Placing Indian cities in the world city network: a firm-level spatial and temporal study

Since the onset of globalization, rapid change in the nature and pace of global integration has made people, firms, cities and countries more connected, and by implication, integrated into a global economy and global society. Perhaps unsurprisingly, attention was first cast towards those world cities located in advanced industrial countries. Over the past twenty years, a group of emerging economies – the so-called BRICS economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, South Africa – have become more central participants in global trade and investments. Despite significant interest in China little attention has been directed towards other BRICS economies. Each is noteworthy in its own way but perhaps the biggest single oversight is India – the sixth largest economy in the world and with a population exceeding 1.3 billion. The aim of this thesis is therefore to provide the first in-depth account of how Indian cities are connected into the world city network. Examining why some Indian cities are better connected than others, this thesis accounts for the changing functional roles of Indian cities in the world city network, develops a typology of Indian cities, and seeks to understand how a better knowledge of Indian cities and how they are connected regionally and globally aids global urban research. Adopting a historical approach to account for the changing functional roles of Indian cities, the thesis then uses an Indian company-level dataset and the classic GaWC global network connectivity approach, to reveal firm-level geographies of Indian cities and by implication, indicating how understanding city connectivity of Indian cities can help to understand India’s recent economic development.