Which are the real "world cities"?

Meh, there are several such ranking systems.
London-New York-Tokyo-Paris virtualy always come out on top, the only diffrence is how what comes after that work.
Urban geograpghy is cool, untill you have to actualy study it that is

Do you agree with the following GaWC Inventory of World Cities?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_City

GaWC Inventory of World Cities

An influential attempt to define and categorise world cities, was made by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group & Network (GaWC), based primarily at Loughborough University in England. The roster was outlined in the GaWC Research Bulletin 5 [1] and ranked cities based on their provision of "advanced producer services" such as accountancy, advertising, finance and law. The Inventory identifies three levels of world cities and several sub-ranks.

Note that this roster is weighted toward financial criteria and generally denotes cities in which there are offices of certain multinational companies providing financial and consulting services rather than other cultural, political and economic centres.

There is a schematic map of the GaWC cities at their website, [2].

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/citymap.html

Alpha world cities

• 12 points: London, New York City, Paris, Tokyo

• 10 points: Chicago, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan, Singapore

Beta world cities

• 9 points: San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, Zurich

• 8 points: Brussels, Madrid, Mexico City, Sao Paulo

• 7 points: Moscow, Seoul

Gamma world cities

• 6 points: Amsterdam, Boston, Caracas, Dallas, Dusseldorf, Geneva, Houston, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Osaka, Prague, Santiago, Taipei, Washington, DC

• 5 points: Bangkok, Beijing, Montreal, Rome, Stockholm, Warsaw

• 4 points: Atlanta, Barcelona, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Budapest, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Miami, Minneapolis, Munich, Shanghai

Evidence of world city formation

Strong evidence

• 3 points: Athens, Auckland, Dublin, Helsinki, Luxembourg, Lyon, Mumbai, New Delhi, Philadelphia, Rio de Janeiro, Tel Aviv, Vienna

Some evidence

• 2 points: Abu Dhabi, Almaty, Birmingham (UK), Bogota, Bratislava, Brisbane, Bucharest, Cairo, Cleveland, Cologne, Detroit, Dubai, Ho Chi Minh City, Kiev, Lima, Lisbon, Manchester, Montevideo, Oslo, Riyadh, Rotterdam, Seattle, Stuttgart, The Hague, Vancouver

Minimal evidence

• 1 point: Adelaide, Antwerp, Arhus, Baltimore, Bangalore, Bologna, Brasilia, Calgary, Cape Town, Colombo, Columbus, Dresden, Edinburgh, Genoa, Glasgow, Gothenburg, Guangzhou, Hanoi, Kansas City, Leeds, Lille, Marseille, Richmond, St. Petersburg, Tashkent, Tehran, Tijuana, Turin, Utrecht, Wellington

Table of the cities of the world

for selected criteria

Rank	Population of city (proper)	Population of metropolitan area	Percentage foreign born [3]	Cost of living [4]	Rail systems by annual passenger ridership	Airports by annual passenger traffic	Number of skyscrapers [5]	Number of billionaires [6]
1	Shanghai	Tokyo	Miami	Tokyo	Moscow	Atlanta	Hong Kong	London
2	Bombay	Mexico City	Toronto	Osaka	Tokyo	Chicago	New York City	New York City
3	Karachi	New York City	Los Angeles	London	Paris	London	Singapore	Moscow
4	Buenos Aires	Mumbai	Vancouver	Moscow	Mumbai	Tokyo	Sao Paulo	Geneva
5	Delhi	Sao Paulo	New York City	Seoul	Seoul	Los Angeles	Seoul	Los Angeles
6	Manila	Delhi	Singapore	Geneva	Mexico City	Dallas	Tokyo	Hong Kong
7	Moscow	Calcutta	Sydney	Zurich	New York City	Paris	Istanbul	San Francisco
8	Seoul	Buenos Aires	Abidjan	Copenhagen	Osaka	Frankfurt	Rio de Janeiro	Paris
9	Sao Paulo	Jakarta	London	Hong Kong	London	Amsterdam	Toronto	Tokyo
10	Istanbul	Shanghai	Paris	Oslo	Hong Kong	Las Vegas	Buenos Aires	----