Liu X., Derudder B. and Wu K. Measuring polycentric urban development in China: an intercity transportation network perspective, Regional Studies. This paper measures polycentric development in 22 urban regions in China by analysing intercity transportation networks. A typology of Chinese urban regions is identified based on individual regions’ functionally and morphologically polycentricity. Three major sets of processes underlying the typology are discerned: the (mis)match between (governmentally) designated and economically integrated urban regions; unequal interregional economic development; and the impact of city-regional plans and policies. Urban regions along the east coast reach high levels of morphological and functional polycentricity. Many planned urban regions are morphologically polycentric, lacking functional integration. Most urban regions in western China lack any form of polycentricity.

Information on air passenger flows is potentially a prime data source for assessing spatial patterns in the world city network, but previous analyses of this issue have been hampered by inadequate and/or partial data. The ensuing analytical deficiencies have reduced the overall value of these analyses. Therefore, this paper examines how some of these deficiencies might be rectified. First, it reviews the rationale for using airline data to analyse the world city network. Secondly, it assesses the problems encountered by previous research. The third section elaborates on the construction of a global intercity matrix based on the so-called Marketing Information Data Transfer database and explains how this matrix can circumvent some previously identified problems.

Sassen's identification of global cities as “strategic places” is explored through world city network analysis. This involves searching out advanced producer service (APS) firms that constitute “strategic networks,” from whose activities strategic places can be defined. Twenty‐five out of 175 APS firms are found to be strategic, and from their office networks, 45 cities out of 526 are designated as strategic places. A measure of “strategicness” of cities is devised, and individual findings from this are discussed by drawing on existing literature about how APS firms use specific cities. A key finding shows that New York and London have different levels of strategicness, and this is related to the former's innovation prowess and the latter's role in global consumption of services. Other cases of strategicness discussed in terms of the balance between production and consumption of APSs are Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai; Palo Alto; Mexico City; Johannesburg; and Dubai and Frankfurt.

This is an empirical paper that measures and interprets changes in intercity relations at the global scale in the period 2000—08. It draws on the network model devised by the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) research group to measure global connectivities for 132 cities across the world in 2000 and 2008. The measurements for both years are adjusted so that a coherent set of services/cities is used. A range of statistical techniques is used to explore these changes at the city level and the regional scale. The most notable changes are: the general rise of connectivity in the world city network; the loss of global connectivity of US and sub-Saharan African cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami in particular); and, the gain in global connectivity of south Asian, Chinese and eastern European cities (Shanghai, Beijing and Moscow in particular).

(2020). Regions in a time of pandemic. Regional Studies: Vol. 54, No. 9, pp. 1163-1174.