EVALUATION OF VIENNA’S WORLD ECONOMIC POSITION BASED ON GLOBAL AND WORLD CITY RANKINGS

Metropolitan areas play a dominant role in today’s economic, social and environmental processes; therefore the scientific interest has also increased related to the global and world cities. They can be considered as key players of the world economy and a very complex competition takes place among them, which crosses the national state borders. Every city tries to reach the most favorable position and this rivalry has helped the birth of several city rankings. This paper has two important aims. Firstly, it explains the term of the world and global city based on the international literature and it is also looking for the answer, whether the Austrian capital belongs to which category. Secondly, it examines the position of Vienna in the different world and global city rankings.


INTRODUCTION
The last few decades have seen the world becoming more urbanised (Giap-Thye-Aw, 2014).
In the year of 2014, 54 percent of the world's population lived in urban areas, which may increase to 66 per cent by 2050 according to the projection of United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The importance of national economies is (relatively) decreasing and the economic role of regions and cities seems to grow (Lengyel, 2009). They are facing strong competition for investors, tourists, qualified labour or international events over the last decades (Begg, 1999) and many economic, global players need help to compare the cities from different point of view. So, the comparison of cities can support investors in their choice of location and it can be an important guide for the cities to judge their strengths and weaknesses, moreover to define their goals and strategies for future development and better positioning in the urban system (Giffinger-Haindl, 2009). Therefore, hundreds of city indexes and rankings proclaim which cities are the most global, with the most powerful economies, have the greatest universities, the richest cultures. Some of them are comprehensive, trying to rate cities as a whole; others specialize, focusing on a city's global financial position, its real estate values or the quality of life (Leff-Petersen, 2015).
The main objective of this paper is to collect the most common global and world city rankings and examine, where the Austrian capital is positioned yearly in them and answer the following question: can we consider Vienna as a real world or global city, and if so, what kind of economic, social, environmental or other factors are able to strengthen its position at global scale? Based on this investigation, the global position of Vienna can be described. The performance of the city in several rankings will present, which factors make strong Vienna in the global space and which are the most critical from the point of view of its competiveness.
We are going to see those elements which should be strengthened in order to be more competitive among similar cities. The reviewed time horizon of several city rankings depends on the publicity and availability of data.

Conceptual framework
Large and significant cities have fascinated social scientists and this is indicated by the range of terms used to describe them: imperial cities, primate cities, great industrial cities, millionaire cities, world cities, global capitalist cities, international financial centres, megacities and global cities are all well-known designations. This variety in terminology reflects both the diversity in the nature of cities and differences of approach to the study of cities. (Beaverstock-Smith-Taylor, 1999). The term "world city" was firstly introduced by the regional planner Patrick Geddes in his 1915 book "Cities in Evolution, but his comments on world cities were mostly forgotten, however, in part because Geddes became so famous for his work on regional planning (Pearce-Wyly, 2006). Half a century later, Peter Hall (1966) defined world cities as follows: "They are centres of political power, both national and international, and of the organizations related to government; centres of national and international trade and all kinds of economic activity, acting as entrepots for their countries and sometimes for neighbouring countries also" (Hall 1966). Hall's book titled "The World Cities" analysed the attributes (politics, trade, communication facilities, finance, culture, technology, and higher education) of cities at the top of the world urban hierarchy (London, Paris, Randstad-Holland, Rhine-Ruhr, Moscow, New York, and Tokyo) (Pearce-Wyly, 2006). Manuel Castells (1989) described a new urban phenomenon: the informational city.
The key issues within his definition are the new communication technologies and infrastructure, including information technology, telecommunications, air transportation, and the accordingly necessitated infrastructure. Furthermore, he takes financial and economic performance into consideration. The informational city is to be seen as embedded in a global system of networked information flows. Within those networks, the cities are forming a hierarchy, representing nodes and hubs according to their capacities for information exchange and their interactive and innovative performance (Castells, 1989). This approach was taken up by John Friedmann in his essay "The World City Hypothesis" (Pearce-Wyly, 2006).
