Sabbactical Ben Derudder

In this project I attempt to understand new world geographies through cities by treating corporate globalization from the perspective of cities insofar they are central to the global networks that make large-scale economic processes possible. To this end, I will draw on a conceptual and an empirical extension of world city network research to describe the major globalization phases that have been shaping the twenty first century. After situating world city network research in the much broader field of research on globalizing cities, I aim to retell the narrative of the extensive, intensive and Chinese globalization phases as reflected in the office networks of 175 of the world’s largest producer services firms across 707 cities. A purposeful combination of connectivity and multivariate analysis will be used to reveal cumulative, interacting, overlapping, and unfolding geographies of global economic patterns. The overarching theoretical aim is to show that these three key globalizations are shaping the global context of economic processes in the twenty first century, and describe the urban geography of each of these globalizations so as to understand their broader meanings within today’s global economy.