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This paper aims to study the internationalization path of emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) in their international expansion through the global cities (GCs) phenomenon.

The authors used a quantitative approach to identify the most used ownership and entry modes, the preferred economic sectors and the level of interconnectedness of GCs.

The manuscript identified the predominance of the tertiary sector in the selection of GCs as foreign direct investment destinations. Second, the acquisition is the preferred entry mode regardless of the connectivity of the GC and the country of origin of the EMNE. The third is the use of wholly-owned subsidiaries as the preferred ownership mode. Finally, market-seeking is the main driver for the internationalization of Latin American EMNE. Consequentially, some GCs-specific advantages remain untapped by Latin American EMNE.

This manuscript considered each investment into a global city as a single step, although some acquisitions occurred incrementally through several small investments.

The authors developed a road map for the internationalization of Latin American EMNEs through GCs, acquisitions and wholly-owned subsidiaries. Finally, service-oriented EMNEs, such as IT and financial services, target locations with high interconnectedness to maximize the benefits of GCs-specific advantages.

The authors pointed out that market-seeking, not resource-seeking or efficiency-seeking is the primary driver of the internationalization of EMNE into global cities.

This article examines the links between average city size, fiscal decentralisation, and national economic growth in 33 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

The data in this paper comprise an unbalanced panel dataset which contains economic growth indicators, average city size, fiscal decentralisation indicators and control variables in 33 OECD member countries from 1975 to 2015 in five-year intervals. Fixed-effects (FE) estimators are used for the analysis.

This research finds i) countries with larger weighted average city sizes have higher economic growth, ii) countries with greater fiscal decentralisation have higher economic growth, but iii) countries with larger weighted average city sizes with greater decentralisation have lower rates of economic growth.

The research highlights the importance of agglomerations and decentralised governance and management for economic growth. While the findings are consistent with previous evidence that larger city sizes and fiscal decentralisation are separately associated with higher rates of economic growth, the authors find countries which have larger cities and greater fiscal decentralisation experience lower rates of economic growth highlighting a need for caution on decentralisation agendas in such cases. The implications of this suggest policymakers should proceed with caution on decentralisation agendas in countries with large cities.

This research addresses the pressing need for comprehensive studies in the rapidly evolving field of city tourism. This study aims to understand the overall performance of the International Journal of Tourism Cities (IJTC), the structure of knowledge in city tourism research and the prevalent themes and trends arising from IJTC.

A bibliometric analysis was conducted to scrutinize the publication patterns in IJTC. This involved examining parameters such as the annual count of published articles, the keywords used in them and their respective authors.

The findings reveal that IJTC has a growing and diverse publication output, establishing itself as a reputable and influential publication within urban tourism research. The results reflect various aspects and themes in city tourism research.

The study has certain limitations. The data used for analysis was obtained exclusively from the Scopus database. The analysis was conducted using only one software package, Bibliometrix. Other software packages may offer different features for bibliometric analysis. The study relied exclusively on quantitative methods for data analysis. Qualitative methods could have provided more nuanced interpretations of the data.

Comparative analyses could be conducted between IJTC and other journals within urban tourism or related disciplines. Such research would yield valuable insights into the current state of the field and aid in identifying areas warranting further investigation.

The findings from this study can inform the decisions and actions of various stakeholders involved in urban tourism. Practitioners and policymakers can draw from this research to make informed decisions. Existing and emerging authors can identify relevant topics for their research. Readers can access pertinent information for their needs.

This study offers a unique contribution by thoroughly comprehending the performance of IJTC between 2015 and 2023. It progresses the existing body of knowledge on city tourism research by examining its current status and future trends.

Cities remain an understudied unit of analysis for understanding the motives of multinational enterprises’ (MNE) foreign direct investment (FDI), with subnational locations in International Business (IB) research to date predominantly captured via the phenomenon of agglomeration. As regional integration projects, such as the European Union and to a lesser degree NAFTA, increasingly reduce the importance of national institutional environments, this paper argues regional and subnational levels become more important for studying MNE location choice. This paper aims to evaluate the explanatory contribution of regional and subnational levels of analysis to understanding MNE location choice.

