According to Kresl (1995: 46), because cities are becoming increasingly significant as 'economic actors' it is necessary to extend the concept of competitiveness within the world economy from national economies to urban economies. He provides a survey of the 'determinants of urban competitiveness' where features of a city's internal structure and governance predominate. He does list enhancing a city's 'position in the urban hierarchy' as an indicator of competitiveness (Kresl, 1995: 51), and transport and communication infrastructure are among the determinants, but the external relations of cities are relatively neglected despite the obvious point that urban competition is an inter-city process. This surprising characteristic of the literature Kresl is reviewing can be understood in terms of its purpose to advise local urban elites on city promotion policy: political and economic levers of change are more accessible within cities. But there is a second important reason which impinges on how urban competition is conceptualized. In their assessment of the prospects for London, Coopers and Lybrand Deloitte explicitly emphasize the importance of developing and enhancing 'global links and relations' (HMSO, 1991: 196) while recognising a fundamental deficiency in information on inter-city relations: it is difficult to prosecute, or even begin to develop, 'external' urban policy in an evidential vacuum.

This data deficiency is, of course, much more than a problem for urban policy makers. In the world city literature in general, the paucity of evidence for many of the concepts and theories has cast doubt over the veracity of this whole framework for research (Short et al., 1996; Cox, 1997; Taylor, 1999a). We have addressed this problem directly in a series of papers (Beaverstock et al., 1999a, 1999b, 2000a, 2000b; Taylor, 2000), here we present a different take on the problem. Making do with data which are available - largely attributes of cities derived from state statistics such as the census - has contributed to the 'internalist turn' (Taylor, 1999b) in development of urban theory even in the world city literature. The latter's focus on individual candidates for the accolade of world or global city status plus some comparative studies of a limited numbers of cities has contributed to an understanding of world city formation but not of world city network formation. When studying cities we must take Storper's (1997a: 222) notion of a 'society of cities' seriously; no city exists, let alone prospers, in isolation. This is the context in which urban competitiveness should be located, whether from a policy or theoretical perspective. Under conditions of contemporary globalization, the process of urban competition is a mechanism of world city network formation.

This paper builds upon the recognition of this prioritization of the external in two ways. First, we specify a conceptual model of the fundamental attendants to world city network formation. Once the intra-urban focus is removed from consideration of competitiveness, other critical influences can be brought back into play. For instance, the 'urban economy' is never autonomous of the 'national economy': as well as a common promoter of world city formation within its territory, state policies set the enabling or disabling contexts within which all city competitiveness operates. Hence states are attendants at world city network formation along with the cities themselves. In addition, we identify global firms and the economic sectors to which they belong as constituting two further attendants at world city network formation. We propose a model of these four attendants whose co-efficiencies produce world city network formation through two nexuses - city-firm, country-sector - and two communities - cities in countries and firms within sectors. The first two substantive sections of the paper elaborate this argument by specifying further the urban competitiveness process in world city network terms.

Second, we illustrate the operation of the model with a case study. We treat the 1997 'Asian crisis' as a moment of globalization in which cities faced new and rapidly changing circumstances. This is a situation where city competitiveness, and therefore world city network formation, becomes more transparent. We focus on three cities at the heart of the crisis, London and New York as the leading cities in the world city network, and Singapore as the leading world city at the centre of the region where the crisis first emerged. From ninety interviews in these three cities we draw out the way the four attendants interact in world city network formation consequent upon the crisis. This discussion forms the empirical core of the paper. In a brief conclusion we bring the arguments together in terms of empirics, theory and policy.
 

The initial identification of 'world city formation' (Friedmann and Wolff, 1982) was consequent upon the recognition of a major restructuring of the world economy in the 1970s. Fröbel and his colleagues (1980) delineated a 'new international division of labour' on the basis of the growth of industrial jobs in the 'third world' which, in turn, reflected world-wide production strategies by major corporations who had a new 'global reach' (Barnett and Muller, 1973). This 'global economy' required 'command and control points' and world cities were deemed to carry out this role (Friedmann, 1986). Above all, therefore, world cities were viewed as the places where transnational corporations had their headquarters, and from where the new international division of labour was organized.

More recently these ideas and concepts have been brought together, updated and expanded upon by Castells (1996). He describes contemporary society as network society which operates in a new space of flows based upon electronic and computer innovations whose major impact is dated from the 1970s. For Castells, the world city network is one important layer in his space of flows. But these cities no longer constitute the simple command and control points of the network as theorized in the 1980s. Although, major corporate headquarters still tend to be located in the major cities, there is a trend towards growth of headquarters in medium-sized cities (Lyons and Salmon, 1995). Quite simply, new communication technologies do not require headquarter functions to be carried out only in the largest cities. Following Sassen (1991, 1994), world cities are associated with a particular category of corporation, large service firms. The contemporary theory of a world city network within globalization is a little more subtle than its forebear 'commanding' the new international division of labour.
 

