During the 1980s it became clear that the restructuring of economic activity and its geographical contribution have been increasingly dominated by processes operating at the international level. The importance of services, specifically producer services, to the development of the global urban system, to the economic welfare of individual metropolitan areas, and to the transformation of the internal structure of cities is now widely recognized.

Services and Metropolitan Development is a timely attempt to reflect this new dimension in urban and economic studies. It incorporates an impressive array of international, multidisciplinary perspectives based on the results of recent and ongoing research by geographers, business management and public administration specialists, and economists. The impact of the internationalization of services is currently marked by a great deal of national and international conformity as well as some interesting differences between economies and within individual metropolitan areas. Multidisciplinary in nature and global in scope, this study will be of interest to students of regional and urban planning and business studies, as well as to policy makers.