World City Competitiveness Index

A new Brookings report examines the economic connections between the global advanced service firms of U.S. cities and other cities around the world as a way of gauging competitiveness.

"Just about anyone with even acasual interest in the geographyof the global economy couldguess that New York, Los Angeles,and Chicago are major world cities,with strong ties to other cities andregions worldwide. But what aboutother U.S. cities? How do places likeHouston and Detroit—or even Portlandand Cincinnati—connect to therest of the world? What is their placein the "world city network?" And whydoes it matter?

The importance of these relationshipsis becoming increasinglyapparent. The conditions of contemporaryglobalization have, in fact,spurred a renaissance of major citiesacross the world, and a new economicconfiguration is emerging based uponcities.2 This is not to say that states areno longer significant in their internationalrelations, but the rise oftransnational interactions hasproduced a new economic globalizationin which cities and their regionsare the prime nodes of a nascentnetwork society. In this new contextU.S. domination can no longer betaken for granted."