Introduction

Much of the literature generated out of the powerful ‘world cities hypothesis’ (more accurately, a set of complex and suggestive hypotheses) framed by Friedmann and Wolff (1982) and Friedmann (1986, see appendix) has tended to emphasize similarities among world cities, attributing these congruencies to global changes in economic organization, labour flows, and finance capital. Sassen (e.g. 1988) has made significant contributions to this new literature by examining the flows of capital and labour between countries of the Third World and the largest American cities, and her most recent book (1991) has highlighted similarities in such historically and culturally divergent settings as New York, London, and Tokyo, attributing them to the global processes of economic restructuring and the impact of transnational finance capital and the ‘trade’ in money.

In the past decade there have also been some excellent studies of the effects of global economic restructuring on specific world cities. On New York, for example, there is, in addition to Sassen (1989), the article by Ross and Trachte (1983) and a book edited by Mollenkopf and Castells (1991). Early on, Soja, Morales, and Wolff (1983) tried to trace the effects of the international economy on Los Angeles; and Allardice et al. (1988) and Squires et al. (1987) have published somewhat less satisfying studies of the changing economy of Chicago.