Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I wouldn't argue that they aren't important, but I'd say it's more fitting the argument for Houston, Dallas and Atlanta should be filling the #6, #7, #8, and #9 slot for most important in the country, not #5.
I think Bay area is pretty much a lock at #5, with Boston and Houston battling for #6. I obviously give the edge to Boston, but there's definitely a solid argument for Houston too.
Location: The Greatest city on Earth: City of Atlanta Proper
8,486 posts, read 14,999,411 times
Reputation: 7333
The GaWC had it right when it placed Atlanta as the 5th most important American city. The city is the economic, transportation, manufactuering and cultural hub of 1/5 of the United States. No city within 600 miles even comes close to it's level. This is what sets it apart from other cities that people on CD consider to be "above it". It is also irrelevant what your view might be of the South.
Don't get me wrong, Philly and Boston are great towns, but New York City is the unquestioned lead city of the Northeast. Houston and Dallas are economic powerhouses, but Chicago rules the central United States. The same goes for Seattle and San Francisco, but no one should ever think to put them above Los Angeles. D.C. is our capitol so it's location is not important as it's influence goes far beyond our borders.
So breaking it down by region:
Northeast: NYC
Midwest: Chicago
West: Los Angeles
South: Atlanta
Secondly, Atlanta may have less Fortune 500 companies than say Houston, but what counts is what they do for the domestic and international economy:
Delta Airlines - The largest commercial airline on planet Earth. Period. It's the only U.S. based carrier to have flights to every continent, minus Antarctica...but we're working on that
CNN - I don't have to go into much detail for you get how influential CNN is on opinion not just in America but the world over.
Coca-Cola - Yes, it's just sugar water, but sugar water that happens to be consumed by every nation on the planet. They also employ millions world wide with it's packaging and distribution network.
UPS - The world really does run on UPS. It's the largest package and freight shipping company in the world and the only game in town in most places. If UPS were to stop operations tomorrow, world business would literally stop dead in it's tracks.
The Southern Company aka The company that runs the electricity in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi
Those are just the largest companies.
In addition, Atlanta is home to the headquarters to the CDC which sets policy and conducts research on disease prevention and control. One of the 7 Federal Reserve Branches is located here. Atlanta is also home to more Federal employees than any other city outside of D.C.
Transportation wise, Atlanta is the hub for the entire Southern United States.
3 major highways (85,75,20) run directly through the center of the city. While millions of people use this as a means of transportation each day, it is also a major artery for land based freight shipments.
It is the largest rail hub in the south as well, connecting all major freight lines in this section of the country along with serving as a distribution hub.
And the then there is the Airport. Hartsfield-Jackson is by far the busiest Air transportation facility on the planet. Hundreds of thousands of people pass through it every single day. In 2011, the new international terminal will open. It will have 70 gates and serve to bring an untold amount of money and people to the region.
Let there be no doubt the level at which Atlanta stands in the country. Comments about its density, sprawl, or the percentage of foreign born residents have about zero relevance on how important Atlanta is nationally or globally.
The GaWC had it right when it placed Atlanta as the 5th most important American city. The city is the economic, transportation, manufactuering and cultural hub of 1/5 of the United States. No city within 600 miles even comes close to it's level. This is what sets it apart from other cities that people on CD consider to be "above it". It is also irrelevant what your view might be of the South.
Don't get me wrong, Philly and Boston are great towns, but New York City is the unquestioned lead city of the Northeast. Houston and Dallas are economic powerhouses, but Chicago rules the central United States. The same goes for Seattle and San Francisco, but no one should ever think to put them above Los Angeles. D.C. is our capitol so it's location is not important as it's influence goes far beyond our borders.
So breaking it down by region:
Northeast: NYC
Midwest: Chicago
West: Los Angeles
South: Atlanta
Secondly, Atlanta may have less Fortune 500 companies than say Houston, but what counts is what they do for the domestic and international economy:
Delta Airlines - The largest commercial airline on planet Earth. Period. It's the only U.S. based carrier to have flights to every continent, minus Antarctica...but we're working on that
CNN - I don't have to go into much detail for you get how influential CNN is on opinion not just in America but the world over.
Coca-Cola - Yes, it's just sugar water, but sugar water that happens to be consumed by every nation on the planet. They also employ millions world wide with it's packaging and distribution network.
UPS - The world really does run on UPS. It's the largest package and freight shipping company in the world and the only game in town in most places. If UPS were to stop operations tomorrow, world business would literally stop dead in it's tracks.
The Southern Company aka The company that runs the electricity in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi
Those are just the largest companies.
In addition, Atlanta is home to the headquarters to the CDC which sets policy and conducts research on disease prevention and control. One of the 7 Federal Reserve Branches is located here. Atlanta is also home to more Federal employees than any other city outside of D.C.
Transportation wise, Atlanta is the hub for the entire Southern United States.
