From North‐South to ‘Global’ South? An Investigation of a Changing ‘South’ Using Airline Flows between Cities, 1970–2005

Abstract

Using a city‐centred approach to development issues, this article critiques the recent concept of ‘Global South’. With its provenance from the ‘South’ half of the 1970s ‘North‐South divide’, the concept recognizes the transformations of the world economy since the 1970s, latterly known as globalization, by adding the adjective ‘global’ but leaves the geography undisturbed: the map of ‘South’ in ‘Global South’ is the same as in the North‐South divide. The limitation of this static geography in dynamic times is explored using relational geographies based upon airline flights and passengers between cities. Flight patterns for 1970, 1991 and 2005 are used to show the prime finding that contrasts a dense Pacific Asian network with airline patterns in the rest of the ‘South’. In addition, there appears to be bifurcation of the ‘South’ with Latin America having less inter‐regional South‐South links than other regions. Specific origin/destination data for 2001 provide a cross‐sectional depiction of the details of this South geography and confirm the very large flows into, through and out of Pacific Asia. These results are interpreted using Jacobs’ work on economic change and moral syndromes. We conclude that ‘Global South’ is a geographical chaotic conception, which has possible implications for its major sponsor, the United Nations Development Programme, wedded to an old political geography while ‘real, existing’ economic development proceeds regardless.

Differentiated Markets: Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong in China’s Financial Centre Network

“…A specific contribution is the unveiling of new global cities within a literature that has been criticised for normalising the sociospatial features and development trajectories of North American and western European cities (Robinson, 2002(Robinson, , 2005. The study of airline flows between cities, for example, reveals the growing integration and importance of cities in the global South (Taylor et al, 2009). Another example is the mapping of corporate linkages between Islamic financial services firms that highlights the importance of Manama, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, cities that are often missing in conventional accounts of global city networks (Bassens et al, 2009).…”

Latin American Cities and Globalisation: Change and Permanency in the Context of Development Expectations

“…This process seems to be at odds with the demographic growth seen in many medium and large-sized cities, which seems to suggest that the expectations about their insertion in global processes are not high. Some studies have shown how the increase in regional interrelationships associated with globalisation has been much more intense in other 'Southern' regions (mostly in east Asia) (Taylor et al, 2009). This seems to be in line with the suspicions raised by many intellectuals when they point out that the idea of Latin America has been crafted 'from the outside' rather than 'from the inside' .…”

The structure of globalized travel: A relational country-pair analysis

“…For a critique of airline passenger data, see Derudder and Witlox (2005). Other research supports the findings of European and North American cities as absolute hubs , and the rise of Pacific Asian cores (Taylor et al, 2009) in the WCN.…”

“…Network analyses within business management, physical sciences, and the social sciences also show uneven travel patterns when examining website connections -accommodations, agencies, transportation services, and activities -of a tourist destination (Baggio, 2007), firms (Erkus-Ozturk, 2009;Erkus-Ozturk and Eraydin, 2011), countries Greenbaum and Hultquist, 2006;Neal, 2010Neal, , 2012Shih, 2006;Teixeira and Fernandes, 2012), regions (Borocz, 1996;Garin-Munoz, 2004;Van Nuffel et al, 2010), and globally Keeling, 1995;Miguens and Mendes, 2008;Rimmer, 1998;Smith and Timberlake, 2001;Taylor et al, 2007Taylor et al, , 2009. Social science research on global travel tends to focus on world city networks (WCN), and in particular, the role of important cities in a national Neal, 2010Neal, , 2012Van Nuffel et al, 2010) and international context Smith and Timberlake, 2001;Taylor et al, 2009). Rimmer (1998) examines the elite 'top 25' cities from 1984 to 1992 and finds that the network of airports have changed from a bifurcated system -one in the transatlantic, the other in the transpacific -to a single interconnected system where a 'Main Street' links together Europe, North America, and Asia, and other parts of the world are connected as if they were separate 'cul-de-sacs' within this system.…”