Sassen's seminal contribution has been to provide credible answers to two critical and related questions. First, if corporate headquarters are not the key distinguishing characteristic of world cities, what does characterize them? (Sassen, 1991). Second, why are some economic functions continuing to concentrate in cities given the de-centralising potential of electronic communication? (Sassen, 1994). The answer to both questions involves the operation of advanced producer services. These are corporate services which enable the world economy to operate through expert assistance given to both private corporations and governments. Covering such activities as banking/finance, accountancy, insurance, advertising, public relations, and management consultancy, these services went 'global' at the same time as their main clients, the transnational corporations. Nothing particularly unusual here, except for the change in geographical scale. Nevertheless, the rise of services has entailed more than 'global servicing'.

The service firms which provide global services are themselves large corporations. The most obvious example is the banking/finance sector which includes some of the biggest corporations in the world which are themselves serviced by other firms such as law partnerships. These advanced service corporations may have begun their global strategy by following clients but their continuing success has required more than being an adjunct to other commodity producers. Global service corporations have been adept at producing their own advanced service commodities, for instance, new financial products, new advertising packages, new forms of multi-jurisdictional law and, most recently, management consultancy as the most rapidly growing service in the world. The one thing all these advanced services share is dependence upon specialized knowledge; their state-of-the-art commodities are produced through bringing together new combinations of general concepts to meet specific needs of clients in particular circumstances. In order to be able to put together such packages, firms need to be in knowledge-rich environments, dense clusters of experts or professionals which provide the necessary milieu for advanced service production. World cities are such locales.

There has been a convergence of ideas which have reached such a conclusion. Sassen (1994) has emphasized the fact that although new communications have enabled the dispersion of much economic activity, this has created a new economic complexity which has generated a concomitant systemic need for increased centrality. Here, face-to-face contacts are important as diverse flows of information are managed and processed to create advanced producer services (Sassen, 1991). In this way world cities have become 'strategic places' in the contemporary world economy (Sassen, 1994: 19). For Storper (1997a: 222) they are 'privileged sites' in the contemporary world economy where economic reflexivity has become crucial to success. Cities are places where specialized knowledges are embedded and interact with on-going learning processes to produce unique products for the world market. Reflexivity, networking and social relationships are at the heart of Thrift's (1994, 1996a) understanding of world cities as places through which people represent themselves and labour to establish and maintain contacts. World cities operate as major nodes of reflexivity in networks of electronic communication, which brings us back to Castells' (1996) notion of a space of flows. Borrowing Sassen's argument about advanced producer services, Castells identifies world cities as 'nodes and hubs' (Castells, 1996: 413) where knowledge generation and information flows intersect. Although these influential theorists have different starting points, they come to similar conclusions about the particular nature of world city network formation; we will focus upon cities as advanced producer service complexes within servicing networks. The city network is produced and maintained by the activities of advanced producer service firms: their investment practices constitute a dynamic office location decision-making process which makes world cities 'the place to be'.
 

Viewed as a network, we can immediately see that urban competitiveness is not the only mechanism of world city network formation. Alongside the competitiveness there are strategies of co-operation between cities, both formal agreements on sharing markets between city authorities, and in the myriad of private transactions between cities, particularly between offices of the same firm. Budd (1998) criticizes policy focus upon just competitiveness. However, it is urban competitiveness which dominates the literature and we relate this to our concern for networks here.

Kresl (1995) is adamant that external aspects - both national and international - must be excluded from any analysis of the determinants of a city's competitiveness. The relatively weak claim that '[m]any of the elements that are important for the nation ... have no relevance for the city' quickly translates into a complete reduction of governance to solely the sub-national ('metrowide') and city scales (Kresl, 1995: 50). Likewise, Kresl insists that 'a city's international competitiveness is quite different from the concept of an 'international city.'' While the latter concerns connectivity (at the inter-national scale), the former concerns only the city in question: on this view, a city can be extremely competitive without being connected into a network of other cities, just as a city can be fully plugged in to a network without being at all competitive. This is why Kresl (1995: 52) can claim that 'a city may dramatically increase its competitiveness, even its international competitiveness, without being or increasing the degree to which it is an international city.' For Kresl, the determinants of urban competitiveness only ever relate to a single city. Strictly speaking, each city competes with itself (and Kresl objectifies this competition through a number of internal indicators). While one may compare the competiveness of cities (yielding a nominal rather than a real urban hierarchy), competitiveness itself is treated as an internal affair: urban competitiveness = f (economic determinants + strategic determinants), all of which are contained within the city (region) in question. Such an extreme form of spatial atomism exemplifies the oxymoron of 'hierarchies without networks' which is implicit in the vast majority of work on world city formation, even when that context is explicitly a global space economy (although see, for example, Thrift and Olds, 1996). It also exemplifies the common failure amongst writers to appreciate that intercity connectivity is absolutely pivotal to urban formation. In this paper we wish to advocate a simple counter-claim: that cities are irreducibly networked phenomena. The most important implications of this claim are that each individual city is necessarily open to a constitutive outside and is perpetually in process. This is why we have adopted the phrase 'world city network formation' in preference to the more ambiguous and ambivalent 'world city formation.' Our preferred phrase has a triple emphasis: cities exist in a world; cities are networked and open phenomena; and cities are processive. In the present configuration of the global space economy there is literally no real or actual world city hierarchy.

