, singularities, and events, strung together through joints, intervals, and folds. Accordingly, a fractal world of infinite disadjustment, destabilization, and disjointure is what is meant by the term ‘scrumpled geography’, and it constitutes the horizon on which one should situate deconstruction, postmodernism, and poststructuralism more generally. Unfolding the joints, intervals, and folds of such a world is precisely the task undertaken by Deleuze and Guattari. However, the author reworks their own undertaking by giving it a much more explicitly spatial inflexion and consistency. Thus, the paper not only clarifies the scrumpled geography embedded within the work of Deleuze and Guattari, it also demonstrates the revolutionary implications of a rigorously deconstructive and poststructuralist consideration of space, place, and spacing.

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World Cities are acknowledged to be a key aspect of globalization. In many accounts, these cities are depicted as rivals in a global marketplace, their economic success a result of their competitive advantage. However, what has not been fully acknowledged is their connectivity and, in addition, the time and effort taken by specific 'attendants' to produce the World City network. Accordingly, this article aims to advance understanding of World City network formation by developing a conceptual model that focuses on four major attendants (firms, sectors, cities and states) that enact network formation through two nexuses -'city-firm' and 'statesector' -and two communities -'cities within states' and 'firms within sectors'. The utility of this model is demonstrated by drawing upon interviews conducted in offices of 39 advanced producer service firms in banking and law. These interviews were undertaken in three World Cities (London, New York and Singapore) in the wake of the East Asian financial crisis, an event that challenged the consistency of the World City network. Showing how attendants sought to maintain and transform the World City network at this key moment of crisis, we conclude that studies of city competitiveeness ultimately need to focus on the cooperative work that sustains global networks.

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