Exploring external urban relational processes: inter-city financial flows complementing global city-regions

External urban relations are commonly described as one of two types: hierarchical local hinterlands (central place theory) and networked non-local hinterworlds (central flow theory), referred to as town-ness and city-ness, respectively. This paper builds on and develops these generic concepts to make them specifically relevant to today’s corporate globalization. The central place process is represented by multi-nodal global city-regions, and the central flow process is represented by inter-city capital investment flows. We find that capital flows in global cities increase flows to proximate smaller cities within their regions. This empirical link between city-ness and town-ness has theoretical and policy implications.