According to Friedman and Wolff, world cities are characterized by the "predominance of financial and service sectors in the economy". They are "closely interconnected with each other through communications and finance and these regions constitute a worldwide system of control over market expansion" (Friedmann-Wolff 1982). The World Bank has classified world cities and identified two main categories: core countries and semi-peripheral countries.
Both of them contain primary and secondary cities (Friedmann, 1986). The examined capital in this paper, Vienna is defined as a secondary city in a core country (Tab. 1).  Friedmann (1986) The sociologist, Saskia Sassen coined the other relevant term, the "global city." The global network of cities, she argued, is less about competition than a division of functions; some cities are hubs for finance, others for manufacturing, and so on, but all are important (Leff-Petersen 2015). Sassen defined global cities as, "cities that are strategic sites in the global economy because of their concentration of command functions and high-level producer service firms oriented to world markets; more generally cities with high levels of internationalisation in their economy and in their broader social structure." (Sassen 1994:154) Sassen Sassen's work (1991) titled "The Global City New York, London, Tokyo" analysed, among other factors in these cities in terms of the growth of the high-paying professional jobs and low-paying lower-order clerical work, as well as the growth in part-time and temporary employment (Pearce-Wyly, 2006). But, Vienna was not mentioned among Sassen's global cities. The Austrian capital in wider context can be considered a centre of a cross-border urban region called "Centrope", which involve four countries (Hardi, 2010). In recent years, many case studies have dealt with the questions of "global city" status of individual cities or city systems and have helped to bring light to the debate of global city research. In particular, studies concerning the role of service sectors (Bourdeau-Lepage 2007), local firm networks (Rossi et al. 2007) or the role of cities as gateways (Grosfoguel 1995, Parnreiter 2002) have led to a deeper understanding of the global city network and its global-local tensions. The expansion of a world city database and a great number of case studies based on alternative data sources helped to bridge the gap between the global city theory and empirical research (Musil, 2009). The current paper tries to contribute the defining of Vienna's world economic position based on global/world city rankings.

Figure 1 A.T. Kearney's Global Cities Index (GCI) (2008-2014) (Cities before Vienna)
Source: Edited by author based on A.T. Kearney, 2015 Next analysed city index is the "Innovation Cities Global Index", which is the world's leading classification and top ranking of cities potential as innovation economies. Established in 2007, with 22 cities released, which was expanded to 256 cities in 2009, and to 500 cities in 2015. All cities in the index are classified for global innovation based on their potential for innovation performance across 31 segments of their city economy. Every city is analysed with 162 city indicators according to 3 factors: cultural assets of a city from arts to sports industries (1); human infrastructure from mobility to start-ups, health, finance and more (2) and networked markets, the power of a city in a networked world (3)    Another approach of city comparisons is the "Smart City" rankings. The Smart City concept may be one of possible development paths of world or global cities, paying more attention on the sustainability of several infrastructure systems, environmental factors and so on. In the last two decades, the concept of "smart city" has become more and more popular in the scientific literature and international policies (Albino-Berardi-Dangelico 2015). Smart Cities have been characterised and defined by a number of factors including sustainability, economic development and a high quality of life. Enhancing these factors can be achieved through infrastructure (physical capital), human capital, social capital and/or ICT infrastructure (Foley, 2013). In the first international "Smart Cities" ranking, which was  What is more interesting: the ranks of Vienna in the several dimensions of the index. The Austrian capital achieved very good placings in the dimensions of "Mobility and Transportation" (2.); "Environment" (6.); "International Outreach" (8.) and "Urban Planning" (9.), but the city lags in the economic, technological and social factors, such as "Public Management" (27.); "Governance" (32.); "Economy" (39.); "Technology" (40.); "Social Cohesion" (55) and "Human Capital" (60). These ranks give a picture about strengths and weaknesses of Vienna in international city comparison (Fig. 3). York, Paris and Tokyo took the top four spots, in that order (Rubia, 2015). Vienna reached the 9 th rank, like in 2012 and 2014 (Fig 4).
