Central place hierarchies have been the traditional basis for understanding external urban relations. However, in contemporary studies of these relations, a new emphasis on urban networks has emerged. Rather than either abandoning or extending central place thinking, it is here treated as representing one of two generic processes of external urban relations. Town-ness is the making of ‘local’ urban—hinterland relations and ‘city-ness’ is the making of ‘non-local’ interurban relations. Central place theory describes the former through an interlocking hierarchical model; this paper proposes a central flow theory to describe the latter through an interlocking network model. The key difference is the level of complexity in the two processes.

Global geographies of higher education: the perspective of world university rankings his item ws sumitted to voughorough niversity9s snstitutionl epository y theGn uthorF Citation: t¤ oxD rF nd ryviD wFD PHIQF qlol geogrphies of higher edutionX the perspetive of world university rnkingsF qeoforumD RTD ppFRSE SWF Additional Information:• xysgiX this is the uthor9s version of work tht ws epted for puE lition in the journl qeoforumF ghnges resulting from the pulishing proessD suh s peer reviewD editingD orretionsD struturl formttingD nd other qulity ontrol mehnisms my not e refleted in this doE umentF ghnges my hve een mde to this work sine it ws sumitE ted for pulitionF e definitive version ws susequently pulished tX httpXGGdxFdoiForgGIHFIHITGjFgeoforumFPHIPFIPFHIR Abstract This paper contributes to emerging debates about uneven global geographies of higher education through a critical analysis of world university rankings. Drawing on recent work in geography, international higher education and bibliometrics, the paper examines two of the major international ranking schemes that have had significant public impact in the context of the on-going neoliberalization of higher education. We argue that the emergence of these global rankings reflects a scalar shift in the geopolitics and geoeconomics of higher education from the national to the global that prioritizes academic practices and discourses conducted in particular places and fields of research.Our analysis illustrates how the substantial variation in ranking criteria produces not only necessarily partial but also very specific global geographies of higher education. In comparison, these reveal a wider tension in the knowledge-based economy between established knowledge centres in Europe and the United States and emerging knowledge hubs in Asia Pacific. An analysis of individual ranking criteria, however, suggests that other measures and subject-specific perspectives would produce very different landscapes of higher education.

This is an empirical paper that measures and interprets changes in intercity relations at the global scale in the period [2000][2001][2002][2003][2004][2005][2006][2007][2008]. We draw on the network model devised by the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) research group to measure global connectivities for 307 cities across the world in 2000 and 2008. The measurements for both years are adjusted so that a coherent set of services/cities is used. A range of statistical techniques is used to explore these changes at the city level and the regional scale. The most notable changes are (i) the general rise of connectivity in the world city network, (ii) the loss of global connectivity of US and Sub-Saharan African cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami in particular), and (iii) the gain in global connectivity of South Asian, Chinese and Eastern European cities (Shanghai, Beijing and Moscow in particular).

Sassen's identification of global cities as 'strategic places' is explored through world city network analysis. This involves searching out advanced producer service (APS) firms that constitute 'strategic networks', from whose activities strategic places can be defined. 25 out of 175 APS firms are found to be strategic and from their office networks, 45 cities out of 526 are designated as strategic places. A measure of 'strategic-ness' of cities is devised and individual findings from this are discussed by drawing on existing literature about how APS firms use specific cities. A key finding shows that New York and London have different levels of strategic-ness and this is related to the former's innovation prowess and the latter's role in global consumption of services. The strategic-ness of Johannesburg, Mexico City, Palo Alto, and leading Chinese and German cities are also discussed in terms of the balance between production and consumption of advanced producer services.

importance. Discussion of these findings elaborates upon two key points: first, globalisation is not a 'blanket' process creating a homogeneous world, and second, the resulting fuzzy and porous regionalisation counters the traditional 'territorialist' regional geographies that can provide a framework for global conflict with a more complex geography of multiple global integrations.