Global Buzz - December 2009
Global Buzz is an ‘immediate measure' of globalization: it indicates levels of global activity that are happening within selected cities over a given month. This short-term measure allows cities to be closely monitored over time. Results are produced for 62 cities in the form of % global buzz occurring in each city.
The first results were released for September 2009; here we release the results for December 2009
and the third set of monthly change results. There are two tables below that provide the detailed levels of Global Buzz and the monthly change.
Main points:
- The big event of the month was the UN conference on climate change and this is reflected by the rise of Copenhagen in these results. Copenhagen is by far the biggest riser in terms of ranking (up 22 places) but just fails to reach the top ten. The city has the third highest rise in global buzz. However, these results show the limits of the effects of just one event, even a major global conference, on our myriad global buzz measure.
- Although it cannot be easily discerned from the rankings, the biggest changes are to be found in a reshuffling of cities at the top of the rankings. Both Hong Kong (rising to 2nd) and Singapore (consolidating 1st place) are the big gainers in terms of global buzz.
- Moscow is also an important gainer (4th) and rises to its highest level of global buzz yet (3rd).
- In contrast, New York (down from 2nd to 4th) and Los Angeles (down from 4th to 7th) record their lowest ranking thus far on the back of the two largest declines in global buzz in these results. Clearly the festive activities in these two leading US cities, ‘Christmas buzz', is not being recorded here as global buzz.
- However other US cities are rising: Washington returns to the top 10 and Boston enters for the first time.
- The big risers from last month - Dubai and Abu Dhabi– maintain their rankings as ramifications of the Dubai's real estate crisis rumbles on. But note that in terms of actual % global buzz both have declined, Dubai markedly so.
- Tokyo and Shanghai drop out of the top ten (to 13th and 15th respectively), the latter being overtaken by Beijing (the 5th highest riser).
- The biggest fall in ranking is by Taipei (27 places from 11th to 38th) on the back of the 4th largest decline in global buzz.
Go to: [Global Buzz - The GaWC Monthly Monitor] |
