Taking world cities literally: Marketing the city in a global space of flows

Abstract

This paper brings two literatures into dialogue. The first is the world-cities literature that explores the strategic importance of key cities in the global economy. The second focuses on the efficacy of city marketing and place promotion in boosting urban competitiveness. It is suggested here that both are fixated on an atomistic conception of urban processes that sees cities prospering on the basis of their indigenous characteristics (e.g. the presence of 'critical infrastructure'). Drawing on poststructural ideas, this place-based perspective is rejected in favour of a relational perspective that reconceptualizes competitive world cities as networked rather than bounded phenomena. The paper concludes that successful city marketing relies on pursuing a spatialized politics of flow rather than a place-based politics of competition.