Scholarly record

COMPETITIVE CITIES IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Sorin-George Toma, P. Marinescu, R. Papuc

Abstract

TodayВ’s world is a world in which urbanization seems to be the rule because most of the planetВ’s inhabitants are living in towns. As humanity has already entered the urban century, cities have increasingly become places where various stakeholders, such as governments, institutions, companies, non-governmental organizations, policy makers, academics and citizens, are interconnected in order to better address social, economic, environmental, demographic, cultural and technological issues. This is why the destiny of a huge network of cities represents a major concern all over the world. Since the beginning of the 21st century, cities have remained key actors in the global economy. The worldВ’s major cities are centres for international trade and banking, sites of production and innovation, locations for massive concentrations of information and specialized service firms, and markets for goods and services. They are competing in the global economy not only for investments or technology, but also for population, knowledge, entrepreneurship and creativity. The paper aims to analyse the evolution of the worldВ’s most competitive cities in a relentlessly changing world in recent years. To such end, the authors used a quantitative research method. A significant literature review was carried on in order to gather data from different sources such as journals, reports and books from the domains of economics, sociology, urban planning, geography and management. The paper showed that the worldВ’s most competitive cities are located mainly in Europe, North America and Asia-Oceania. Also, it identified several key factors that influence the competitiveness of these leading metropolitan areas by taking into account the Global Power City Index and the Global Cities Index for the period 2016-2017.

Publication details

Back to publication list