A qualitative deductive bottom-up multiple-case study research design is adopted to study the city location choices and FDI motives of six automotive and six commercial banking companies. These purposefully sampled manufacturing and service MNEs have different home countries and regional orientations. Data on their foreign investments across the extended Triad of Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific were collected for the time period of 2000–2021.

Findings suggest that different classes of city tend to attract specific types of FDI and that these patterns might vary across sectors and be influenced by the regional strategic orientations of MNEs. Industry-specific findings reveal the importance of related and support industries and partners in a city location for the automotive MNEs, while the commercial banks seek investment opportunities in cities that allow acquisition targets that have an attractive customer based and will improve their local market knowledge.

The findings provide evidence in support of MNEs in manufacturing and service industries perceiving the attractiveness of three city types in different ways across the Triad regions.

The research analyses the spatial-temporal behaviour of international visitors using mobile positioning data (MPD) in three second-tier cities in Hungary: Szeged, Debrecen and Pécs. The purpose of this study is to identify the origins of visitors, length of stay, seasonal concentrations and mobility between cities.

A large volume of data generated by foreign mobile phone users was processed and analysed for six consecutive months in 2018. The movements of around 3.5 million foreigners visiting Hungary were captured.

The data showed significant differences in tourist turnover, mobility patterns and flows indicating different levels of tourism activity and potential in the three cities. This included day trips, cross-border tourism, seasonal fluctuations and activity-driven demand (e.g. special events and cultural tourism).

MPD cannot fully explain or predict drivers of visitor behaviour, such as purpose of visit, the precise activities that they undertake there and the experiences that they gain. It can, however, provide information on spatial and temporal flows, patterns and concentrations of visitors.

The investigated cities should follow distinct tourism development policies to attract more tourists and strengthen the links with their neighbouring destinations at the same time as differentiating themselves through marketing as competitive alternative destinations.

Augmenting tourism has socio-economic implications for residents and communities. The development of cultural tourism and local event-based tourism must incorporate community needs.

The paper analyses the extent to which MPD can provide insights into visitors’ spatio-temporal mobility and flows in relatively under-visited second-tier cities and it highlights opportunities and gaps for big data research in an urban context.

Cities are host to many of the world’s knowledge intensive research and innovation clusters. As such, they are likely to be attractive locations for emerging market multinational enterprises (MNEs) seeking to engage in knowledge seeking “springboard” type firm-level catch-up strategies. The purpose of this study is to therefore explore whether city-based research-intensive clusters containing deep pools of location bounded (i.e. “sticky”) knowledge are a stronger driver for greenfield research and development (R&D)-related FDI projects for Chinese MNEs than they are for developed market MNEs.

The authors use logistic modelling on 97,163 worldwide greenfield FDI projects to explore the relative likelihoods of Chinese MNEs engaging in R&D-related greenfield (i.e. “strategic asset seeking”) FDI projects as well as how city type (global or research-intensive cluster city) moderates this relationship for Chinese MNEs.

The authors find that Chinese MNEs are more likely to engage in overseas R&D FDI projects (compared with other types of project) than DMNEs and that research-intensive city clusters hold a stronger attraction for Chinese MNEs than developed market MNEs.

The authors discuss how the research contributes to the debate on emerging market MNE catch-up theory, as well as that on sub-national city location choice, by highlighting the growing importance of sub-national geography to understanding strategic asset seeking related greenfield FDI.

Sub-national city location choice is an important driver of strategic asset seeking FDI for Chinese MNEs, one that both national and local city level policymakers should pay attention to.

Chinese FDI via aggressive mergers and acquisitions to acquire key technologies has been restricted in recent years. Policymakers must consider whether they may also wish to restrict Chinese greenfield FDI in R&D-related projects, which now exhibit a pronounced upward trend.

