World Cities and the Uneven Geographies of Financialization: Unveiling Stratification and Hierarchy in the World City Archipelago

Abstract

This article critically evaluates the network-centrism of much of contemporary world cities research and queries its capacity to unveil key accumulation processes under financialized globalization. Our object of inquiry is the world city archipelago (WCA), a material yet non-contiguous space of world city 'islands', which is (re)produced through the socio-spatial practices of advanced producer services (APS) firms as they assist in constructing ( financial) accumulation strategies for their clients. Scrutinizing the WCA with a singular focus on networks can veil dynamics that lead to internal stratification and hierarchy between world cities and their constitutive outside. Alternatively, these veiled dimensions are better grasped by territorial, scalar and place-based abstractions. As an example, we unveil WCA space by studying the space of APS practices in three recent cases of Eurobond issuance. By comparing these three instances through an encompassing approach, a bounded geography of a financialized accumulation space is identified, which contains London and other world cities as a necessary space of dependence but also stretches out to various contingent spaces of engagement at the fringes of the WCA network: offshore jurisdictions and places of debt origination. We conclude by making the case for a heightened sensitivity in respect of core-periphery structures that exist between the WCA and its outside, but also within the WCA itself.

Climate riskscapes in world port cities: situating urban‐cosmopolitan risk communities via Ulrich Beck's comparative tactics

“…My own work grapples with such issues via the alternative notion of the 'world city', a term of earlier origin and wider geographical applicability than the global city. Moreover, it does so in ways that recognize the reality of urban hierarchies, yet rethink the world city category more along the lines of the relative densities of network flows, of finance, professionals, aspirations and indeed climatic risks, among relationally constituted and polymorphic urban geographies coagulating, eventually, in intermeshed sites of place-making (Smith 2003;Van Meeteren and Bassens 2016). This commitment then underlies my pragmatic focus on world port cities in particular, since they arguably constitute intense admixtures of trade histories, intra-and interregional migrations, and contemporary climatic threats (Hein 2011).…”

Rethinking international financial centres through the politics of territory: renminbi internationalisation in London's financial district

“…However, the relationship between networks and the places and spaces in which they become grounded, interpreted and acted on is a longstanding concern within economic geography, extending well beyond work on IFCs (Dicken ; Scott ; Storper ). In this paper, I want to suggest that while by no means ignoring the territorial basis of IFCs, the relative balance of work on such centres has taken networks and flows of people, knowledge, information and capital as their starting point and hence, understandings of how these networks are grounded and reworked in particular places has been comparatively neglected (see Van Meeteren and Bassens ). In particular, I am interested in how this focus has meant that the governance of such networks, and particularly the role of the state in such activities, remain overlooked.…”

“…However, in this paper, I use the case of RMB internationalisation to demonstrate how state intervention is vital in creating the conditions under which these financial networks can develop and thrive. In particular, I suggest that foregrounding the role of the state in the (re)production of IFCs demands a shift in the geographical imagination used to study financial centres from its current emphasis on networks and relationality to one more sensitive to the territorial qualities of financial centres and the ways in which territories are co‐produced through financial networks (see also Budd ; Van Meeteren and Bassens ). Drawing on the increasing interest in territory in economic geography and beyond (see for example Christophers ; Elden ; Sassen ), I demonstrate how the territorial construction of London's financial district, understood as the (re)production of the space of London's financial district through state intervention in setting the institutional and regulatory parameters of legitimate financial activity, is vitally important in understanding the development of offshore RMB markets in London.…”

European Union financial integration, a geography perspective

“…Gradually, finance-state interactions are "uploaded" (Mügge, 2010) to the EU scale, engendering a scalar fix (Jonas, 1994;Smith, 1995). The more institutions become reliant on the scale of the EU, the more it evolves from a space of engagement into a space of dependence, where the necessity to keep the scale stable to avert crises increases (Cox, 1998;Van Meeteren & Bassens, 2016).…”

“…For instance, EU member states outside the Eurozone still have to adhere to Commission directives regarding financial market governance. Arbitrating this legal variable geometry produces its own lucrative financial geographies (Aalbers, 2018;Van Meeteren & Bassens, 2016). Moreover, the EU scale comprises different power centres: the European Commission, the European Council, the European Parliament, and comitology procedures determine policy outcomes in interaction (Mamadouh & Van der Wusten, 2008;Quaglia, 2010a).…”