Once one shifts from a perspective that considers the world city network to be an amalgamation, integration or summation of so-many individual cities to one that considers cities as networked phenomena, 'a particular form of urban theory which sees the city as the stamp of great and unified forces which it is the task of the theorist to delineate and delimit is left behind. Instead, the city is seen as a partially connected multiplicity which we can only ever know partially and from multiple places' (Thrift, 1997: 143. See also: Thrift, 1990, 1991, 1993). The corollary of this is the need for an appreciation of 'cities as performative, as in use, and . urban landscapes as essentially incomplete and only rarely in the hands of just one network of association' (Thrift, 1997: 138). By emphasizing partial, on-going, and polycentric networking - a process that requires constant effort and attention - our investigation of world city network formation can avoid both the pitfalls of atomistic urban studies which are purely additive and comparative, and the fait accompli that is the hallmark of structuralist urban studies. Indeed, the vast majority of the literature on world cities remains resolutely structuralist and functionalist, wherein the global space economy is rigidly apportioned in terms of form, structure, and function (such as 'cores' and 'peripheries'), and necessitates the accomplishment of various reproductive requirements. For example, Lo and Yeung (1998: 1-2) assume as self-evident that 'world cities can be distinguished by the functions they perform in the new global economy', while Sassen (1994: 20) dwells on the 'strategic role for major cities' consequent upon 'the combination of geographic dispersal of economic activities and system integration.' Such an overemphasis on the functional differentiation of the global space economy occludes both the contingency of systematization and the plasticity of networked space-time. Not only do network formation and maintenance take time and effort (Barnes, 1998; Bingham, 1996; Murdoch, 1997), systemic regularity and functional reproduction are irreducibly unintended outcomes of manifold agents and events (Latour, 1992; Thrift, 1996b). A system does not consist of functions. Rather, the manifold functions as a system only so long, and to the extent that, it consists. In a 'crisis' the consistency of system integration and reproduction cannot be counted upon as an ineluctable aspect of the global space economy: hence there will be widespread mooting of the need for a revamped 'global financial architecture' to normalize the flows, interactions, and translations through which the networked global space economy consists (cf. Castells, 1989, 1996; Thrift and Leyshon, 1994). Translation is a key word in this context since it alludes to the porosity of what are often presented as separable parts of the social formation: politics, economics, media, culture, society, etcetera. Hence the importance of devising an enculturated understanding of political economy (cf. Gibson-Graham, 1996; Lee and Wills, 1997; Naylor et al., 2000; Sayer, 1994). Furthermore, translation itself requires contextualization and attention, as well as inevitably bearing the possibility of mistranslation, breakdown, and dissemination (Derrida, 1988, 1992, 1994).

That global city formation is partial, manifold, contingent, open, processive, and in need of constant attention feeds directly into its spatial and temporal plasticity. Such space-time plasticity portends the shift from structural to post-structural takes on the global space economy (Doel, 1999). This strikes at the very heart of an inflexible spatial differentiation, zoning, and functional integration. Insofar as cities are networked phenomena, their identity is relational and relative. Therefore, the space-time of cities is not absolute, but relative. Such an image of thought is partially captured in notions of 'space-time compression and annihilation' and the 'shrinking of a borderless world,' through which places become ever closer owing to more efficient and effective technologies of transportation, communication, and distanciation (cf. Allen and Hamnett, 1995; Harvey, 1989; Thrift, 1996b). However, such notions all-too-easily lead astray insofar as the relative positions of places remain absolute: only distance (that is to say, space) decays - and its rate of decay is everywhere the same (à la technological determinism). These notions are partial, then, because they fail to take account of the reversibility of relative space-time. In a relative configuration, there can be no compression without a corollary decompression, just as there can be no acceleration without an accompanying deceleration. In short, world city network formation is always subject to a double movement of speed and slowness, contraction and expansion. To that extent, what is interesting about city manifolds is not their fixed position within an imploding although stable system (Virilio, 1991, 1994, 1999), but the degree to which specific aspects speed up and slow down, drift in and drift out, contract and expand, etcetera (cf. Allen and Pryke, 1994; Jameson, 1984, 1988). Elsewhere we have endeavoured to depict the relative space-time of world city network formation diagrammatically by way of non-Euclidean topology (see 'The world according to GaWC'¹ in Beaverstock et al., 1999a, 456). In this paper we approach the same concern discursively, through ninety interviews across three world city manifolds.
 

World city formation functions only insofar as it is attended to. This is why we have chosen to address firms, cities, sectors, and countries as if they were four attendants to world city network formation. But one should not hastily assume that while the networks are primary and active, the attendants are secondary and passive. On the contrary it is the attendants who are most active and interactive. For while the word 'attendant' is drawn from the Old French atendre, and the Modern French attendre, 'to wait for,' the original Latin root - attendere - is drawn from ad + tendere, 'to stretch,' with a sense of motion, intensification, and change. (Parenthetically, this attendant network stretching alludes to Giddens' (1984) notions of time-space distanciation and duality of structure). This intense, mobile stretching is the sense in which firms, sectors, cities, and countries attend to world city network formation in a manifold global space economy. It is through their attention that networks are configured, maintained, articulated, negotiated, and expressed. Urbanists have barely begun to unfold the full implications of this new image of thought.

