The global command and control centres, 2012

Abstract

In recent years, a wide range of studies have focused on defining world cities as global command and control centres. In the two original classic formulations, they are a prominent feature in John Friedmann’s definition of a world city hierarchy, and are integral parts of Saskia Sassen's specification of global cities. In subsequent studies of world/global cities, the idea of control and command centres remains a key component in understanding the role of cities in globalisation.

This study returns to the roots of world city research, which defines command and control centres as powerful headquarter cities of multinational/transnational companies, leading regional companies, banks and other financial organisations as first developed by Peter Hall in the 1960s. All data were calculated from the Forbes “The Global 2000” database, which contain information on the world's largest 2000 public corporations as measured by a composite ranking for assets, market values, profits and revenues. The Forbes “The Global 2000” classifies corporations into 80 industry categories on the basis of their activity profiles. To facilitate interpretation and ease comparison with other studies, the companies operating in these industry categories were re-classified into the 10 basic sectors of the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS), developed and used by Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) and Standard & Poor’s (S&P). As a new indicator of the leading cities of the global economy the Command and Control Index is introduced.

The primary aim of this contribution is to identify which cities were the leading global command and control centres in 2012. The relation between the major cities of the emerging economies and the traditional centres of the most developed countries were also examined. The results show that the leading command and control centres – Tokyo, New York, London and Paris – are the same as Sassen’s global cities. However, Beijing is in a unique position as it is not a traditional global city but one of the world’s biggest command and control centres representing the power of the Chinese economy. Finally, it emerges from the analysis that the leading cities of the emerging economies are responsible not only for production but they are also emerging command and control centres of the global economy.