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.
Everybody still thrashing this poor topic around is a ... I better not.
DC's more important than LA in a long shot. If some of you have forgotten, Lindsay Lohan lives in LA. Or Santa Monica or some sh*t like that. Yet, Barack Obama, the president of the United States lives in DC.
Yes, sadly, terrorists are gonna attack the most important city of a country. If a terrorist attacked Muscogee Oklahoma, I'd think they were mentle. That's why they didn't attack LA. We can live without it. If DC goes down, nope. We lose everything, & that's what the terrorist focuses on.
Not better, more important. That was the topic. In fact, D.C. is probably the most important city in the world. The White House, Congress, Supreme Court, the Pentgon & all the foreign embassies are here. I'd really like to hear someone lay out the case for L.A. being more important.
Everybody still thrashing this poor topic around is a ... I better not.
DC's more important than LA in a long shot. If some of you have forgotten, Lindsay Lohan lives in LA. Or Santa Monica or some sh*t like that. Yet, Barack Obama, the president of the United States lives in DC.
Yes, sadly, terrorists are gonna attack the most important city of a country. If a terrorist attacked Muscogee Oklahoma, I'd think they were mentle. That's why they didn't attack LA. We can live without it. If DC goes down, nope. We lose everything, & that's what the terrorist focuses on.
I win!
Jessie
I shouldn't have mentioned the attacks - bad choice of an example that is still too touchy to many and I understand why. I Apologize if I offended.
The Los Angeles Area is home to 18 Million people and LA is not in any other city's shadow out west.
LA is the center of gravity for 1,000 miles in every direction. No ifs, ands or buts about it.
DC is like a moon that cirlces Jupiter AKA New York.
Awesome analogy. What part of this are people not understanding. Americas super city's come first.. than comes the DCs the san fransicos,the bostons of it all
I'm somewhat of the mindset that parrots what some others have said: you can't really compare DC to any other U.S. city because of the unique space it occupies in this country. You can throw around population, economic statistics, alpha world city rankings and so forth, but those criteria only tell part of the story of DC's importance to this country.
There isn't a single facet of life throughout the country that isn't impacted by the decisions that spring forth from DC--there's no other city that can make such a claim. And those decisions are significantly impacted by the countless think-tanks, NGOs, non-prodits and other associations that are headquartered here.
Playing the "if the city disappeared tomorrow" game, the sudden disappearance of the DC region would have a nearly incomprehensible impact on this country. Big government vs. small government arguments notwithstanding, there is a whole lot in this country that is affected by Washington, and it's nearly impossible to state what the impact tot he nation would be if it were to suddenly disappear.
That said, there are unquestionably other U.S. cities whose impact on domestic and global affairs--culturally, economically, financially, etc.--exceeds that of DC. LA, for instance, is a city that exceeds DC in a number of areas. Do those criteria offset the fact that the federal government is headquartered in DC? That's a really difficult question to answer, and one that really can't be answered by charts, graphs and statistics. Hence my position here--there's not really an apt comparison to be made between DC and any other U.S. city. And that includes LA.
That said, there are unquestionably other U.S. cities whose impact on domestic and global affairs--culturally, economically, financially, etc.--exceeds that of DC. LA, for instance, is a city that exceeds DC in a number of areas. Do those criteria offset the fact that the federal government is headquartered in DC? That's a really difficult question to answer, and one that really can't be answered by charts, graphs and statistics. Hence my position here--there's not really an apt comparison to be made between DC and any other U.S. city. And that includes LA.
Well, that's why I like GAWCs 2004 ranking.
It relegates Political clout to its rightful place, as a category by itself.
Quote:
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
^ 2004 was awhile ago. L.A. is in serious decline from what I've read recently. Job losses, outward migratation of the middle class, severe budget problems, low student achievement in the schools. Then of course you have the smog, traffic congestion (which is very bad in DC as well), high taxes and all of that. It is a behemouth in size which accounts for its economic clout on that survey, but I note that it didn't come out tops in any category, unlike D.C. which was tops in political/social.
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.
