GaWC Research Network: Christof Parnreiter

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Christof Parnreiter

GaWC Associate Director (Cities in the 'Global South')

Christof Parnreiter has contributed to GaWC since 2000 with his work on Mexico City. His main interest is to show that global / world city research is, in fact, a very useful tool to grasp the roles and functions of cities in the ‘Global South' and to correct overgeneralized notions of a clear-cut North-South power divide into impressive global cities in the North and problem-burdened megacities in the South. His second contribution is to recuperate the economic geography spirit of global / world city research that has informed the studies of John Friedmann and Saskia Sassen, but that has been marginalized in the subsequent work on global / world cities, which has focused either on the analysis of internal transformations accompanying global city formation or on the measurement of inter-world city linkages. In order to scrutinize the command and control functions of global / world cities in the world economy, Parnreiter has, together with GaWC colleagues, suggested to integrate global / world city research and global commodity chain research. Following this line of reasoning, his major interest focuses on the role of global / world cities in the production of uneven development.

Christof Parnreiter holds a PhD in economic history from the University of Vienna and is currently Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Hamburg. He has been a Fellow at the Globalization Project at the University of Chicago. He has published extensively on global city formation in Mexico City, and, more generally, on the economic geography heritage of the global city paradigm.