3 major highways (85,75,20) run directly through the center of the city. While millions of people use this as a means of transportation each day, it is also a major artery for land based freight shipments.
It is the largest rail hub in the south as well, connecting all major freight lines in this section of the country along with serving as a distribution hub.
And the then there is the Airport. Hartsfield-Jackson is by far the busiest Air transportation facility on the planet. Hundreds of thousands of people pass through it every single day. In 2011, the new international terminal will open. It will have 70 gates and serve to bring an untold amount of money and people to the region.
Let there be no doubt the level at which Atlanta stands in the country. Comments about its density, sprawl, or the percentage of foreign born residents have about zero relevance on how important Atlanta is nationally or globally.
Coke is NOT important. Why do you keep using soda to prove importance for a city??? None of the things you mentioned really are truly as important as OIL. Your making an argument but how does those rank up to being the King of Oil???
The Coca-Cola company is a very large company and owns assets around the world. Moreover, it also serves as a symbol of America and Western commercialism (as silly as as that is). Its symbolic value can be considered fairly great. Which is to say that Coke shouldn't be immediately discounted and to say that Atlanta offers nothing compared to what Houston offers is silly, especially given that both metros are of comparable size but Atlanta has few cities of comparable size to compete with in its region.
The GaWC had it right when it placed Atlanta as the 5th most important American city. The city is the economic, transportation, manufactuering and cultural hub of 1/5 of the United States. No city within 600 miles even comes close to it's level. This is what sets it apart from other cities that people on CD consider to be "above it". It is also irrelevant what your view might be of the South.
Don't get me wrong, Philly and Boston are great towns, but New York City is the unquestioned lead city of the Northeast. Houston and Dallas are economic powerhouses, but Chicago rules the central United States. The same goes for Seattle and San Francisco, but no one should ever think to put them above Los Angeles. D.C. is our capitol so it's location is not important as it's influence goes far beyond our borders.
So breaking it down by region:
Northeast: NYC
Midwest: Chicago
West: Los Angeles
South: Atlanta
Secondly, Atlanta may have less Fortune 500 companies than say Houston, but what counts is what they do for the domestic and international economy:
Delta Airlines - The largest commercial airline on planet Earth. Period. It's the only U.S. based carrier to have flights to every continent, minus Antarctica...but we're working on that
CNN - I don't have to go into much detail for you get how influential CNN is on opinion not just in America but the world over.
Coca-Cola - Yes, it's just sugar water, but sugar water that happens to be consumed by every nation on the planet. They also employ millions world wide with it's packaging and distribution network.
UPS - The world really does run on UPS. It's the largest package and freight shipping company in the world and the only game in town in most places. If UPS were to stop operations tomorrow, world business would literally stop dead in it's tracks.
The Southern Company aka The company that runs the electricity in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi
Those are just the largest companies.
In addition, Atlanta is home to the headquarters to the CDC which sets policy and conducts research on disease prevention and control. One of the 7 Federal Reserve Branches is located here. Atlanta is also home to more Federal employees than any other city outside of D.C.
Transportation wise, Atlanta is the hub for the entire Southern United States.
3 major highways (85,75,20) run directly through the center of the city. While millions of people use this as a means of transportation each day, it is also a major artery for land based freight shipments.
It is the largest rail hub in the south as well, connecting all major freight lines in this section of the country along with serving as a distribution hub.
And the then there is the Airport. Hartsfield-Jackson is by far the busiest Air transportation facility on the planet. Hundreds of thousands of people pass through it every single day. In 2011, the new international terminal will open. It will have 70 gates and serve to bring an untold amount of money and people to the region.
Let there be no doubt the level at which Atlanta stands in the country. Comments about its density, sprawl, or the percentage of foreign born residents have about zero relevance on how important Atlanta is nationally or globally.
Here's a list that Montclair has posted previously on this site, so credit goes to him for it:
THE WORLD'S MOST WELL ROUNDED CITIES by GaWC released in 2004
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
GLOBAL 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. 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
And here's Foreign Policy's 2008 Global City Index:
The rankings are based on the evaluation of 24 metrics in five areas: business activity, human capital, information exchange, cultural experience, and political engagement. The top thirty of the 60 cities ranked were:
RankCityBest category (position in that category)
1. New York City
2. London
3. Paris
4. Tokyo
5. Hong Kong 6. Los Angeles
7. Singapore 8. Chicago
9. Seoul
10. Toronto 11. Washington DC
12. Beijing
13. Brussels
14. Madrid 15. San Francisco
16. Sydney
17. Berlin
18. Vienna
19. Moscow
20. Shanghai
21. Frankfurt
22. Bangkok
23. Amsterdam
24. Stockholm
25. Mexico City
26. Zurich
27. Dubai
28. Istanbul 29. Boston
30. Rome
I think you could easily make a case that oil, energy, medical research, biotechnology, high tech, elite educational systems, and financial services prominence easily outweigh UPS, Coke, and CNN...not to mention San Francisco, Boston and Houston all have considerably larger economic power than Atlanta.
