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It seems Chicago and Los Angeles are just going along these days while San Francisco and Houston keep rising to new heights. Will these two cities eventually become the second and third cities in prestige, as well as culturally and economically?
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Los Angeles is too strong, imo. Hollywood will always have more cache than either energy or tech, even if superceded in pure dollar terms. Plus, its population is massive and still growing. Houston would only be able to challenge in at least 50 years.
Maybe if we keep on with the current trajectory, but it'd still be a while. The odd thing is the omission of the DC-Baltimore CSA which is actually larger than both the Bay Area and Houston, will likely pass the Chicago CSA by the next census, and since the last census is estimated to be growing at a faster clip than the Bay Area by both percentage and absolute numbers and growing at about the same clip as the Houston CSA by absolute numbers.
I think really what you get is NYC and then a much larger number of cities in the tier below that.
Economy isn't everything or else cities like Rome, Venice, Madrid wouldn't have prestige and iconism.. Houston completely lacks in terms of cultural legacy compared to the historic giants like NYC, Sf, Chicago, LA, and Boston which is why it will be hard for the upcoming city to simply topple over these cities. Maybe Chicago because it's not THAT well known around the world, but certainly not NYC, SF, and LA.
Maybe if we keep on with the current trajectory, but it'd still be a while. The odd thing is the omission of the DC-Baltimore CSA which is actually larger than both the Bay Area and Houston, will likely pass the Chicago CSA by the next census, and since the last census is estimated to be growing at a faster clip than the Bay Area by both percentage and absolute numbers and growing at about the same clip as the Houston CSA by absolute numbers.
I think really what you get is NYC and then a much larger number of cities in the tier below that.
I wanted to include DC, but their economy has slowed with the cuts from the government, while SF and Houston are red hot.
The LA CSA has the largest numeric population growth in the U.S., year after year, for basically the past 50 years.
So no city in the U.S. has a chance in hell of catching up to LA. It will remain a solid #2, twice the size of any other U.S. metro (excepting NYC, of course), probably for all of our lifetimes.
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