Global buzz
A network of researchers, led by Loughborough University, has devised a way to regularly measure the links between key cities around the world, providing a new perspective on how the world’s economy is changing.
The Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) – the leading academic think tank on the relationships between cities around the globe – is able to quantify, on a month-by-month basis, the ‘global buzz’ of 62 leading world cities.
‘Global buzz’ is the term the researchers have coined to describe the social links – economic, political and cultural – between key cities. By measuring this, cities can be compared with one another and ranked. It will also enable the trajectory of a city to be tracked over time.
Professor Peter Taylor, the founder and director of GaWC, explains the concept: “For the month of September, Hong Kong is ranked top, with 10.55% of the total global buzz that we recorded. This means that it had more global activity links than any other city at this time. Links can be high profile cultural or political events, or the more routine economics connections that keep the world economy going, but they have to be links with a global impact.”
By determining cities’ ‘global buzz’ the researchers will be able to see how the current economic situation is affecting different parts of the world. They will also be able to provide a composite measure of the world’s ‘global buzz’, which will allow them to monitor on a monthly basis how the global economy is changing, offering up another perspective alongside the traditional economic measures.
The top ten ranking for September shows a typical transcontinental pattern, with four cities from Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Delhi), three from Europe (Moscow, London and Paris) and three from North America (New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco).
Comparing this with earlier months’ trial data, Professor Taylor says they are seeing variations in the rankings: “Hong Kong has been as low as 3rd, Singapore has been number one, New York as low as 4th and Moscow as high as 2nd.
“It’s this variability that we’ll be able to report each month with this new measure,” he said.
GaWC will publish the results for each month on the first day of the following month. All data will be available on its website at www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc.
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