Global Cities Within A Structure of Their Relations

Globalization I perceive as a social transition taking place in many locations at different speeds. This seems to call for reconsideration of the notion of global cities that in their rankings suggest that there are degrees of globality that different cities can possess or do. Rather I would attempt at approaching global cities in ontological terms that allow to determine whether a city is global or not but not to what extent. This, in other words, promises to bring more clarity to the question of strategies to project a global city image that art biennials seem to be a part of. As the number of art biennials grows to saturation, when every large city will have its own biennale, it will be more obvious that the challenge is less to become a global city than to reveal a structure of relations between global cities and to map a given city's place within it. Whether art biennials can help with this task? To the extent that I will be attempting to uncover structural underpinnings of their existence in each city the task appears to be doable since structural relations between global cities bel0ng to the same analytical level and language that art biennials can be analyzed in.