These are London because it is the world's leading financial market as far as transactions are concerned and also constitutes a crucial airport node and is one of the ends of the economic backbone that crosses Europe New York for being the main receiver of capital flows and service exporter and Tokyo for being the greatest capital lender and the headquarters of the most important banks in the world, as well as an international center in the economy of services, education, advertising, and design. Manuel Castells reduces the number of Global Cities to three.

Thirdly and lastly we can mention those establishments that satisfy the new consumer habits of contemporary society, which particularly stress fashion and style, together with cultural activities. To these are added advanced production services: legal and financial advice, innovation, development, design, administration, personnel, production technology, maintenance, transport, communications, security, advertising, marketing, market studies, mergers, management tasks, etc. The most important, which allow the controlling of the world economic organization, are executed from the central headquarters of corporations and transnational banks. Its raison d’être consists of high-level tertiary functions. Secondly, the territorial dispersal that characterises the 'global assembly line' (the production of goods in factories scattered throughout the world) has generated a need for highly centralized control and management from a spatial viewpoint.įrom the functional point of view the Global City is a post-industrial one.

In the first place, the decentralization of economic activity has not been accompanied by a parallel decentralization in the property of the capital.

For Saskia Sassen the centralization–decentralization dichotomy obeys the internal logic of late capitalism.

Although globalization is characterized by a powerful decentralizing tendency, this appears in tune with acute tendencies that point in the opposite direction.

The global city london