Revisiting gateway cities: connecting hubs in global networks to their hinterlands

ABSTRACT

Gateway cities have received much attention from urban geographers. In spite of outstanding contributions being made, we think that the concept needs to be revisited with regard to regional development implications. Bringing together research on global production networks (GPNs) and world cities, this article shows that gateway cities are critical for development in networks, generating impulses for peripheral locations by engaging them in processes of “strategic coupling.” Yet, gateway cities also concentrate segments of GPNs to the detriment of their hinterlands. We conceptualize gateway cities with the aid of five features: logistics and transport, industrial processing, corporate control, service provision and knowledge generation. Our concept allows for an understanding of cities in global and regional economic processes beyond corporate headquarters, corporate services and governance – that is, beyond the boundaries of existing research. It unsettles traditional understandings of strategic coupling and world cities, filling a lacuna on city–hinterland connections.

KEYWORDS:

• Gateway cities
• world cities
• global production networks
• Singapore
• oil and gas industry

Acknowledgments

We presented a preliminary version of this article at a workshop at the University of Campinas (Brazil) in February 2016. We would like to thank Paula Bastos, Mariane Françoso, Celio Hiratuka, Patrícia Mello and Maurício Serra for their comments. The workshop served as a kick-off for the project “Gateway Cities and their Hinterland,” financed by the German Research Foundation and the São Paulo Research Foundation. We are also grateful for the feedback received while discussing this project with James Sidaway, Godfrey Yeung, Aidan Wong and Karen Lai from the Politics, Economies and Space Research Group at the National University of Singapore in October 2016. We owe particular thanks to Richard Grant, who made essential suggestions on a draft of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Gateway cities are primarily a different analytical perspective than world cities (and world city-regions), not a different real world phenomenon. We would argue that every world city somehow serves as a gateway or, using a synonymous term, an intermediary. For some cases, the gateway role is of marginal relevance compared to global connectivity. For others, being a gateway is a critical feature, as we show in this article.

2. The oil and gas industry is usually divided into three sectors: down-, mid- and upstream. The upstream sector includes searching for oil and gas fields, drilling wells and operating these wells. The midstream sector involves transport, storage and wholesale marketing of crude or purified/refined products. The downstream sector comprises refining crude oil and purifying raw natural gas as well as the marketing and distribution of products derived from oil and gas.

3. The temporary installation of mobile platforms by spudcans creates footprints on the seabed. A subsequent installation of another platform into these footprints can cause damage. The project aims to reduce this risk by exploring the effectiveness of various mitigation measures.

4. This is exemplified by the second edition of the book World City Network: A Global Urban Analysis and Grant’s (2017) review thereof.