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Economic hubs and the domination of inter-regional ties in world city networks

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Abstract

Cities are widely considered as the lifeblood of a nations’ economy housing the bulk of industries, commercial and trade activities, and employment opportunities. Within this economic context, multinational corporations play an important role in this economic development of cities in particular, and subsequently the countries and regions they belong to, in general. As multinational companies are spread throughout the world by virtue of ownership–subsidiary relationship, these ties create complex inter-dependent networks of cities that shape and define socio-economic status, as well as macro-regional influences impacting the world economy. In this paper, we study these networks of cities formed as a result of ties between multinational firms. We analyze these networks using intra-regional, inter-regional, and hybrid ties (conglomerate integration) as spatial motifs defined by geographic delineation of world’s economic regions. We attempt to understand how global cities position themselves in spatial and economic geographies and how their ties promote regional integration along with global expansion for sustainable growth and economic development. We study these networks over four time periods from 2010 to 2019 and discover interesting trends and patterns. The most significant result is the domination of inter-regional motifs representing cross-regional ties among cities rather than national and regional integration.

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Notes

  1. Top 15 countries are selected based on GDP from the year 2022 https://globalpeoservices.com/top-15-countries-by-gdp-in-2022/.

  2. Source of Data: Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing (http://www.bvdep.com/) and was processed as a collaboration between the Université de Lausanne (CitaDyne group) and the University of Paris (ERC GeodiverCity group)

  3. United Nations Geoscheme (https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/) divides the world into 6 regions, and 17 sub-regions.

  4. https://globalpeoservices.com/top-15-countries-by-gdp-in-2022/

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mathematics and Computer Science, Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, Pakistan

    Mohammad Yousuf Mehmood & Syed Junaid Haqqani

  2. School of Administrative Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada

    Faraz Zaidi

  3. Institute of Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Céline Rozenblat

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  1. Mohammad Yousuf Mehmood
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  2. Syed Junaid Haqqani
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  3. Faraz Zaidi
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  4. Céline Rozenblat
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Contributions

MYM and JH performed the experiments and wrote the first version of the paper. FZ and CR reviewed and revised the paper, added Results and Discussion section, and provided the literature review.

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Correspondence to Faraz Zaidi.

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Mehmood, M.Y., Haqqani, S.J., Zaidi, F. et al. Economic hubs and the domination of inter-regional ties in world city networks. Soc. Netw. Anal. Min. 13, 125 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-023-01134-4

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