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The 'world city paradigm' assumes a convergence in economic base, spatial organisation and social structure among the world's major cities. However, Tokyo, capital of the world's second-largest national economy and the world's largest urban agglomeration, departs from the world city model on most salient dimensions. Seoul, centre of east Asia's second OECD member and the region's second-largest metropolis, exhibits the same anomaly. Tokyo and Seoul's departure from the world city hypothesis stem from late industrialisation and especially the relationship between industrial policy and finance institutionalised in a developmental state. Understanding Tokyo and Seoul necessitates a different conception of the world system from the globalist version of the world city argument. World cities differ from one another in many salient respects because they are lodged within a non-hegemonic and interdependent world political economy divided among differently organised national systems and regional alliances.
Hill et al. (Wed,) studied this question.