Uneven ties! The imposition of inequality through interscalar networks

Notwithstanding the fast globalizing world we live in, academics and policymakers continue to view economic geography as a science of particularly urban and sometimes regional scales (Grabher 2006). This has led to an over-territorialized notion of development (Dicken and Malmberg 2001; Hess 2004; Crescenzi et al. 2016). Within our contemporary context, a need for the smart coupling of regional assets to global production networks, across geographic scales, is evident (Henderson et al. 2002; Coe et al. 2004; Hess 2004). This type of approach is important when considering that globalization can be characterized by the integration of international labor markets, capital markets and commodity markets (Bordo et al. 2005), through which corporations intensify their networks globally, in their pursuit of profit maximization, and driven by natural and human resource scarcity (Maddison 1995). Combined expansion and integration has enabled the increased development of international networks and the splintering of markets and production across various spatial scales (Dicken 2003; Taylor 2004; Alderson and Beckfield 2004; Wall 2009). Urban and regional economic development does not depend particularly on local production and knowledge characteristics, but instead requires ‘global pipelines’ (Bathelt et al. 2004), and ‘local buzz’ (Storper and Venables 2004). The emergence of these linkages does not necessarily depend on geographic proximity (Alderson and Beckfield 2004; Boschma 2005; Wall and van der Knaap 2011), and where attributes that are non-spatial, such as cognitive, organizational, institutional and social, play a critical role in the formation of corporate networks (D’Este et al. 2013).