The ordinary city Robinson, J. (2002) Global and World Cities: A view from off the map. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26(3): 531-554 · Some cities do not fall into either global or world city categories as are missing qualities of city-ness or are too small . Concerned by the split between accounts of cities labelled as in the third-world and those in the west - urban theory based primarily of views of the west · World cities: have regional, national and international economies and can be arranged into a hierarchy based on fortunes of world history · World cities approach assumes all countries will follow a similar path making their way up through the categories (core, periphery and semi-periphery) · Saskia Sassen (1991/4) has coined the term 'global cities' as a distinct feature of the 1980s onwards phase of the world economy due to the increasingly transnational structure · Sassen also says there is an emergence of new periphery cities (some in poorer countries) that have global city functions but fall short of being first order global cities . South-east Asia is the top location for investment in manufacturing by the highly developed countries and many poorer countries are now exporters of capital . Countries such as Zambia have seen the value of their exports decrease on the world market since the 70s as suffered the consequences from ruthless structural adjustment programmes - its capital Lusaka is one of the most urbanised in Africa and still has exports to the world market but is not considered a global player despite links with other places · Poorer countries are relevant to global economy as are important for exporting raw materials · Variability in cities global reach - in terms of provincial, political, symbolic , transport or production centres . All cities of global nature have globalisation of varying amounts but this still leads to a hierarchy type ranking . There is not an alternate way of viewing third-world countries as are all viewed in comparison to western ideology when there are different issues such as population growth without economic growth · Challenge for urban studies is to develop creative ways of thinking about connections across the diversity and complexity of different cities to contribute to framing policy alternatives to support diverse economies · Periods where first and third world cities have converged and diverges - e.g. in South east Asia there are the American style shopping centres · Global cities offer a concept of success for the city and people buy into it - this can mean ordinary cities are ignored with less investment and migration · There should be a greater emphasis on the process of city making rather than putting cities straight into categories as this can harm reputation · Also need to decolonize the area of urban study in order to have less western viewpoints on city strengths Ordinary Cities - Global South Pre-lecture video · Some cities are not part of the network -