We can begin investigating this attending to world city network formation through the simple co-efficiency model presented in Figure 1. Here the attendants are arranged in four relations of two distinctive types. First of all, there are two communities of agents, one functional, the other territorial. The first community (A) connects every firm to a specific service sector which is governed by its own customs, regulations and practices overseen by sector institutions, notably professional organizations. In this way law firms operate in a different professional context than, say, insurance companies. The second community (B) is that found within countries, famously depicted by Anderson (1983) as the national 'imagined community'. Here we include also important practices of regulation and policy by the state. Every city is within the jurisdiction of a state and is part of a nation. In this way, German world cities operate in a different territorial context than, say, US world cities. Power is expressed in both communities through policing the community boundary in an effort to control flows. Each community is a bounding together of attendants in a specific articulation of cultural, economic and political relations.

Both communities interact at key points to define nexuses of causal connections linking alternative pairs of attendants. Nexus I is the pull which draws together (service) firms and (world) cities in a relationship of mutual reciprocity. This is the knowledge and reflexivity from the literature discussed above. Nexus II is the modern causal link through which country, as nation-state, shares its bounded authority with national professional and business institutions who operate rules and customs under state regulation and national customs. Each nexus is a binding together of attendants in a conjoint exercise.

Our argument is that the four attendants in communities and nexuses are directly implicated as concomitant successes and failures to make world city network formation in an ever changing world economy. In the discussion below we draw on the existing literature to flesh out this co-efficiency model - we use the two communities to order the discussion - before illustrating its operation in our own empirical material.
 

The emergence of Transnational Corporations (TNCs) in services (see Dicken, 1998; Enderwick, 1989; UNCTAD, 1996), and their distinctive organizational strategies for engaging in international activities outside of their 'home' market (see Daniels, 1991a, 1991b; Moulaert and Daniels, 1991) are crucially important attendants for understanding world city network formation. Essentially, TNCs in services have 'physically' expanded into foreign markets, through wholly owned offices or hotels or retail outlets, in order to supply their clients at source (for a detailed discussion of the internationalisation of services in the world economy, see Daniels, 1993; UNCTC, 1988). Since many services cannot be easily traded, especially those which offer clients specific knowledge structures, skills and professionalism, and because many have to be consumed at the point of final demand (see Allen, 1995), most advanced producer services can only be internationalized effectively through extensive regional, and/or branch office networks (see Bagchi-Sen and Sen, 1997; Daniels, 1993; Dunning and Norman, 1983, 1987; Marshall and Wood, 1995).

Many specific examples of the internationalization of individual producer service sectors now exist in the geographical literature (e.g. for accountancy, see Daniels et al., 1989; advertising, Perry, 1990; banking, Daniels, 1986; business services, Wood, 1991; consultancy, Daniels et al., 1992; real estate, Thrift, 1987). Each of these detailed aforementioned case studies, not only discuss the rationale for each sector globalizing through office networks, but also highlight the metropolitan concentrations of such activities, in the world cities especially (see e.g. Sassen, 1991; 1995; Warf, 1991). Beaverstock, Smith and Taylor's (2000b) analysis of the globalization strategies of U.S. law firms illustrates very well the differences in the organizational strategies of firms within the same sector, but highlights their salient world city focus. For example, White & Case, the New York headquartered firm, organizes its office networks on a 'hub and spoke' basis, with world city branch offices always under the corporate control and strategic guidance of the headquarters. In contrast, Baker & Mackenize, the largest U.S. firm, based in Chicago, organizes their globalization strategies through a network of 'independent' offices, who have autonomy in their own world city-regions, of the world economy.

A second very important attendant for world city network formation, in the service sector economy especially, is the regulatory frameworks, or professional codes of conduct, which governs the practising of various activities, for both domestic and international firms in the world city environment. For example, in London, many producer service sectors, and other services, are tightly regulated and controlled by professional bodies, through combinations of (individual) professional and firm (institutional) based membership. At an individual level, for example, to practice British accountancy or law, individuals have to be members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales, or the Law Society, respectively. In contrast, at an institutional level, firms have to meet specific criteria to engage in domestic business in the host world city: in this case London. For example, in order for foreign investment banks to trade on London's Stock Exchange, they first have to become accepted as member firms (following 'Big-Bang' in 1986: see Leyshon and Thrift 1997). This process is very rigorous:

Of course, many different producer service sectors have many different levels of 'gatekeeping' regulations. In general, those sectors which intersect directly which the international financial system (e.g. accountancy, law, investment banking, corporate finance etc.), real estate (e.g. chartered surveyors) or offer financial related professional services (e.g. management consultancy), are tightly governed by both individual and firm membership criteria, in London, and in other world cities. Whereas there are other producer services, like for example advertising, executive search, media or estate agency, where 'gatekeeper's' are much more self-regulated, and their rules and regulations for both domestic and foreign presence are relatively lax compared to the former (e.g. The Advertising Association).
 