You mentioned that Atlanta has a Fed Bank? So does Boston and San Francisco. The CDC? Sounds pretty cool but I'm sure it's nothing compared to Longwood or Texas Medical Center. Plus Boston just completed one of the only labs in the country dedicated to researching defenses against biological warfare.
I don't deny that Atlanta isn't the capital of the South, but when you're surrounded by states like South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and North Carolina (all of which are fine in their own right) which don't have any major cities, it's easy to make the claim of "we're most important!!". The fact that cities like Boston and Philadelphia happen to be in arguably the most powerful corridor on the planet shouldn't take away from how important they are. Just like the fact that Chicago dominates the center of the country shouldn't take away from Houston's importance.
P.S. I'm absolutely puzzled that you listed 3 major highways passing through Atlanta as a reason for it being a transportation hub, and therefore increasing its importance. Hartsfield does increase Atlanta's importance...but highways definitely do not.
The Coca-Cola company is a very large company and owns assets around the world. Moreover, it also serves as a symbol of America and Western commercialism (as silly as as that is). Its symbolic value can be considered fairly great. Which is to say that Coke shouldn't be immediately discounted and to say that Atlanta offers nothing compared to what Houston offers is silly, especially given that both metros are of comparable size but Atlanta has few cities of comparable size to compete with in its region.
Coke is a symbol; that's it. I could easily throw out the Astrodome being the first domed stadium in the world and being nicknamed "the 8th wonder of the world". You don't put up a soda against things like oil, education, energy, ports, technology,etc.
If the argument was international reputation than sure ,but were speaking about importance.
Here's a list that Montclair has posted previously on this site, so credit goes to him for it:
THE WORLD'S MOST WELL ROUNDED CITIES by GaWC released in 2004
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
GLOBAL 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. 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
And here's Foreign Policy's 2008 Global City Index:
The rankings are based on the evaluation of 24 metrics in five areas: business activity, human capital, information exchange, cultural experience, and political engagement. The top thirty of the 60 cities ranked were:
RankCityBest category (position in that category)
1. New York City
2. London
3. Paris
4. Tokyo
5. Hong Kong 6. Los Angeles
7. Singapore 8. Chicago
9. Seoul
10. Toronto 11. Washington DC
12. Beijing
13. Brussels
14. Madrid 15. San Francisco
16. Sydney
17. Berlin
18. Vienna
19. Moscow
20. Shanghai
21. Frankfurt
22. Bangkok
23. Amsterdam
24. Stockholm
25. Mexico City
26. Zurich
27. Dubai
28. Istanbul 29. Boston
30. Rome
I think you could easily make a case that oil, energy, medical research, biotechnology, high tech, elite educational systems, and financial services prominence easily outweigh UPS, Coke, and CNN...not to mention San Francisco, Boston and Houston all have considerably larger economic power than Atlanta.
You mentioned that Atlanta has a Fed Bank? So does Boston and San Francisco. The CDC? Sounds pretty cool but I'm sure it's nothing compared to Longwood or Texas Medical Center. Plus Boston just completed one of the only labs in the country dedicated to researching defenses against biological warfare.
I don't deny that Atlanta isn't the capital of the South, but when you're surrounded by states like South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and North Carolina (all of which are fine in their own right) which don't have any major cities, it's easy to make the claim of "we're most important!!". The fact that cities like Boston and Philadelphia happen to be in arguably the most powerful corridor on the planet shouldn't take away from how important they are. Just like the fact that Chicago dominates the center of the country shouldn't take away from Houston's importance.
P.S. I'm absolutely puzzled that you listed 3 major highways passing through Atlanta as a reason for it being a transportation hub, and therefore increasing its importance. Hartsfield does increase Atlanta's importance...but highways definitely do not.
+1!
Couldn't of said it better. No one is downplaying the importance of Atlanta, but UPS, CNN, and Coke are more necessities or entertainment than actual needs. Atlanta's best thing to put up against these cities are CDC, Airport, and history.
Coke is a symbol; that's it. I could easily throw out the Astrodome being the first domed stadium in the world and being nicknamed "the 8th wonder of the world". You don't put up a soda against things like oil, education, energy, ports, technology,etc.
If the argument was international reputation than sure ,but were speaking about importance.
Symbols are more powerful than you give them credit for. LA and NYC derive a good deal of their power from their symbols. The US is both envied and hated because of its symbols.
Symbols are more powerful than you give them credit for. LA and NYC derive a good deal of their power from their symbols. The US is both envied and hated because of its symbols.
Once again, how does that benefit the rest of the world or the country??? Will I die if Coke stopped selling?? Will I never receive my package if UPS stop shipping?? Can I not fly outside of the US if Hartsfield closed down?? Seriously, we're talking about two different levels of importance.
Last edited by blkgiraffe; 10-08-2009 at 10:36 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
