On the relationship between Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and global urban networks

Both Sassen (1991) and Castells (1996) have argued that a proper understanding of cities and their relative positions within the current globalized Information Society entails the analysis of the myriad relationships between Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and urban networks. After all, due to the rise of new information and (tele)communication technologies , the world is experiencing a series of fundamental social, political, economic, and cultural transformations whereby information and knowledge seem to be the prime facilitators of economic productivity and societal change under contemporary capitalism. As these ICTs are key drivers of the current globalization processes, questions around how different types of knowledge flow between cities become central to the study of cities within the global urban hierarchy. While influential theoretical and empirical work such as that by Sassen (1991), Castells (1996), and Smith and Timberlake (2001) has emphasized the need for using these ICTs to approach the global urban system, empirical elaboration has been lacking in diverse ways: the majority of empirical analyses in the ‘world city network’ (WCN) literature are analyses drawing on the corporate geographies of service firms and air transport-based studies of urban connectivity (Derudder & Witlox, 2008; Van Nuffel et al., 2010; Devriendt et al., 2010). This relative underdevelopment of ICT-based analyses has a number of causes.