Top 10 U.S. Cities (best city, real estate, universities)

[AK123]

Originally Posted by Lakewooder

Fort Worth is to Dallas as Galveston is to Houston.

Not really... Galveston is much smaller and dependant on tourism.

You'll see "Dallas-Fort Worth" or "DFW" all the time, but when do you see "Houston-Galveston"?

Anyway, what I think he was asking was for a list with just Dallas on it, not DFW like the above list has.

[AK123]

Originally Posted by Lakewooder

Dallas just passed up Houston in Fortune 500 companies.

No, Dallas + Fort Worth + numerous other suburb cities of Dallas passed up Houston (by itself) + the 1 company in The Woodlands by one.

There was a whole discussion on this a few days ago in the TX forum, guess you missed it...

Taking cities alone, Houston has twice as many Fortune 500 companies as Dallas, and second most after NYC.

From:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortu...00/2007/cities

Cities # of Fortune 500 headquarters.
New York 45
Houston 22
Atlanta 12
Chicago 11
Dallas 11

[friendnc]

Originally Posted by TheRealAngelion

Based on what? Number of jobs? Corporate headquarters?

Banking assets. It's the headquarters of Bank of America (the nation's largest bank and #9 on Fortune 500), Wachovia Corp. (nation's 5th largest bank and Fortune 500 #43, I think), and home to other smaller bank headquaters and regional offices. Also has a Fenderal Reserve Bank.

[TheRealAngelion]

Originally Posted by friendnc

Banking assets. It's the headquarters of Bank of America (the nation's largest bank and #9 on Fortune 500), Wachovia Corp. (nation's 5th largest bank and Fortune 500 #43, I think), and home to other smaller bank headquaters and regional offices. Also has a Fenderal Reserve Bank.

Are you referring to a specific list or ranking that you can produce? You said Charlotte was the second largest financial center in the U.S. after NYC. The assets of BofA and Wachovia and whatever smaller banks you are referring to does not constitute being the second largest financial center in the U.S. IMO.

[KerrTown]

Originally Posted by friendnc

Banking assets. It's the headquarters of Bank of America (the nation's largest bank and #9 on Fortune 500), Wachovia Corp. (nation's 5th largest bank and Fortune 500 #43, I think), and home to other smaller bank headquaters and regional offices. Also has a Fenderal Reserve Bank.

There is no Fed Reserve Bank in Charlotte; a branch maybe to do check processing and currency sorting. The closest ones are in Atlanta and Richmond, VA.

After NYC, Chicago is the second largest financial center, then Toronto.

[irwin]

Originally Posted by KerrTown

There is no Fed Reserve Bank in Charlotte; a branch maybe to do check processing and currency sorting. The closest ones are in Atlanta and Richmond, VA.

After NYC, Chicago is the second largest financial center, then Toronto.

Uhh...Chicago is a big place for derivatives and commodities trading, no doubt. But there are other cities in the county that are just as specialized. San Francisco is a huge center for the VC industry because of the history of high-tech innovation. Boston is the center of the country's managed funds industry. Charlotte, although lacking a Fed Bank, is home to two of the biggest commercial banks in the world. Atlanta is a huge center for mortgage lending. DC has the Fed and Fannie Mae.

[friendnc]

Originally Posted by TheRealAngelion

Are you referring to a specific list or ranking that you can produce? You said Charlotte was the second largest financial center in the U.S. after NYC. The assets of BofA and Wachovia and whatever smaller banks you are referring to does not constitute being the second largest financial center in the U.S. IMO.

Charlotte Federal Reserve Bank (it's a branch)
530 E. Trade St.
Charlotte, NC 28202

Charlotte 2nd largest banking center:

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_North_Carolina
http://www.charlottenorthcarolina.co.../cityinfo.html
www.charlottechamber.com/files/Factsheet_Financial.pdf (broken link)
www.post-gazette.com/pg/06178/701358-28.stm
(google "charlotte second 2nd largest banking center" for more references)

If you think I'm being missleading about the other information I mentioned as well, go to www.charlotte.com (Charlotte's local newpaper) and look at the Thursday 4/26/07 business section.

