Global Cities: A New Hierarchy and Critical Assessment of the Post-Colonial Legacy

Resumen

With the increasing human migration to cities, the relevance of global cities at the international
level is becoming more evident. Nonetheless, a concrete definition of what is needed for a city to
become global has not been formulated. The existing system that identifies cities as global is highly
embedded in the colonial past and perpetuates a hierarchical system born from the colonial legacy.
Therefore, this research paper intersects the significant factors that indexes utilize to evaluate a city
in terms of its global output and highlights the relevant connection of the factors to the colonial
legacy of yore. The social normative conditioning of the citizenry inhabiting these urban centers
and the discrepancy in city resiliency byproduct of a disparity in resource availability. Furthermore,
the inequality in resource allocation has created a perpetuation in the inability to become resilient
to modern transnational problems and transboundary issues, fostering the disparity between
emerging cities and global cities. Finally, this paper seeks to aid in the post-colonial discourse of the
international relations discipline and calls for a conjoint interdisciplinary approach to emancipate
the classification of cities from the contemporary colonial hierarchical system.