Gateway Cities and their Hinterland: Global Cities from the Global South as Nodes in Global Commodity Chains

在过去几十年中，全球南方的一些区域实现了相当大的经济增长。全球城市拥有蓬勃发展和具有全球竞争力的第二和第三产业。它们是世界经济外围和核心之间的枢纽。我们认为，来自全球南方的全球城市作为枢纽或门户城市的作用源于跨国公司、相关产业和生产性服务业、适当的制度和交通基础设施的集聚。门户城市的作用，特别是它们与腹地的关系，可以通过基于《2009年世界发展报告》中轻松整合的自变量（密度、距离和划分）的因果机制来体现。因此，我们将回答以下主要问题：密度、距离和划分（自变量）如何制约全球南方门户城市与世界经济外围（因变量）的全球互联？我们的初步研究表明，开普敦、圣保罗/里约热内卢和新加坡的油气行业适合测试三个d的相关性，并在探索性案例研究中确定相关的因果机制。这个项目在四个方面具有创新性。首先，我们从经验和理论上对密度、距离和划分进行背景分析，以回应对《世界发展报告》的批评。我们展示了经济过程中相当传统的因果因素的相关性，这些因素被经济地理学的进化和关系方法所忽视。第二，将全球城市研究与全球商品链研究相结合，推进德鲁德和威洛克斯的商品链与世界城市研究。通过这种方式，我们克服了全球城市与其腹地的脱节，以及全球商品链的贫乏嵌入。我们还与跨国公司的区位选择研究建立联系。三是积极参与新兴经济体研究。新兴经济体作为区域经济节点和增长引擎的作用有待验证。我们还提出了一种新兴经济体的观点，这种观点不是以国家为中心的，因此更适合当前塑造世界经济的进程。第四，为了解决全球城市和全球商品链研究方法上的缺陷，我们利用《金融时报》的FDI市场数据库和范迪克局提供的Zephyr数据库来衡量源自/经过我们分析的全球城市的流量。此外，我们还应用了一种定性方法，这种方法接近于主体间可验证，并允许基于计算机的场景建模：模糊认知地图。

During the last decades some regions of the Global South have realised a considerable economic rise. Global cities there possess thriving and globally competitive secondary and tertiary sectors. They are the hinges between the periphery and the cores of the world-economy. We argue that the role of global cities from the Global South as hinges or gateway cities results from the agglomeration of transnational companies, related industries and producer services, adequate institutions and transport infrastructure. The role of gateway cities and especially their relationship with their hinterland can be captured by causal mechanisms based on independent variables handily consolidated in the 2009 World Development Report: density, distance and division. Hence we will answer the following main question: How do density, distance and division (independent variables) condition the global interlinking of the periphery of the world economy (dependent variable) by gateway cities in the Global South? Our preliminary research indicates that the oil and gas sector in Cape Town, São Paulo/Rio de Janeiro and Singapore is suitable to test the relevance of the three Ds and identify related causal mechanisms in exploratory case studies. This project is innovative in four ways. First, by contextualising density, distance and division empirically and theoretically we react to the criticism of the World Development Report. We show the relevance of rather traditional causal factors for economic processes, factors that have been neglected by evolutionary and relational approaches in Economic Geography. Second, we link research on global cities and research on global commodity chains, advancing the inroads built in Derudder´s and Witlox´s Commodity Chains and World Cities. This way we overcome the disconnectedness of global cities from their hinterland and the poor embeddedness of global commodity chains. We also build tie ins with research on location choices of transnational companies. Third, we contribute to research on emerging economies, whose role as regional economic nodes and growth engines remains to be proven. We also advance a perspective on emerging economies that is not state-centric and hence more appropriate for processes that presently shape the world-economy. Fourth, addressing methodological weaknesses in research on global cities and global commodity chains we make use of the FDI Markets Database from the Financial Times and the Zephyr Database provided by the Bureau van Dijk in order to measure flows that originate in/pass through the global cities that we analyse. We furthermore apply a qualitative methodology that comes close to being intersubjectively verifiable and allows computer-based scenario modelling: fuzzy cognitive maps.