A survey of the main headquarters locations of the 1,000 largest landmarks in the world in 1993 shows Tokyo as the leading world city, followed by New York and London.
Because of the growing global importance of financial, informational, and other services, I include in this study the largest 500 industrial and 500 service-oriented corporations. Services include 100 commercial banks, 100 diversified companies, 50 savings institutions, 50 diversified financial companies, 50 retailers, 50 insurance companies, 50 transportation companies, and 50 utilities. Although the United States retained a narrow overall lead with 290 of the 1,000 corporations, these recent data reflect the rising economic power of Japan and the new preeminence of Tokyo as a global command center (Fortune 1993; Hoover's handbook 1993). As urban prospects increasingly depend on participation in the changing international economy, cities that are unable to adapt their global roles are especially hard hit. Urban centers created around industries of previous eras often face stiff international competition and changing conditions of production. Examples include numerous large, medium-sized, and small urban centers in the United States. Many cities have sought to adjust to postindustrial trends by concentrating on corporate and financial management, computing and data processing, and other key services. Not coincidentally, the cities most affected by inner-city revitalization, gentrification, and displacement are regional or national headquarters cities with strong downtown office sectors, such as Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Washington.Contemporary changes in the historic American core region illustrate
the problems facing restructured cities. Called megalopolis, the 600-mile-long urban corridor between Boston and Washington, D.C., once enjoyed an unrivaled concentration of people and services in the prosperous postwar American economy. In 1960, with only 2 percent of the land surface of the conterminous United States, megalopolis accounted for 37 million residents, or 20 percent of the total American population. A new scale and complexity marked spatial organization as urban, suburban, and rural areas became intricately interwoven in a suprametropolitan system.