The nation-state also has an important function to play as an attendant in world city network formation. State legal frameworks, especially in the financial services sector, and the relative liberalisation of such laws, are crucial in allowing foreign producer services to practice in 'host' nations. Retaining the example of London's financial system, foreign firms (investment banks) were only really given access to the London Stock Exchange following de-regulation, or Big Bang, in October 1986. Prior to Big-Bang, membership of the stock exchange was limited to individuals, or jobbers - who actually traded on the floor of the exchange for fixed commissions. Post-Big Bang, membership was transferred to member firms (of any nationality, who met the membership criteria), which was followed by an unprecedented influx of foreign institutions into the City of London (see Thrift, 1994). In contrast, Tokyo has a very tightly regulated financial system, for all markets, and the activities of foreign institutions are relatively curtailed, in relation to the de-regulated markets of London, Frankfurt, Paris, Hong Kong and New York, for example.

Apart from the direct influences of government, and their legislative frameworks, the organizational culture of the domestic market, and the different business cultures that foreign institutions bring to the city, also plays an important indirect role as an attendant of world city network formation. If we take the example of finance again, the different organizational cultures of domestic and foreign firms, and the embedded synergy that is created between them and their associated business and social networks in tightly bound spaces, are well known as determinants of international financial centres (Budd, 1999; Thrift and Leyshon, 1994; McDowell, 1997). The success of the City of London as the pre-eminent international financial centre in the world economy is firmly attributed to the size and strength of its: financial markets in foreign exchange and securities especially (Drennan, 1996; Lee and Schmidt-Marwede, 1993); intensity of foreign banks (circa 500: The Banker, 1999) and other producer services (Leyshon and Thrift, 1997); its concentration of international migrant workers (Beaverstock and Boardwell, 2000); and, just as importantly, its cultural capital - created in a milieu of foreign and domestic business and social networks, underpinned by the different organizational and life experiences brought to the City by its global professional workforce (Beaverstock, 1996; McDowell, 1995; Thrift, 1994).

Finally, the agglomeration economies of producer service firms, their global professional workforce, state and sectorally-bound professional codes and legislative frameworks, all act to (re)produce cities themselves as attendants in world city network formation. Producer services create a 'complex' within the world city (Sassen, 1995), and in essence, this 'complex', is not only the sum of all the parts, but is also the knowledge economy of the city (see Amin and Thrift, 1992). Individuals, firms, sectors, regulators and the state we argue, all accumulate and reproduce knowledge in the city because of its distinctive city milieu. The city is more than the sum of its parts: it itself acts as a magnet, which induces the parts to cohabitant within the world city, and thereby attend to world city network formation.
 

In October 1997, severe market pressure on the baht forced the Thai government into a humiliating devaluation of its national currency. This event is usually identified as the trigger of the Asian economic crisis. A process sometimes referred to as 'contagion' led to similar devaluations in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and South Korea. Coupled with the longer-term problems of the region's leading economy, Japan, the crisis seemed to be a critical moment in the globalizing world economy at the end of the twentieth century. Pacific Asia, the region that had dared to compete with the traditional European and American centres of capitalism, was in trouble.

In the event, the world economy seems to have coped with the Asian crisis quite well. Similar problems in developing markets in Latin America and the emerging market in Russia followed but the old core areas of the world economy were never severely effected. Nevertheless, the Asian crisis did produce specific alterations in the pattern of opportunities and dangers in the world economy to which global service firms have had to respond. The slow-own and cancelation of major projects, the selling off of government assets, and the collapse in the value of investments have all had to be accommodated within the overall operation of world markets. This was a period of rapid change when top firms could use their expertise and contacts to manoeuvre themselves into opportunities and out of dangers. We take advantage of this enhanced circumstance to treat the Asian crisis as an 'experimental design' through which to study world city network formation.

In the year following the crisis (1998/9) we conducted 88 interviews about the effects of the Asian crisis with senior personnel at 70 advanced producer service firms in London, New York and Singapore. The first two cities were chosen for their role as the leaders among world cities: given our network emphasis. London and New York are not simply 'outside' Asia, they are present and active through the operations of their advanced producer services; in many ways one could argue that the Asian space economy is centred on London and New York. Singapore was chosen as the leading city at the heart of the region where the crisis initially unfolded. Two sectors were chosen, banking/finance and law, which represent, respectively, the leading globalized service and one of the newer and therefore less globalized services. In the interviews the respondents were invited to comment on the crisis with respect to their own firm's activities, how it affected other firms in their sector, the macro-policies of the national government and the effect on their city. We have interpreted these interviews through the attendants model to show how practices and perceptions have operated in this particular episode of world city formation. This is a case study of one moment of globalization as captured in these three important world cities.
 

There was one group of firms who have been heavily hit by the Asian crisis. The mix of their particular portfolios of work turned out to be highly vulnerable and they are commonly referred to by interviewees as being 'stung' (NL2, LB15, LL6, LL10). Examples quoted are the banks J P Morgan, Chase Manhattan, Bankers Trust, Schroders, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank plus all Japanese banks, and the law firm Linklaters (NB2, NB4, NB9, LB10, LB13, NL2, SL4, LL8). In our sample of firms, two are reported as having withdrawn from the region (LB16, LL2). Narrow interests have been a particular problem - for Linklaters it was a focus on capital markets. In our sample two very specialized law firms (both shipping) admitted to being heavily hit (SL8) and disadvantaged (SL6), the latter complaining about no opportunity to expand. In banking, one of our sample blamed bad performance on an extreme conservative approach to the crisis (NB3).

