The letter gamma (Hebrew gimel) is derived from the Phoenician word for "camel"


I recently came across a reference to Montreal as being a "Gamma" global city. Gamma? What the heck does that mean? It doesn't take a Classics degree to realise that gamma presupposes an alpha and a beta set of cities, but what do these distinctions mean and where do they come from? I decided to find out.

The term "global city" entered common parlance mainly through Saskia Sassen's writings in the early 1990's and came to mean a city "that has a direct and tangible effect on global affairs through socioeconomic, cultural, and/or political means." Of course, it was quickly argued that different kinds of cities have different kinds of "effects" upon the global circulation of, let's say, money or goods, or culture so, as you might imagine, a kind of ranking system was developed to define and categorise these world cities.

Being a particularly British obsession (ranking, that it), studies were first made by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network (GaWC), based primarily at Loughborough University in Loughborough, England. (Which, I can tell you right now is hardly what you'd call a "world class city" - no offence to the Loughboroughians). The roster was outlined in the GaWC Research Bulletin 5 [1] and ranked cities based on provision of "advanced producer services" such as accountancy, advertising, finance and law, by international corporations. The GaWC inventory identifies three levels of world cities and several sub-ranks.

Now it also doesn't take a cultural studies degree to realise that these rankings threw culture right out the window when it came to all the box ticking. Can you imagine what this list would look like if we re-ranked everything according to "advanced cultural services"?

Anyway, since that will never happen, here's the list, folks. Read it and weep. Or better yet, tell us what you think....

Alpha world cities

* 12 points: London, New York City, Paris, Tokyo
* 10 points: Chicago, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan, Singapore

Beta world cities

* 9 points: San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, Zürich
* 8 points: Brussels, Madrid, Mexico City, São Paulo
* 7 points: Moscow, Seoul

Gamma world cities

* 6 points: Amsterdam, Boston, Caracas, Dallas, Düsseldorf, Geneva, Houston, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Osaka, Prague, Santiago, Taipei, Washington, DC
* 5 points: Bangkok, Beijing, Montreal, Rome, Stockholm, Warsaw
* 4 points: Atlanta, Barcelona, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Budapest, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Miami, Minneapolis, Munich, Shanghai