We place labor flows, involving both highly skilled professionals and unskilled workers, within the framework of research on world cities. These flows are central to understanding the growth of world cities, particularly those whose growth is not primarily a result of advanced producer services. The context of Arab Gulf cities allows us to understand urban growth in the region as an outcome of wealth accumulation that stimulates large flows of skilled westerners and of unskilled workers from poor regions in Asia. We conclude with an agenda for research on migration to world cities and the division of labor in those cities.

Urban areas compete with one another for people, goods, capital, ideas and other inputs of economic activity. Under the rubric of globalization, instead of only maintaining or improving the initial stock of assets in a city, the power of a place to attract outside flows of economic activity from elsewhere is increasingly important to economic development. Similarly, global or world cities are characterized as the command and control points through which these global economic flows operate. In response to the heightened mobility of highly-skilled labor across national borders, research has begun to examine the role of international human capital as an economic flow. This paper will examine the role of places in determining where the highly-skilled go in the global economy by viewing global city command and control functions as requiring unique labor flows. By reviewing the evidence found in the literature, we can better understand the potential for urban areas to compete for highly-skilled labor in the global economy. Known indicators of place attractiveness are assessed to examine the relationship between the economic trajectories of cities and their labor requirements. Cities are situated between firms and states as the key place-based actors which influence the mobility of highly-skilled labor. Finally, the paper also examines measurement issues and methodological problems in creating indices of world cities as well as explores possibilities for new research.

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The oil-abundant, labour‐deficient countries of the Persian Gulf are investing their wealth towards creating economic development beyond oil. At a minimum, these strategies are attempts to craft the basis for sustainable economic development in a global economy that is more dependent on human capital and creativity than on natural resource wealth. This paper examines the Gulf development experience in light of theories on the diversification of natural resource‐based economies, the transition from pre‐ to post‐industrial development, and the role of services as an economic base. The paper assesses the Gulf's current development efforts and post‐oil, knowledge‐based aspirations in terms of the region's competitiveness, knowledge accumulation, and labour market structure.Development , post‐industrial , catch‐up , knowledge economy , Gulf Cooperation Council , Dubai ,