Global inter‐city networks and commodity chains: any intersections?

Abstract The article proposes five analytic operations that help in generating a larger frame that can encompass at least some foundational aspects of global city analysis and Global Commodity Chains analysis. Given the author's research, the ground from which this task is taken on here is the city. To do this requires going beyond the narrow empirical component that is at the centre of this special issue, namely World City Networks (WCNs). The five analytic propositions range from the problematic of incomplete knowledge for global actors, one shared by actors in the WCN and in the GCC, to that of the locational correlates of command functions, which can be as diverse as functions concentrated in headquarters to functions distributed across the chain of operations. The article concludes by asking what a focus on the city and its messiness adds to what is basically an analysis of the current phase of global capitalism (rather than an urban theory as is often assumed).