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

[uptown_urbanist]

Originally Posted by dementor

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

I was joking.

[cdw1084]

LA has to be the second most important because of the population. It's the second largest city in the country and second largest metro area.

If we're going off politics, then DC would be the #1 city, if we're going off anything else, it has to be LA followed by Chicago.

[tmac9wr]

Originally Posted by Scott Summers

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

I agree with DC being #2....but how in god's name can you put Los Angeles behind Chicago, Boston, SF, and Houston? Hell I'm a Boston guy, and I have no shame in admitting we're not as important as LA, and I don't think any of those other cities will claim they're more important they're either.

I feel the only city that could claim the #2 spot instead of LA would be DC just because of the obvious political influence.

Would you care to explain your reasoning?

Mine would go:
DC > LA > Chicago/San Fran > Boston > Houston.

[grapico]

LA is 2nd no question in my mind... 3rd is where the toss up lies...
forget about population numbers or skyscrapers for a second...
and think to yourself, most people just aren't that influential
what city has the most "movers and shakers" the most "brain power" etc.

then it becomes a toss up between DC, Boston, SF, and Chicago for 3rd IMO. I am talking across the board contributions in every area... not just #1 in one thing.

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by 18Montclair

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

Sadly, the same institute takes LA and SF off the Alpha list entirely while putting Chicago as number two in the US.

[dementor]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

Sadly, the same institute takes LA and SF off the Alpha list entirely while putting Chicago as number two in the US.

It would be sad if it was true...

[theSUBlime]

LA
Chicago

(could be different order depending on how you're looking at it after this)
SF
DC
Boston
Houston

The "second tier" has a lot of cities (some which are missing from this list), and IMO I consider LA and Chicago the basis for the "first tier."

[prelude91]

Somebody please explain to me how DC is not the 2nd most important city in the US.

[TheWereRabbit]

LA or DC (cuz...ya know)

I voted for Boston though (cuz...ya know)

[blkgiraffe]

Why are people putting Houston last? Houston is easily more important than Boston.