However, most firms missed being stung by having more initial variety in their portfolios (NL5) and adapting rapidly to the new circumstances (SL4). There seems to be a definite bias here to larger firms (NB1, SB8, SL9, LL3, LL8, LL9), in law the 'middle tier' are identified as being more effected than more rounded and large firms (SL4). But the key feature identified for successful firms was to see the crisis as an opportunity (SB3, LB7, LB10, LB14, SL11, SL1, LL7, LL8) and to be pro-active (LL1, LL6). This is to take advantage of the situation by adapting: refocusing, redeploying, readjusting, repackaging and diversifying are all common descriptors of this behaviour (SB6, SL11, NL4, NL5, SL1, SL2, SL3, SL5, SL8, SL10, LL1, LL3, LL4, LL6). In contrast one of our sample admitted to not being strong in restructuring with a resulting fall off in business (NL3). However, several firms claim to have actually done well out of the crisis (SB1, SL11, SL5, SL9, LL10).

Finally, the actual type of firm figured little in comments on why successful or otherwise. Only two of our sample mentioned central control of behaviour, one as a positive effect limiting exposure (NB8) and one not preventing exposure (NB3). The main organisational feature mentioned was whether a firm was simply client-led (NL3, SL1, SL7) or had their own global strategy (NL1, NL4). The former tended to follow their clients - banks following borrowers, law firms following banks - and prospered or not with their clients (LB6, SL11) whereas the latter 'positioned themselves' to develop in the market and prosper through 'organic growth' (NL4); there was a halfway house where followers subsequently developed local markets (SL10). It was commonly emphasized that the global strategy was, in reality, a global-local strategy using local professionals to link business at different scales (NL1, NL4, SL3, SL4, SL5, SL10, LL12).
 

As may have been adjudged from the firm analysis, the two sectors, banking/finance and law, fared very differently. At its most basic the crisis tended to be bad for banking/finance (SB9, LB6, LB12, LB15, LB17) but the resulting volatility is generally good for lawyers (LL8). For banks which stayed it was generally a matter of damage limitation, cost-cutting and retrenchment (SB3, SB6, SB8, LB7, LB10) whereas for law the crisis was often seen as a good thing (SL4, SL5, LL1, LL10, LL11). Lawyers do well in good and bad times (SL3, LL3): one respondent even referred to 'a perfect market - insolvency, contention, restructuring' (SL8). There was one important specific point which arose in relation to law. It was pointed out that there were signs that the crisis had encouraged a cultural change with law becoming accepted as necessary for good business (Asian traditional business practices had no place for lawyers) (SL11, LL6).

Not surprisingly, there seems to have been very different styles of practice between the two sectors. In banking there was basically a very conservative approach for reducing exposure (NB1, NB2, LB16) with several references to a 'herd mentality' (NB3, NB7, NB9, SB11). This could hardly be more different from law where there has been a renewed emphasis on quality - in bad times you need good lawyers (SL2, SL4). This links to the firms who are not client-led, for instance, there is reference to staying one step ahead of the clients (NL4). Where banks find positive outcomes from the crisis it is largely learning from mistakes (SB8, LB4): reviewing risk management (NB1, SB2) and debating regulation (NB5, NB9, SB2, SB5) especially in regard to transparency (LB1, LB10). The only example of banks treating the crisis as an opportunity has been in the practice of buying up cheap assets or 'cherry picking' (SB2, SB8, SB10). In contrast successful law firms were flexible, turning from one legal discipline to another, notably from capital markets and project contracts to restructuring, debt recovery and litigation (LL2, LL5). In general, law has been more pro-active than banking/finance in confronting the crisis (LL6).
 

Although with global markets everyone is affected by crises like the Asian one (NB4), states mediate how the economic change impacts in different countries. Politics produces the bounded institutions and structures which are sometimes seen as the key to how a crisis develops geographically (NB8, NL1).

Two examples are widely discussed by our interviewees. First, although Singapore has been particularly vulnerable due to its location and dependence on Asian regional trade, its government is widely praised for being pro-active in confronting the crisis and managing the problem: their good governance is a theme widely discussed (NB7, SB1, SB2, SB3, SB4, SB5, SB6, SB7, SB8, SB9, SL2, SL3, SL5, SL6, SL7, SL8). This is contrasted with corruption and cronyism in other Asian countries (NL3, SB8, SL2, LB16) including Japan (LB7). Singapore is said to have come out of the crisis even stronger (SB3) because it has a government which thinks ahead (SL8). Second, the USA is another country which has had a good crisis. In this case the late 1990s economic boom is attributed to the lowering of the interest rates consequent upon crisis fears (NB1, NB2, NB3, NB4, NB5, NB8, NB9). In this the USA preceded the UK which has followed a similar path (NB4, LB2).

