Beyond the Global City Concept and the Myth of ‘Command and Control’

Abstract

The article argues that the lack of convincing empirical evidence for the global economy as being subject to ‘command and control’ results from that contention being a neo‐Marxist myth. First, imagining the global economy as being subject to ‘highly concentrated command’ through the function of some major cities as ‘strategic sites’ for the production of ‘command and control’ is traced back through several neo‐Marxist authors to narrate its genesis, and to argue that the lack of evidence for that proposition is a consequence of those antecedents envisioning capitalism as a totalizing structure, thus making the assumption that it is subject to control and coordination from a distance. Second, Taylor's interlocking world city network model is forensically examined to explain that it is fallacious because it is a structuralism that, bedevilled by a sorites paradox, contains the further problem of containing no credible evidence for the existence of ‘command centres’. Finally, the article moves beyond neo‐Marxism's key concepts by juxtaposing their assumptions with ethnographic results from social studies of finance, a manoeuvre which forges an understanding of cities as socio‐technical assemblages and eventful multiplicities, beyond, inter alia, the baseless assumption that the global economy is subject to ‘command and control’.

The Ordinary City Trap

“…Keen to point out the diversity of London's economy as somehow amounting to a critique of the global city concept, Massey (like Robinson, 2006) nevertheless paradoxically affirms Sassen's (1991) contention that London is "a global centre of command, playing a crucial role in framing the world economy in neoliberal form. That is agreed by all" (Massey, 2007, pages 39-40), (5) because she wants to claim she is critiquing in order to extend-with no concept [cf Sassen's (1991) 'joint production' between financial and advanced producer service firms; or Taylor's (2004) equating of command and control to the structural effect of networks (see Smith, 2013)] to explain exactly how command and control is said to occur-the neo-Marxist platform for what 'counts' as a part of command-and-control functionality.…”

“…The world city concept (Friedmann, 1986) and the global city concept (Sassen, 1991)-because of their shared neo-Marxist heritage [for a detailed explanation see Smith (2013)]-are extremely specific: they are not, nor (4) Massey's is an all-too-common consequentialist critique. For example, Mayaram (2006) is seemingly unaware of works such as Fenster's (2004) on the global city and the holy city when she claims that other dimensions of the urban world-her specific example is the "globality of religious centers" (page 6)-have been negated by the economism of the global city literature.…”

“…For example, Mayaram (2006) is seemingly unaware of works such as Fenster's (2004) on the global city and the holy city when she claims that other dimensions of the urban world-her specific example is the "globality of religious centers" (page 6)-have been negated by the economism of the global city literature. (5) In fact, there is not a consensus over the contention that some major cities, such as London, are centres for command and control of the global economy (eg, see Smith, 2013;Thrift, 1993).…”

“…However, both neo-Marxist concepts are different, both theoretically and empirically, especially with regard to their key purposes of supposing and evidencing command and control [for a detailed explanation see Smith (2013)]. The superficiality of postcolonial and ordinary cities advocates engagement with the detail of the two neo-Marxist concepts only serves to further question the credibility of their critiques and the need for the alternative they propose.…”

El área metropolitana de Valencia en el sistema global de ciudades: los efectos de la crisis económica en la red de relaciones financieras de las empresas multinacionales

“…Por otra parte, se ha insistido en la necesidad de considerar no solo las ciudades cabecera de la jerarquía, sino también las ciudades «en globalización», es decir, las situadas en distintas fases del proceso (Krätke, 2014;De Mattos, 2010). Otras aportaciones han matizado el significado de los conceptos implícitos de «dominación» y «control», subrayando el hecho de que no se trata de juegos de suma cero, en los que las ciudades «subordinadas» puedan perder respecto a las ciudades cabecera de la jerarquía, sino de que el «poder» de las ciudades globales consiste más bien en la posibilidad de crear y mantener conexiones, un poder que no restringe necesariamente las posibilidades económicas de las ciudades «subordinadas» (Allen, 2010;Smith, 2014). Finalmente, desde un punto de vista más general, también se ha criticado el sesgo excesivamente económico del análisis, que tiende a subestimar el papel de las redes culturales, sociales y políticas que vinculan las ciudades a escala internacional (Pflieger y Rozenblat, 2010).…”