World Cities, Nation-States and Global Competition

Global economy can be defined as a system where strategically dominant activities work as a single unit in real time, on a planetary level, while contextual factors which are not considered as functional are excluded because of their structural irrelevance. This brings about a continually evolving dynamic scene; a sort of society in which the material basis of all processes consists of flows (financial, technological, image creation and information flows), where power and wealth are organized in global networks that transport flows. These flows are asymmetric and express the power relationships among different actors in a global scenario. In this situation, we have seen the role crisis of Nation-States, which are structurally weak for two reasons: their areas of authority are insufficient to control global flows; the plurality of local identities tend to delegitimize the national representation. In opposition to the Nation-States crisis we can see the growing importance of the strategic role of networks in global cities.