For urban policymaking, inequality in large U.S. metropolitan areas appears as a principal consequence of a trichotomy of motives over resources allocation, consisting of urban economic development, ecological sustainability and socioeconomic equity. In the case of global cities, a greater inequality appears to result, in part, from the propensity for urban economic-development motives to pursue and/or maintain worldwide centrality, connectivity and command over the dynamic forces of globalization. Such global-city development priorities are reflected in the endogenous urban content and institutional makeup distinguishing “global-city status,” a characterization attributable to only a handful of places in the U.S. As a cross-sectional comparison of 53 large metropolitan areas (MSA), this paper examines the hypothesis that MSAs having a higher index value for “global-city status” exhibit comparatively greater socioeconomic inequality than MSAs with a lower index value. It produces statistical evidence supporting this thesis, with wide-ranging implications for globalization’s imprint on metropolitan areas.