Globalization and Urban Economic Change

The reorganization of global space that has been set in motion over the past quarter century by processes of international economic change has had some important consequences for North American cities. Traditionally, cities' economic functions have been to organize and facilitate production and distribution within local, regional, and national spaces. Increasingly, these functions are being eclipsed by cities' roles as nodal points in global commodity chains. In this context, a few cities have acquired world city status because of their involvement in linking and shaping whole complexes of commodity chains. In most other cities, the globalizing world economy can be seen in the changes of economic fortune attached to the ebbs and flows of foreign direct investment, imports, and exports, and in the local economic restructuring and spatial reorganization driven by a new international division of labor.