Local Geographies of Global Players: International Law Firms in Brussels¹

Abstract

Literature on world cities has repeatedly argued that major agents of globalization, i.e. 'global players' such as advanced producer service firms, transnational corporations and international organisations, play a determining role in interlocking cities into networks of control centres of the contemporary world economy. It is very rare however that analyses cover the spatial distribution of these global players within urban settings. We argue here that local geographies of global players shed a new light on how globalization is territorialised in cities. Following an outline of Brussels' position in European and world city networks, this contribution analyses the transnational linkages, local strategies and intra-urban spatial distribution of international law firms in Brussels as a case study. Empirical evidence highlights the play of agglomeration economies down to micro-local scales (i.e. the street, the office building) and the influence of past layers of organisation of urban space on present-day territorialisation of international law firms in the city. We argue that these results are indicative of how further analyses of local geographies of global players could foster a deeper understanding of world cities as global‐local nexuses within contemporary globalization, hence combining insights from the two main existing research orientations on world cities today – focused respectively on inter-urban or intra-urban analyses.