[TheRealAngelion]

Originally Posted by KerrTown

After NYC, Chicago is the second largest financial center, then Toronto.

This would have been my assumption as well, which seems to be supported by a recent survey and ranking of global financial centers. The top financial centers in North America include:
New York
Chicago
Toronto
San Francisco
Boston
Washington, DC
Montreal
Vancouver

The top 10 global financial centers worldwide include:
London
New York
Hong Kong
Singapore
Zurich
Frankfurt
Sydney
Chicago
Tokyo
Geneva

Here are links to the full report and rankings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Centre
http://www.zyen.com/Activities/On-li...rveys/GFCI.htm

[metroplex2003]

Well, DFW is considered by the US Govt.and Census bureau as one cultural entity. It's like Minneapolis St. Paul, or the Bay Area (San Francisco/Oakland), or Seattle/Tacoma. These are all considred metropolitan statistical areas. The reason we use these is that they oftentimes will be a more accurate reflection of the city than just using the city limits population numbers.

Example: Louisville, Kentucky is larger than Atlanta, but there is not a single soul that will call Louisville, Kentucky more of a major city than Atlanta, and to the lay American, most American's would say Atlanta is bigger than Louisville, Kentucky, though this is not the case. That's b/c our perception of "bigness" really does come from the MSA, than just the city limits city. Without its suburbs, Atlanta drops down to 483,000 people from 5.1 million. This is much smaller than several cities across the country. When companies choose to locate, they choose the region, not necessarily the principle city within the region unless it's economically just. Another example is St. Louis: proper drops to 330,000 + people from 2.7 million when including the suburbs.
What makes a region is the principle city plus the suburbs, not just one or the other.

Thus, given DFW's land mass 9400 sq miles, it's oftentimes cheaper to build in the suburbs than in the actual city. Studies have shown that low to mid rise corporate headquarters are much more efficient and cheaper to operate than super tall high rise buildings, which are much more per sq. foot, and thus increasing overhead tremendously. This is what has launched DFW to the 4th largest MSA in the country and Houston to what will be the 5th largest MSA in the country by the end of the decade.

Having said all that, if it werent for the principle city, then corporate hq may not relocate there. If DFW did not have the "D" or Dallas in it, they would not have the 24 FOrtune 500 companies that are in the DFW region today.
Same with St. Louis, take away the principle city, all of a sudden Mastercard has no reason to have a huge operation there.
So culturally the principle city is necessary, but you still need to consider the region as a whole. Before there were suburbs, families lived in the principle city, then migrated out to suburbs, but they are culturally tied to the principle city and will oftentimes say they're from that city...ie St. Louis, or Dallas, or Atlanta's 4.6 million that do not even live in Atlanta proper.

Thus, the reason why DFW is called "DFW" is for that reason, and yes you can skew the numbers down to 11 Fortune 500 located within the city limits, but the region as a whole is still a lot stronger than other MSA's. No one will argue that DFW from a corporate headquarter standpoint is much more inferior to a place like St. Louis. Or look at Chicago, if you are going to tell me that business wise, Chicago does not rank up with the other MSA's like NY or Houston just b/c their corporations decided to go into the suburbs would be unjust. Chicago area ranked number 1 last year for most number of corporate headquarter relocations, and Chicago does have several more area Fortune 500 companies. These companies are culturally tied to the principle city (ie Chicago) but chose for lower overhead costs in the suburbs.


At the end of the day, Houston and DFW are both great cities for business, they have a favorable business climate, low taxes, cheap cost of living, and plenty of recreational activities.

[mpope409]

Well yeah, but then you have the San Francisco who's metro is smaller than a lot of other cities, but it's the 4th most important city in America.

And in my opinion, you have the four largest cities which are larger than life phenomenal entities.