What does it mean to be and become a ‘global city’? Several scholars have to date investigated the nature of popular metropolises like New York, London or Tokyo, presenting the academic public with accounts of the socio-economic characteristics of these easily recognizable cities. This project was funded by support from the Centre for Studies in Property Valuation and Management Trust with matched funding from Oxford Martin School, and previous fieldwork support from the Australian National University’s Vice Chancellor and the International Alliance of Research Universities(IARU). What does it mean to be a “global city”? What is the state of the art in understanding this term in urban studies? How do contemporary metropolises become “global cities”? Is there a recipe for ‘making’ growing urban centres into the strategic hinges of globalization? Focusing on the evolution of global city research and on the pathways to global city formation, this project, developed by the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society (InSIS) in collaboration with the Urban Research Program (URP) at Griffith University, Australia, and led by Michele Acuto, seeks to unpack and analyze the evolution and governance of contemporary global cities.

What are 'global' world cities?