Respuestas
Each phase in the long history of the world economy raises specific questions about the particular conditions that make it possible. One of the key properties of the current phase is the influence of information technologies and the associated increase in capital mobility or liquidity. There have been long cross-border economic processes: flows of capital, labor, goods, raw materials, tourists ... but to a large extent they occur within the framework of an interstate system, where the main agents were the nation states. The international economic system was basically articulated around this interstate system. This has changed dramatically over the last decade as a result of privatization, deregulation, the opening of national economies to foreign companies, and the increasing participation of national economic agents in global markets.
In this context, we observe a reorganization of the strategic territories that make up the new system. With the partial disintegration or, at least, the weakening of the national as a spatial unit caused by privatization, deregulation and the strengthening of globalization, favorable conditions have been created for the prevalence of other spatial units or dimensions. These include sub-nationals (ie cities and regions), transnational regions spanning two or more sub-national entities, and supranational entities (ie global digital markets and free trade blocs). The processes and dynamics that are territorialized at these various scales can be, in principle, regional, national or global.
I place the emergence of context of global cities in this and within this range of strategic scales and spatial units (Sassen 2001, 2006a). In the case of global cities, the processes and dynamics that are territorialized are also global. In this essay I will examine the general conceptual and empirical elements that are valid for a large number of very diverse cities, each with its specific characteristics