Below I provide a list of my personal favourite reports on and rankings of global cities, where the political/diplomatic aspect is visible. It does not mean, though, that these reports put no emphasis on the political, diplomatic clout of global cities. The issue of economic leverage means that the majority of international reports on and rankings of global cities are written from the economic, capital – or even real estate prices’ – perspective.
Overall, if a city wants to be truly global, it has to effectively deal with many different challenges – from public transportation, through the access to healthcare, to the access to high quality food, culture and leisure. Global cities – meaning “strategic sites” that manage and guide the global economy (Saskia Sassen’s definition) are sometimes several times smaller than megacities such as Manila, Mexico City or Delhi and build their position primarily on the economic leverage, their ability to pull talents and capital as a result of globalisation processes. Quite the contrary, the size matters only to a certain level. What is sometimes not that clear is the fact that not all the cities play an equally important role and one should not think that the bigger the city, the bigger its significance in the international arena. Longworth, Richard Florida, Carlo Ratti, Manuel Castells have been providing a plethora of arguments to support this thesis. Benjamin Barber (the author of a global bestseller „If Mayors Ruled the World”) and many other analysts, like Saskia Sassen, Richard C. Cities play a big role in contemporary international relations.
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