‘The most systematic contemporary approach to the notion of the city as node in a network of cities is quite likely represented by the work of the international research network on global and world cities (GaWC)… To study these networks… GaWC researchers must ask novel questions requiring new kinds of data and new forms of visualization – in other words, define a new agenda for urban research.’
Helen Couclelis (2021) ‘Conceptualizing the city of the information age’ in W. Shi, M.F. Goodchild, M. Batty, M.-P. Kwan and A. Zhang (eds) Urban Informatics (Singapore: Springer) p. 139
‘Critical urbanists have used such data to construct and analyze the global urban system, with particular attention on how these networks function to create a global urban hierarchy of more and less powerful cities… [T]he most prominent body of such scholarship comes out of Loughborough University’s Globalization and World Cities collaborative, analyzing inter-urban networks of corporate service firms to relationally position cities with respect to their global ‘command and control’ influence.’
Helga Leitner, Jamie Peck and Eric Sheppard (2020) Urban Studies Inside/Out: Theory, Method, Practice (London: Sage) p. 32
‘This approach [by GaWC] has been extremely prominent in urban studies and, through its maps, diagrams, and tables, not to mention its prolific output of detailed and innovative analyses, has come to define what the global cities approach is for many urban geographers.’
Andrew E.G. Jonas, Eugene McCann and Mary Thomas (2015) Urban Geography: A Critical Introduction (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell) p. 88
‘Although many geographers have contributed to the study of world cities…, arguably the most sustained and innovative analyses have emerged from the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Study Group and Network based in the Department of Geography at Loughborough University.’
Nick R. Fyfe and Judith T. Kenny (2005) Editors’ introduction to ‘World City Network: A New Metageography?’, in N.R. Fyfe and J.T. Kenny (eds) The Urban Geography Reader (London: Routledge) p. 64
‘[R]eaders are strongly encouraged to consult the outstanding website of the GaWC (Globalization and World Cities) research group at Loughborough University, brilliantly organized by a team of urban scholars led by geographers Jonathan Beaverstock and Peter J. Taylor in the UK…. This website contains an invaluable selection of bibliographies, research bulletins, project descriptions, data sets and web links related to research on cities and globalization. The GaWC website is updated regularly and will be immensely useful to anyone who is engaged in reading or research on these matters.’
Neil Brenner and Roger Keil (2006) ‘Editors’ introduction’ in N. Brenner and R. Keil (eds) The Global Cities Reader (London: Routledge) p. 12
‘As a source of stimulating intellectual debates and ideas, the Globalization and World Cities Study Group (GaWC) at Loughborough University is a veritable online goldmine. The fast and frequent publication of world cities literature and the wider array of data available is surely a foretaste of disseminating methods that will later become standard.’
Alasdair Rae (2006) ‘Out of the ordinary? British cities in the world city network’ Scottish Geographical Journal 121, p. 72
‘[T]heir superb website brings together all the state-of-the-art research on global cities.’
Adrian Favell (2006) ‘London as Eurocity’ in M.P. Smith and A. Favell (eds) (2006) The Human Face of Global Mobility (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers) p. 274
‘[T]he work of Peter Taylor and his research group at Loughborough University is particularly incisive in this respect [measuring connectivity]. Not content just to invoke big cities as global cities, this research establishes a three level ‘interlocking network’… Thus a complex and enduring ‘structure’ of city types and networks can be established, derived directly from the data on connectivity.’
Grahame F. Thompson (2003) Between Hierarchies and Markets: The Logic and Limits of Network Forms of Organization (Oxford: OUP) pp. 204-5
‘To better understand how large corporate service firms have expanded around the world, the research of a group of geographers at Loughborough University in England is illuminating. For the past several years, this research group (known as GaWC for ‘globalization and world cities’) has been tracking the growth and connections among corporate service firms.’
Mark Abrahamson (2004) Global Cities (Oxford: Oxford University Press) p. 85
‘Perhaps the best global encapsulation of our [London’s] position is contained in the Globalisation and World Cities Study Group and Network data.’
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, House of Lords debate on ‘London: Financial Centre’, 8 June 2006