Beyond these various political responses, there are important cultural differences which are an important country-effect on world city network formation. One theme commonly reported is that Americans are inward looking (NB1, NB9, SB2); in fact it was suggested that one effect of the crisis might be to reverse a trend towards more openness and make the USA even more insular (NB9). Hence US banks were less exposed than their European and Japanese rivals which has enabled them to be the leader in handling the crisis (NB9). But this has been largely through retraction, it is UK banks which have increased involvement (NB10). This relates to the UK's deeper roots than the USA in Asia outside Japan (NL4, NL5). This is particularly reflected in law where the colonial legacy, particularly use of English Law, is important (NL5, NL2, SL1, SL2, SL8, SL10, LL2, LL4, LL5, LL7). Beyond this advantage UK firms are said to be better at operating with local cultures (SL1). The UK itself is seen as being more open, Americans more closed (LB16), the latter are accused as having a 'mental protectionism' (LB2).

Singapore is said to be a key site in a 'global fight' (NL3), 'head to head' (NL4, SL5), a 'battleground' (LL4) between US and UK law (NL3). The advantage of US firms is that they are being brought into the region by the USA's larger banking sector and therefore tend to have a bigger and more international client base (SL11, NL2, NL4, SL5, SL7, LL5, LL8). However, being 'followers' (NL1, NL2) does not make for local success: it is UK firms which are 'winning on the ground' (SL7). This relates to their not being so client-led which leads to several advantages: UK firms tend to be more long-term, have more depth and commitment, and are more diversified than their US rivals (NL2, NL4, NL5, SL7, SL8, SL9, SL10). In addition, US firms have a huge domestic legal market to fall back upon to make retrenchment more amenable than for UK firms (NL4, SL2, LL2, LL5). Thus US firms tend to 'fly in' and 'cherry pick' rather than build international networks (NL4) compared to UK firms' long term global strategies (LL5).

Combining this discussion with the previous section, we can conclude that the US seems to be dominant in the more conservative sector (banking/finance) and the UK in the more innovative legal sector (LL2, LL4).
 

With firms now being global in their strategies some interviewees thought there would be little difference between cities. This was thought to be true for New York and London in particular: same reactions to the crisis (NB4) and same or similar effects (NB5, LB3). But other respondents had a more subtle interpretation with New York being less affected because of the strength of its domestic economy (NB1, NB3, NB7, NL3, LB1). There have been lay-offs related to the crisis in New York (NB2) but these are seen as only 'pockets of exposure' (NB3) whereas London has been more affected because of its greater reliance on international markets (NL3), particularly its Hong Kong links (NB7). The latter city is very widely identified as a key loser in the crisis (SB2, SB8, SB11, NL2, SL5, SL9) especially with respect to Singapore which has become the 'best placed in the region' (SB10) so that it is reportedly set to be the 'hub of Asia' (SB7). This specific process of world city network formation - Singapore 'overtaking' Hong Kong - is a commonly reported effect of the crisis (SB4, SB6, SB8, SB9, SB10, SL11, SL9, LB8).

How did Singapore become 'one of the predators rather than prey in the crisis' as one respondent so aptly put it? (SB3) Obviously it is difficult to disentangle the state effects from city effects in this case - the praise for the government reported previously is obviously very relevant. But there is more to it than political initiative. Singapore has developed a civic business culture in which networks, relationships, and local knowledges have been built up over time (SL3). Trust and relationships are the key in a crisis (SB5, SL1, LL3, LL4) as success is built upon 'roots, credibility, connections' (SL4). This is a good learning milieu (SL3) and Singapore, we are told, is 'attracting know-how' (SL5). In short, it has become 'a substantial and sophisticated base' (SL3), an essential shore of existing knowledges, and a site of creating new knowledges, for handling the crisis and beyond. Of course, it is not necessarily as simple as this: two respondents think government policy has produced a civic conformity which stifles local initiative (SB7, LB5), another considers Singapore to be too small, a 'sleeper' town which has reached its limits (SL10), and there is always the pollution problem (SB11). Hence several dispute Singapore's replacement of Hong Kong in the Asian city pecking order (SL4, SL10). But there are no doubters that Singapore coped remarkably well in the difficult situation thrown up by the crisis.

In terms of London and New York, these were generally viewed as equals (LB9) but with leads in different areas (LB3, LB14, LB16). Although there were effected in specific ways (e.g. the retrenching of Japanese banks in London (LL2)) the important effects were indirect ones in a globally connected world (LB12). Hence, there was little comparison about how they coped with the crisis. In terms of cultural differences, bankers seem to think New York more entrepreneurial and competitive while London is 'more comfortable' and prudent (LB2, LB7, LB15) but the reverse is the case for lawyers (LL2, LL5, LL7, LL9, LL10, LL11). However bankers praised London's 'infrastructure' (LB3) and its concentration of skills, communications and contacts (LB4) where innovation is coupled with resilience (LB10). London has 'core competence and critical mass', not just of clients (LB13), but also of services relating to banking - lawyers, auditors and accountants are mentioned (LB14). This is recognition of London as more than a financial centre, it is a world city. We have little equivalent discussion of New York except for the intriguing notion that 'New York feeds on itself' (LB4).
 

