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Within research on world cities, much attention has been paid to advanced producer services (APS) and their role within both global urban hierarchies and network formation between cities. What is largely ignored is that these APS provide services to firms operating in a range of different sectors. Does sector-specific specialisation of advanced producer services influence the economic geography of corporate networks between cities? If so, what factors might explain this geographical pattern? This paper investigates these theoretical questions by empirically focusing on those advanced producer services related to the port and maritime sector. The empirical results show that the location of AMPS is correlated with maritime localisation economies, expressed in the presence of shipowners and port-related industry as well as APS in general, but not by throughput flows of ports. Based upon the findings, policy recommendations are addressed.

An important source of competitiveness for mega city-regions results from their capacity to combine a strong local knowledge capital base with high levels of connectivity to similar regions elsewhere in the global economy. Globally networked advanced producer services firms are presumed to play a key role in transferring knowledge between local and global circuits. But how does this actually work? Which kinds of knowledge may be acquired through global networks and which others not? An in-depth analysis of the practices of knowledge production by advanced producer services firms in the mega city-region of the Randstad provides answers.

This paper introduces a special issue of Regional Studies on 'Globalization, City-Regions and Polycentricity in North West Europe'. The issue focuses on the thematic core of the EU-funded project POLYNET: the analysis of economic connections and information flows generated by advanced producer services in eight European polycentric city-regions. The paper first discusses key elements of the current debate on global city-regions and points out some unresolved gaps. A summary of the main findings of the contributions to the special issue is followed by a research agenda for future work on emerging mega-city regions.

AbstractCities and city regions are back on the research agenda in the UK. Taking the world city literature as a guide, this article uses advanced producer service firms to study contemporary inter‐city relations in the UK space economy. We employ an interlocking network model, initially developed for global scale analysis, to assess signs that recent globalization is effecting a revival outside the London region, and to identify leading urban areas in the UK national economy. Two different analyses are presented: a connectivity analysis, which indicates how well cities and towns are linked into the UK space economy, and a fuzzy clustering analysis, which classifies the cities and towns in order to search out hierarchical and regional tendencies. From these findings, we identify two distinctive polycentric city‐regional processes in contemporary Britain: a Jacobs‐style polycentric mega‐city regional process out of London, which creates new important service centres and reaches selected smaller cities and towns; and a polycentric multi‐city regional process beyond London, which mainly enhances the service capacities of selected larger cities. A concluding section considers the implications of the two processes for spatial planning in the UK.Résumé Les villes et régions urbaines reviennent en force dans la recherche britannique. Orienté par les publications sur les villes mondiales, ce travail utilise les entreprises de services avancés à la production pour étudier les relations contemporaines entre villes dans l'économie spatiale britannique. À l'aide d'un modèle de maillage, mis au point à l'origine pour une analyse à l'échelon mondial, nous mesurons les signes indiquant que la récente mondialisation provoque une relance hors de la région de Londres et nous identifions les zones urbaines dominantes de l'économie nationale. Sont présentées deux analyses différentes: une analyse de la connectivité, montrant dans quelle mesure les villes et grandes villes sont reliées au sein de l'économie spatiale britannique, et une analyse des groupements flous qui classe villes et grandes villes afin de trouver les tendances hiérarchiques et régionales. À partir de ces résultats, sont identifiés deux processus distincts de région urbaine polycentrique dans la Grande‐Bretagne contemporaine: un processus de méga‐région urbaine polycentrique, proche de la description de Jacobs, à la périphérie de Londres, qui crée de nouveaux centres de services importants et atteint certaines villes et grandes villes plus petites; un processus de multi‐région urbaine polycentrique au‐delà de Londres, qui renforce principalement les capacités de services de certaines grandes villes. La conclusion étudie les implications des deux processus sur l'aménagement spatial au Royaume‐Uni.

This article highlights the patterns of Advanced Producer Services (APS) in Belgrade and relates them to contemporary spatial and economic intrametropolitan transformations. The locational strategies of APS have influenced the creation of another center called New Belgrade next to the traditional central business district (CBD). Over the last ten years, government planning documents and the location preferences of foreign firms have made New Belgrade the most attractive business location in Serbia. In a sample of the leading APS firms in Belgrade, 129 firms are analyzed in terms of firm sector, ownership, and location. The results confirm the multipolar-monocentric pattern, which appears to be a common feature in many European cities.

This article highlights the patterns of Advanced Producer Services (APS) in Belgrade and relates them to contemporary spatial and economic intrametropolitan transformations. The locational strategies of APS have influenced the creation of another center called New Belgrade next to the traditional central business district (CBD). Over the last ten years, government planning documents and the location preferences of foreign firms have made New Belgrade the most attractive business location in Serbia. In a sample of the leading APS firms in Belgrade, 129 firms are analyzed in terms of firm sector, ownership, and location. The results confirm the multipolar-monocentric pattern, which appears to be a common feature in many European cities.

We analyse the geographies of urban networks created by leading producer services (PS) firms in China. Because of the national regulation of the Chinese state-led economy and the location strategies of global advanced producer services (APS) firms, the geography of global APS in China as examined by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) cannot be studied as a subnetwork of GaWC's global network, but needs an empirical study based on a wide range of leading PS in the Chinese market. We explore the spatial differentiation in the connectivity of Chinese cities based on the location strategies of 323 APS firms in 287 Chinese cities. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen emerge as the primary nodes. The spatial distribution of banking, securities, and insurance services networks appears to be more even than those of non-financial PS firms. Regional disparity exists in terms of polycentric urban development in coastal China, as well as in the centralisation model in central and western areas. We suggest that owing to the continued tight regulation of China's state-led economy and the nature of the location strategies of 'globalised' PS firms, the urban networks created by Chinese PS firms are not only an extension of urban networks at a global scale but also an embodiment of economic activities at other scales.

Presented in this paper is a formal economic model that identifies the optimal intraurban location for a producer-service vendor that caters to the technical needs of spatially dispersed clients in the manufacturing sector. Two major components are incorporated into the model. The first of these describes the oft-cited externalization process among industrial firms, where in-house service provision is selectively abandoned in favor of out-sourcing. The second component describes a vendor location process based on profit maximization, where buyers and sellers are optimally located relative to one another. Normative modeling propositions are then compared with current empirical streams in the literature on producer-service location, the role of manufacturing demand, and the process of selective vertical disintegration among industrial firms. The paper is concluded with a brief research agenda for modeling the intraurban locational behavior of specialist firms in the producer services.