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I dont disagree with this statement but Boston and Philly are different story. Both should arguably be top 5 for the forseeable future.
That is a very arguable point if thats what you believe, but you can't justify it by looking to the past. Ignoring the pre-electricity era, I think Houston, Atlanta, and the other Johnny-come-latelys stack up very well against Philly and Boston.
It primarily is location. Located in the Southeast it almost single handily dominates the states of GA, NC, TN,SC, and AL as well as the northern portion of FL. That gives it, what I shall term, a regional influential population of ~22 million. This is an extreme estimate as I am roughly counting the population of areas where Atlanta's influence is significant.
Add to that the airport, which is the busiest in the world. The advantage of this is ease of international trade, key port for exportation, among other things. Having this airport is good for companies to travel around the US and the world. This makes setting up operations in ATL a strategic location.
Atlanta has quite a diverse economy from finance, to manufacturing, biotech, high tech, higher ed, and others. You have a Fed Reserve branch (as do most of the other cities on this thread), CDC, one of the credit agencies, and other federal agencies.
Atlanta doesn't dominate either of the cities in anything, but it does compete strongly in many levels, something not too many cities can say.
Well there is constant bickering on the site about whether or not we should compare CSAs or MSAs because the physical borders of the Northeast CSAs are usually about the same size as those in the Sunbelt...meanwhile the MSAs of Northeastern cities are often 1/2 the physical size of Sunbelt MSAs.
All in all, I personally prefer MSAs.
I prefer CSAs for arguments like these because I believe they give you the sphere of influuence a city has on its surroundings. For example, Charlotte MSA has a larger GDP than Cleveland. Would you conclude Charlotte is more economically powerful than Cleveland? Definitely not. When you look at CSA Cleveland comes out on top. And this is coming from a Charlotte booster.
In the same way I think in judging which city is more important, I think you're asking what city has the most influence over a general area? This influence includes higher ed, DMAs, trading areas, GDP, etc. Depending on how you measure this influence will determine your answer.
That's completely false, take a look outside the Northeast, while it is our most important, and arguably best region, your saying that the best portion of something should be used to represent the entire subject. Are you saying that the majority of the US is really urban, has a lot of history, is really liberal, etc? No, you can't take one part of something and represent it as the whole. If anything, the midwest is the most representative region of the US.
Yes, the Midwest is the most representative of the entire nation.And there's a little bit of all regions in the city of Chicago.
It primarily is location. Located in the Southeast it almost single handily dominates the states of GA, NC, TN,SC, and AL as well as the northern portion of FL. That gives it, what I shall term, a regional influential population of ~22 million. This is an extreme estimate as I am roughly counting the population of areas where Atlanta's influence is significant.
Add to that the airport, which is the busiest in the world. The advantage of this is ease of international trade, key port for exportation, among other things. Having this airport is good for companies to travel around the US and the world. This makes setting up operations in ATL a strategic location.
Atlanta has quite a diverse economy from finance, to manufacturing, biotech, high tech, higher ed, and others. You have a Fed Reserve branch (as do most of the other cities on this thread), CDC, one of the credit agencies, and other federal agencies.
Atlanta doesn't dominate either of the cities in anything, but it does compete strongly in many levels, something not too many cities can say.
On a regional basis, I'd say Atlanta dominates the Southeast.
On a regional basis, I'd say Atlanta dominates the Southeast.
This deifinitely goes without an argument. My argument is saying, given its domination of the Southeast it is a strong case for the #6 spot. The US is a country of regions. Since 1-5 clearly dominate the nation, spots 6-11 don't really dominate each other. Therefore, by default, you could argue Atlanta deserves the 6th spot because it influences a larger region than the others.
So far some homerism and something else, probably no clear cut out winner of this group. As some others have said great that we have so many great cities, and there are a at least a dozen more that are also great and unique in their own way, what a great diversity of cities we have in this great country...
So far some homerism and something else, probably no clear cut out winner of this group. As some others have said great that we have so many great cities, and there are a at least a dozen more that are also great and unique in their own way, what a great diversity of cities we have in this great country...
You need to give Phily a better argument for #6. So far your.colleagues have used history, urban area population, dt population, and DMA. While these are great, they're weak. But I know if there is a champion of Phily who could give it a great argument, it would be you.
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