In the previous section we have presented evidence concerning the four attendants consecutively for pedagogic reasons but it is obvious from the discussions that they are in no sense 'separately factors'. This is, of course, what our co-efficiency model asserts (Figure 1). Relations and interactions between attendants abound in our empirical evidence and they point very strongly towards the nexuses and communities identified in our model. What are the concomitant successes and failures which may be due to the various pairings of attendants?

In terms of nexuses, the two clearest examples are the causal connections potent in the success of large London law firms and in the success of the US banking/finance sector. In the former case a very entrepreneurial local legal culture has projected key firms to treat the Asian crisis as an opportunity to sell new service products. In the latter case a buoyant national economy has meant that the American banking sector has been largely immune from the Asian crisis although fears of wider crisis has generally led to a more defensive approach. Other nexuses can be discerned. In contrast to the latter examples, US law firms, despite their large size, have been much more domestically oriented and when venturing abroad they have been dependent on clients, especially banks. This has meant that as 'followers', they have not tended to take up the new opportunities for law firms in the wake of the crisis. Finally London as an international banking centre with strong links to Hong Kong, and with a large presence of Japanese bank branches, has had more banking/finance firms more exposed to the crisis.

In terms of communities, the immunity of New York from the crisis on the back of the US national economy's successes shows, more than any other relation, the error in the suggestion that urban competitiveness can be separated from national competitiveness. The Singapore situation shows a very similar territorial effect but is somewhat confused by its 'city-state' status. In contrast, London's territorial community is much less important with the UK too small and the European Union too large and divided to offer much succour. However, use of English Law and the colonial legacy of linkages have contributed to this former imperial capital prospering as a world city (King, 1990) and there is evidence that this has helped London law firms in the crisis region. For sector communities there is a marked contrast between firms in banking/finance to act defensively and firms offering legal services to act offensively in response to the crisis is quite marked. The contrasting cultures of norms and expectations between firms of different sectors is probably the most clear-cut finding of this study. The latter sector-firm community effect counters the US-law nexus and is represented by selected large US law firms being as proactive as their London rivals. This latter example emphasizes the point that relations between attendants produce only tendencies: hence contradictory dynamics are both part of our model and are found in our evidence. World city network formation is not a smooth, regular process; its complexity is clearly evident even when we focus on only a limited number of cities and sectors at just one particular moment in the development of the world economy.
 

We bring together our arguments by starting in the middle and working outwards. There is an evidential core at the heart of this study which has provided direct empirical insights into world city network formation. Rivalry between London and New York, and between Hong Kong and Singapore, have featured within interviewees' discussions of their experiences of the effects of the Asian crisis. These city rivalries are interwoven with information on firms, sectors and countries which we have identified, with the cities themselves as the attendants of world city network formation. Thus we have been able to develop a model of co-existencies and co-efficiencies in which the attendants are linked together as nexuses and communities in their inter-related contributions to forming and reforming the network. This model was presented in the abstract before the empirics and its operation illustrated in the second section of our empirical offering. Finally, the findings resulting from putting the empirical information into the model format brought us back to the theme with which we began: urban competitiveness. We think that both our theoretical excursions and empirical inferences enable us to conclude that urban competitiveness under conditions of contemporary globalization can be understood only as a matter of world city network formation. This has both important policy and theoretical implications.
 

We would like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council for supporting this project (Award number: R000222693). We would also like to thank the people and firms who kindly agreed to be interviewed during the course of the research.
 

1 GaWC is the acronym for the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network, a web-based facility which focuses on the external relations of world cities. URL: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/. [The site is maintained by the Department of Geography, Loughborough University, England.]
 

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Figure 1: Co-efficiency model 

When referring to interviews in the text, the following prefixes apply:

LB denotes a London-based interview with a global investment bank.

LL denotes a London-based interview with a global law firm.

NB denotes a New York-based interview with a global investment bank.

NL denotes a New York-based interview with a global law firm.

SB denotes a Singapore-based interview with a global investment bank.

SL denotes a Singapore-based interview with a global law firm

Numerical suffixes denote individual interviews sequenced according to the above schematic.
 

The global investment banks and law firms interviewed during the course of the research are listed below. Some banks and law firms were interviewed in more than one world city.

Allen & Overy
Arab Bank
Ashurst Morris Crisp
Baker & McKenzie
Bank of China
Bank of East Asia
BHF Bank
Cameron McKenna
Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton
Clifford Chance
Clyde & Co
Credit Agricole Indosuez
Credit Lyonnais
Credit Lyonnais Securities
Den Norske Bank
Denton Hall
Dibb Lupton Alsop
Freshfields
Generale Bank
Hill Samuel Asset Management (Lloyds TSB)
Industrial Bank of Japan
Macfarlanes
Masons
National Australia Bank
Nippon Credit Bank
Norinchukin Bank
Norton Rose
Richard Butler
Sakura Bank
Sanwa Bank
Simmons & Simmons
Societe General
State Bank of India
Stephenson Harewood
Sumitomo trust and Banking
Sumtoto Trust
Union Europeenne de CIC
Westpac Banking Corporation
White & Case
Zenshinren Bank