World Cities Quiz - Global Sherpa. Global Cities. What Is a Global City? We hear a lot of talk these days about so-called “global cities.” But what is a global city? Saskia Sassen literally wrote the book on global cities back in 2001 (though her global cities work dates back well over a decade prior to that book). She gave a definition that has long struck with me. In short form, in the age of globalization, the activities of production are scattered on a global basis. In this world then, a global city is a significant production point of specialized financial and producer services that make the globalized economy run.
The question then becomes how to identify these cities, and perhaps to determine to what extent they function as global cities specifically, beyond all of the other things that they do simply as cities. A number of studies were undertaken to produce various rankings. As you can see, this is quite a hodge-podge of items, many of which are only tangentially related to globalization per se. Note that these were not all equal weighted. Aaron M. Andrew Marr's Megacities - Living In The City - Episode 1. "On Global Cities" by Richard C. Longworth.