The authors highlight the growing importance of sub-national geography to understanding strategic asset seeking related greenfield FDI in Chinese MNEs (and how it plays, more generally, a central role in their strategies).

This paper aims to test three hypotheses in city growth literature documenting the poverty reduction observed in Brazil and exploring a rich spatial dataset for 5,564 Brazilian cities observed between 1991 and 2010. The large sample and the author's improved econometric methods allows one to better understand and measure how important income growth is for poverty reduction, the patterns of agglomeration and population growth in all Brazilian cities.

The author identifies literature gaps and use a sizeable spatial dataset for 5,564 Brazilian cities observed in 1991, 2000 and 2010 applying instrumental variables methods. The bias-corrected accelerated bootstrap percentile interval supports the author's point estimates.

This manuscript finds that Brazilian data for cities does not support Gibrat's law, raising the scope for urban planning and associated policies. Second, economic growth on a sustainable basis is still a vital source of poverty reduction (The author estimates the poverty elasticity at four percentage points). Lastly, agglomeration effects positively affect the city's productivity, while negative externalities underlie the city's development patterns.

Data for cities in Brazil possess unique characteristics such as spatial autocorrelation and endogeneity. Applying proper methods to find more reliable answers to the above three questions is a desirable procedure that must be encouraged. As the author points out in the manuscript, dealing with endogenous regressors in regional economics is still a developing matter that regional scientists could more generally apply to many regional issues.

Rapid urbanization and development of pilgrimage cities cause significant problems for the environment and society, leading to long-term challenges. Despite several discussions on city sustainability, the literature does not address some of the specific problems of pilgrimage cities. Hence, this study attempts at developing a method to examine the growth pattern and sustainability of pilgrimage cities in southern part of India.

The benchmarking method and the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability are considered to construct the Pilgrimage City Sustainability Index (PCSI). Appropriate variables and categories are identified through a literature review and expert opinion survey. The benchmark values of the variables are derived by contemplating the pilgrimage cities of Tamil Nadu, one of the states with the largest tourist arrivals in India. Subsequently, three prominent pilgrimage cities from Tamil Nadu were chosen for the case study and the method was tested.

The result reveals that the cities investigated are performing above average in the sustainability index, with slight variations in their dimension scores. While the category scores of cities assist in identifying macro-level issues, the variable scores provide an insight into micro-level issues. Furthermore, the gap analysis between the benchmark and the present value of each variable discloses the immediate area of attention in each city. Thus, the cities could set more specific targets, frame strategies and/or collaborate with matching cities to bridge these gaps.

This index assessment provides a comparison of the pros and cons of these pilgrimage cities and helps identify their demand and supply. Policymakers can find appropriate tools and approaches that aid in sustainable urban development and tourism management.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study in emphasizing the application of the benchmarking method to assess the sustainability of Indian pilgrimage sites. With appropriate modifications, this method can be used in varied contexts across the globe.

The “unplannable” is a welcomed exception to the formal order of urban planning. This opinion article explores some examples of informal urbanism and discusses its ambiguous relationship to public space and unplanned activities in the city. The informal sector offers important lessons about the adaptive use of space and its social role. The article examines the ways specific groups appropriate informal spaces and how this can add to a city’s entrepreneurship and success. The characteristics of informal, interstitial spaces within the contemporary city, and the numerous creative ways in which these temporarily used spaces are appropriated, challenge the prevalent critical discourse about our understanding of authorised public space, formal place-making and social order within the city in relation to these informal spaces.

The text discusses various cases from Chile, the US and China that illustrate the dilemma of the relationship between informality and public/private space today. One could say that informality is a deregulated self-help system that redefines relationships with the formal. Temporary or permanent spatial appropriation has behavioural, economic and cultural dimensions, and forms of the informalare not always immediately obvious: they are not mentioned in building codes and can often be subversive or unexpected, emerging in the grey area between legal and illegal activities.