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If NYC disappeared today, probably Los Angeles. It's our #2 city that would then become our #1 city.
If NYC never existed to begin with, probably Philadelphia. NYC became what it is due to its importance as a major east coast port and port of entry for 19th century immigrants, and transportation connections to the west. If there was no NYC, that stuff would have happened in another east coast city, probably Philadelphia.
This is basically the premise.
Not re-writing history and speculating on what would have developed and what wouldnt have.
Just take NYC out for a second and look at the US. What is the go to, premier city?
This is post #4 from the first page. I got the vibe that we are talking about NY disappearing today, not back in the 1700s.
I'm going with Philadelphia. I kind of did process of elimination on this one.
It all starts with history. One of the reasons that NYC is so great is that it's been around since America was founded, and has been absorbing every cultural thing about America since day one. LA, San Fran, Chicago, and D.C. are all eliminated because they lack this.
Now it's down to Philadelphia and Boston. At the end of the day I went with Philadelphia because I think it's more modern. Even though NYC has been around forever, it's one of the most modern cities in the world. Philly resembles this more than Boston, with it's modern, pop-culture feeling, whereas Boston still feels very old and historic with a lot of colonial culture.
In part New York grew so big because it became the primary destination for the flood of European immigrants from Ireland and Italy and Eastern Europeans (and many European Jews) in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. Lots of cities and parts of the US grew with this influx, but in part so many entered the US at Ellis Island and so many stayed right there in the Five Boroughs at that point...
So, yeah, with no New York existing, Philadelphia and to some extent Boston(and to a lesser extent Baltimore) would've ended up with more immigrants. Though Philadelphia is the centrally located harbor town that would've probably increased the most. Chicago got a lot of immigrants in this period as well, though it's hard to say that sans New York they would've attracted that much more immigrants than they already did. Part of New York's reason for growth was that it was the primary entry point for immigration at that point. If Philadelphia became that place, you could see a possible alternate history scenario where the Philadelphia suburbs and Delaware Valley got built up even more--and places were as dense as Brooklyn or Queens further out...
Los Angeles would probably be the same as it developed already even without New York, since so much of it's growth was in a separate period from the real boom years of New York. Whether or not Philadelphia would be larger than Los Angeles, who knows--but Los Angeles grew largely on the basis of first, Midwestern and Southern transplants and later the masses of Hispanic and Asian immigrants that came post-1965 immigration reform...
Orzo, your second post actually answered the question. I cannot speak for everyone but I think that those of us who voted for Philadelphia were thinking historically. If NYC did not exist, then the same things (or most of them anyway) that made NYC boom probably would have happened to Philadelphia. In fact its not even really guessing because Philadelphia would most likely have Wall Street as early as the 1700s Philadelphia showed signs of becoming a economic capital.
I think most people are thinking that Los Angeles and Chicago are already the next biggest cities so which one of them would replace New York? Both are good choices.
But a lot of posters are seeing the Philadelphia that IS today not the Philadelphia that MIGHT have been. Its hard to imagine Wall Street or the Broadway theater district in Philadelphia but it could have happened without New York.
That's the way I thought as well. I was thinking from the historical sense.
I'm really looking at it in the simplest terms possible - if NYC didn't exist, what's the next premier American city? IMO that's Chicago. I don't look at it as dispersing all of NYC's attributes, or historically what would it be, I just looked at it as "what's most similar and next best to NYC?" Whatever that is would be the new premier US city.
Why is New York so important? It’s not because it’s so large but because it’s the national center of finance, journalism, publishing, fashion, culture, etc. If New York disappeared where would the stock exchange be? Where would fashion week be held? What would replace the New York Times as the newspaper of record?
Why is New York so important? It’s not because it’s so large but because it’s the national center of finance, journalism, publishing, fashion, culture, etc. If New York disappeared where would the stock exchange be? Where would fashion week be held? What would replace the New York Times as the newspaper of record?
Fashion and culture would go to LA, finance would probably go to Chicago and SF, publishing/newspapers and to a lesser extent journalism are dying breeds.
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