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According to Short and Kim (1999) there are three types of globalisation; economic, cultural and political. In terms of economic globalisation, the transnational operations of multinational firms have given rise to a new international division of labour, shifting manufacturing sectors from developed to developing economies.

Producer services (including, financial, legal, consultancy, accountant and advertising firms) have experienced huge growth, especially global capital flows aided by deregulation and liberalisation.

Culturally, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find purely territorialized cultural forms. One may argue that globalisation has created the reorganisation of different cultures in different forms in different places, which is an important factor to consider in spatial plan-making. As Short and Kim (1999) explained; in terms of political globalisation, multiple market-driven players are now competing with national governments over the rules and practices of international trade, exchange and negotiation. Therefore, in summary, globalisation is the interaction and integration of worldwide countries, which can be magnified with improvements in infrastructure, communication and transportation (Newman and Thornley, 1996).

However, some argue that globalisation has negative effects, such as removing talent pools from countries in need, creating global financial crises (as we are seeing in the current recession), creating income disparity and causing environmental degradation (Scholarpedia, 2010). Some groups (e.g. classical economists), in favour of globalisation, believe that market forces will stabilise all of these negative effects and that in the long-run the world will benefit (Sloman, 2000). However, as Keynes explained; - “in the long run we are all dead” (Sloman, 2000), which emphasises the importance of the here and now. Blowers and Evans (1997) argued that under Thatcherism, in the 1980s, the belief that physical planning should be part of wider economic and social planning was abandoned.

More recently, the Geneva Report (2008) explained that globalisation may contribute to increasing internationalisation of metropolitan regions in terms of capital and labour, changes in the distribution of responsibilities between the public and the private sector, developing stronger roles for major cities within a country (which will be examined later), and the polarisation of social and economic standards within cities.

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