However, Juan Pérez Ventura assumes that global cities play a crucial role in center and periphery locations. “In today’s world, globalization is actually not a global process. The world is becoming polarized, and this polarization, which has traditionally been referred to as the dynamics between the north and the south (with the north being the center as opposed to the underdeveloped countries in the southern periphery), has changed considerably over time. The countries of the former periphery have experienced a very rapid transformation since the 1990s, and these emerging economies cannot be considered peripheral anymore.” Building on Mackinder’s “empty zone,” he maps economic power centers of the northern, primarily Atlantic period, as well as the rapidly emerging economies and global centers of the new world order that can be found south of that band.