Economic Globalisation and the Structure of the World City System: The Case of Airline Passenger Data

Matthew C. Mahutga, Xiulian Ma, David A. Smith and Michael Timberlake
Additional contact information
Matthew C. Mahutga: Department of Sociology, University of California at Riverside, 1226 Watkins Hall, Riverside, CA, 92521, USA, matthew.mahutga@ucr.edu
Xiulian Ma: Department of Social and Cultural Studies, Chinese Academy of Governance, No. 6 Changchunqiao Road, Haidian Distr., Beijing 100089, China, echolley@gmail.com
David A. Smith: Department of Sociology, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA, 92697-5100, USA, dasmith@uci.edu
Michael Timberlake: Department of Sociology, University of Utah, 380 S 1530 East, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84112, USA, timber@soc.utah.edu

Urban Studies, 2010, vol. 47, issue 9, 1925-1947

Abstract: This paper reports results from an analysis of the relationship between the structure of the city-to-city network of global airline passenger flows and the interstate world system. While many scholars suggest that the broader parameters of the world system structure the urban hierarchy embedded within or articulated to it, others argue that the urban hierarchy is decoupling from the world system. The analyses show that there has been some modest convergence in the distribution of power in the world city system. Moreover, they suggest that the mechanism for this convergence is the upward mobility of cities located in the semi-periphery and the east Asian region. The paper closes by considering the implication of these findings for a larger understanding of the relationship between globalisation, the structure of the world city system and its articulation with the world system.

Date: 2010
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:47:y:2010:i:9:p:1925-1947

DOI: 10.1177/0042098010372684

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