Battle of "number two" US cities: LA, Chicago, SF, DC, Houston or Boston? (America, Atlanta)

[dementor]

Which is the second most important city in the US based on its cultural and economical contribution to the nation?
Please vote....

[californialove24]

Chicago and LA!

[krudmonk]

Chicago, because LA is 1B.

[25thHour]

Well technically Chicago is the "Second City"

[californialove24]

Chicago is the Second "American City",LA not technically "American",Anyways Chicago is a Well kept Secret!

[ogre]

I can see how L.A. and Chicago might seem like the obvious choices, especially if you're talking about being influential in a number of areas, but I'm inclined to go with Washington. In the one area where D.C. has an impact, it has a BIG impact.

The question could get tricky, though, if you moved out of the territory of looking only at present-day influence. If you consider impact over the entire course of American history, Boston moves up the list, and then I would also add Philly.

But, going with the present day, I'll say D.C.

[uptown_urbanist]

You forgot to put NYC on the list.

[dementor]

Originally Posted by uptown_urbanist

You forgot to put NYC on the list.

No. I was asking about the second most important city.

[David Alleyne]

Dementor, how do you feel about Chicago? Don't answer that here's my list:
*D.C.
*Chicago
*Boston
*San Fran
*Houston
*Los Angeles

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by dementor

Which is the second most important city in the US based on its cultural and economical contribution to the nation?
Please vote....

There actually was a ranking that specifically measured economic and cultural impact.

Here it is

THE WORLD'S MOST WELL ROUNDED CITIES by GaWC released in 2004

Quote:
Five levels of global city are identified. First, and clearly above all others, there are London and New York. All previous research has highlighted the dominance of these two cities in the world city hierarchy (Taylor 2004a) and they emerge here as the most important 'all-round' global contributors. They are followed by three cities that make smaller all-round contribution and with particular cultural strengths: Los Angeles, Paris and San Francisco. Finally, among 'all-rounders' there are seven incipient world cities identified in Table 11. In the second category of global niche cities, the three leading Pacific Asian cities are critical economic nodes in the world city network and there are also three critical nodes that are non-economic: Brussels, Geneva and Washington, DC. Thus a total of 18 cities are deemed to be global, actual or incipient.

The remaining world cities encompass articulator and niche cities. The former are focussed upon subnets and there are 13 distributed between the three non-economic spheres. Classic examples are Vienna at the centre of a UN agency subnet and Nairobi at the centre of a NGO subnet. There are 21niche world cities identified of which seven have important concentrations of economic activities and 14 concentrations of non-economic activities. Frankfurt is typical of the first group with its concentration of banks while Manila is typical of the second group with its concentration of NGOs.

These two sets of cities represent the upper echelons of the hierarchical tendencies in world city networks. To reiterate a point made in the introduction, they do not encompass all globalization processes, all cities as so involved, but they are the key locales that network formation agents are using in their everyday activities that are creating world city networks.
GLOBAL CITIES

Well rounded global
Very large contribution: London and New York Smaller contribution and with cultural bias: Los Angeles, Paris and San Francisco

ii Incipient global cities: Amsterdam, Boston, Chicago, Madrid, Milan, Moscow, Toronto

Global niche cities - specialised global contributions

i Economic: Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo

ii Political and social: Brussels, Geneva, and Washington

WORLD CITIES

Subnet articulator cities

i Cultural: Berlin, Copenhagen, Melbourne, Munich, Oslo, Rome, Stockholm Political: Bangkok, Beijing, Vienna

ii Social: Manila, Nairobi, Ottawa

Worldwide leading cities

i Primarily economic global contributions: Frankfurt, Miami, Munich, Osaka, Singapore, Sydney, Zurich

ii Primarily non-economic global contributions: Abidjan, Addis Ababa, Atlanta, Basle, Barcelona, Cairo, Denver, Harare, Lyon, Manila, Mexico City, Mumbai, New Delhi, Shanghai

GaWC Research Bulletin 146