In the economy category including gross domestic product, wage level, total employment, corporate tax rate and total market value of shares on stock exchanges, among others, Tokyo topped the list. In terms of research and development, New York is a clear powerhouse followed by Tokyo, London, Los Angeles and Paris. For liveability, Paris emerged as the winner, followed by Berlin, Vancouver, Vienna and Barcelona, while Geneva emerged as the winner in terms of environment, followed by Frankfurt, Stockholm, Zurich and Vienna. In terms of accessibility, Paris earned the highest score, followed by London, Amsterdam, Singapore and Hong Kong. For cultural interaction, cities like New York (ranked second), Paris (third), Singapore (fourth) and Tokyo (fifth) also earned higher scores compared to most global cities (Maceda, 2015).  Let's take a closer look at the several dimensions of the Global Power City Index in the case of Vienna. According to the actor-and function-specific ranks, Vienna's position is outstanding in the "Liveability" (4.); "Environment" (5.); and "Cultural interaction" (9.) functions. Regarding these factors, Vienna is a leading global city. Besides this, the most important target groups of the city are "Artist" (5.); "Residents" (7.); and "Visitor" (12.).
Both of rankings (actor-specific and function-specific) present excellently the strengths and weaknesses of the city in global competition (Fig. 5).  Vienna: actor-specific rank Vienna: function-specific rank "Liveability" is one key characteristic of cities that enable them to attract a disproportionate amount of the globally-mobile resources that are recognised to make positive contributions to economic growth, economic resilience, global political influence, world agenda-setting power, socio-cultural innovation, and international lifestyle impact (Giap-Thye-Aw, 2014). The concept of liveability is simple: it evaluates which locations provide the best or the worst living conditions. Assessing liveability has a broad range of uses. The Economist Intelligence Unit's liveability rating quantifies the challenges that might be   Global Sherpa, 2011;The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2012;Huffington Post, 2013;The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2014;economist.com, 2015 According to the other liveability research, the "Quality of Living Survey" released by global consultancy Mercer, Vienna is the most liveable city on the earth since 2009. Mercer performs this survey each year in 223 metropolises. Cities are evaluated across 39 metrics in 10 groups, including "political and social environment," "economic environment," "medical and health considerations," "schools and education," "consumer goods," and "housing" (Forbes, 2015) Overall, European cities dominate the top of the ranking along with major cities in Australia and New Zealand. Zurich, Auckland, and Munich are in second, third, and fourth place respectively. In fifth place, Vancouver is the highest-ranking city in North America and the region's only city in the top 10 (uk.mercer.com, 2015) (Tab. 4).  Frankfurt.de, 2008;Livemint.com, 2009;Malaysia-Finance Blogspot, 2010;Mercer, 2014;Huffington Post, 2014, Mercer 2015 Some of the world's most liveable cities provide publicly accessible green spaces 7 with physical amenities in the heart of their neighbourhoods. It should therefore come as no  factors are able to strengthen its position at global scale?) we can say, that the Austrian capital is a world city, because it is a member of the world city hierarchy (Friedmann, 1986), moreover, the city is included into the most world and global city rankings. In the case of Vienna, it can be clearly seen, that the main priorities of the city are related to the needs of local inhabitants and their liveable, sustainable environment. The culture and tourism also play a dominant role in its "Smart City" approach. Based on the results of global city rankings, the Austrian capital can be considered globally underperforming in dimensions of business and financial sector (compared to the liveability, environment and culture) therefore, its global position is much weaker in this point of view. So, the city may have two possibilities for the future: it follows the begun development path and pay more attention on the environment than on economic benefits, or the management of the city tries to strengthen