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Good to know. I certainly think it's far from perfect, but it's only source I general hear of that talks about that sort of thing. Out of curiosity, what metrics does it measure?
If I recall, it counts firms in accounting, advertising...forgetting the last one or two. Even in those industries, it only counts offices of certain global firms, not local firms, in-house professionals, etc.
So people respond to GAWC posts with litanies of what's important about their cities, and they're right, but none of that is relevant to GAWC.
This topic is catnip for CD etc., but there's not much utility to it. The result is not much info other than some narrow and/or half-assed studies, and of course the occasional click-bait.
Agreed. If the compassion is Greater Cleveland vs Greater St. Louis as the OP describes, Greater Cleveland carries more weight both in population and GDP.
As much as I love my hometown I voted Cleveland. Last time I visited there it felt like much more of a diverse and international city than it feels here in StL. Maybe it's just the corner of the metro I live in but it feels so damn provincial here in the Lou. I never got that vibe in Cleveland.
It had 389,965 in the 2015 estimates, larger than most of the cities on the list. Again, we are not talking about metro as it said "city" in the question.
It's interesting how people keep picking the cities that rank near the bottom of international presence as those with the most. It just goes to show how horribly wrong perception can be.
I haven't been to Saint Louis recently, so I can't really comment on which one is more or less, but part of it is probably familiarity. Like, I think once you've been seeing the same thing a lot, you either have a tendency to see it with rose colored glasses, or, to be more favorably impressed by something different.
However, I'm glad you enjoyed your visit! The city really has made a lot of strides in the past 10 years, and even 5 years. 2019 should be an interesting point, and I'm curious to see how the city is perceived then, as at that point:
-The Cavs likely will have won at least one NBA title, which will enhance curiosity/possibility of outside development.
-The downtown population, with all new apartments being created, will have increased from where it's at currently (14,000), to approaching 25,000.
-Some of the major greenway projects and beautification efforts around UC will be complete, and residential population will be higher there also. The Cleveland Museum of Natural History renovation will be complete, and at that point in time, it will have roughly the same square footage of open exhibition space as that of the Field Museum in Chicago.
-The Towpath Trail will be complete, and there will be seamless trail connections to the riverfront and lakefront (including going 110 miles further south), plus, the Red Line Greenway, going from the west side, which will be similar to NYC's High Line Park, will be finished also.
-The Flats East Bank final phase will be close to finished if not already so, apartments will take the place of surface lots in the Warehouse District, and nuCLEus, a 650 foot skyscraper with retail, hotel, apartment and office space will be finished. Downtown will no longer have blank spaces, and will essentially be (I keep using this word) seamless. Plus, there'll be a Superman statue on the waterfront.
I can't think of anything else, but these developments alone will radically change Cleveland's appearance for the better, even though as it is it is pretty good.
I think at the end of the day, the quote that defines it is cities, being shaped for people instead of automobiles, and Cleveland's many initiatives, already now, but especially 3 years from now when complete, will look really impressive. My hope though is that The Flats is allowed to retain a somewhat industrial look, as having that type of place right next to a city is exceedingly rare, and valuable piece of history. Striking a good balance between industrial and manicured is crucial.
It had 389,965 in the 2015 estimates, larger than most of the cities on the list. Again, we are not talking about metro as it said "city" in the question.
Witchita is 160 sq mi with 390k people in it. Grand Rapids is 44sq mi with 195k people. If Grand Rapids were 160 sq mi it would have over 450k people in it. Same goes for all of the cities on that list if the were to reach that mass of land.
It's interesting how people keep picking the cities that rank near the bottom of international presence as those with the most. It just goes to show how horribly wrong perception can be.
I think it's because your thought of international is based strictly on foreign born population.
Not institutions like the Cavaliers, Cardinals, the Cleveland Orchestra, The Arch, etc. Which are obviously all well known, and more known than anything in Columbus besides maybe OSU. And most international people do not know it's in Columbus.
The CLEVELAND Cavaliers, the ST. LOUIS Cardinals, ETC.
This is definitely going to be either Cleveland, Pittsburgh, or St. Louis with an honorable mention to Milwaukee as the fourth-place runner-up. All three are nationally-important "legacy cities" that were habitually in the Top 10 for population for decades before faltering over the past several generations due to the dissolution of blue-collar manufacturing jobs, white flight/urban sprawl, a rise in crime (real or perceived), political corruption, failed mid-Century "urban renewal projects" that did more long-term harm than good, etc.
I'm not voting because I don't feel qualified to choose between the three. From an overall livability standpoint I prefer Pittsburgh due to the diverse terrain, historic architecture, unique culture, and greater percentage of the city proper being home to upper-middle-class families than the other two cities, but that's 100% subjective. Pittsburgh is also not a "Midwestern" city, though. It is the "Southwest of the Northeast", as I like to put it, and there's just as much of the BosWash Corridor's influence upon it in terms of transplant exchange, tourism, cultural identity exchange via sports fandoms, etc. as there is with the Great Lakes/Upper Midwest.
Here's my own SUBJECTIVE determinations, which are, of course, open to debate:
DIVERSITY:
Yes, this can be easily quantified by a U.S. Census Bureau search; however, I'm also going to go by more subjective metrics such as perceived integration based upon racial, cultural, and socioeconomic lines and the "visibility" of different races, cultures, and heritages to the naked eye.
1.) Cleveland: Whenever we visit Cleveland it's refreshing to see such a strong and proud black professional class, which is something Pittsburgh, my beloved hometown, sorely lacks. Finding a younger African-American man in a suit-and-tie in Downtown Pittsburgh on any given day is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, even though the city proper is ~26% black. Cleveland's eastern suburbs, especially Cleveland Heights, possess a very strong sense of harmonious racial integration unlike anything I've ever been able to find here in Metro Pittsburgh or in Greater St. Louis. While it's not overt racism alone that prevents minorities from upward socioeconomic mobility, I've found overt racism to be the LEAST prevalent in Greater Cleveland of the three.
2.) Pittsburgh: Metro Pittsburgh isn't very racially diverse at all, and the city proper is quite segregated along socioeconomic and often racial lines. The 15208 zip code, for example, spans the city's wealthiest (and nearly 100% white) neighborhood of Point Breeze as well as its poorest and most dangerous neighborhood, Homewood (nearly 100% black and literally "on the wrong side of the tracks"). There is a small strip of a neighborhood called "North Point Breeze" that is actually pretty well racially-integrated and has a nice mixture of both white and black families; however, it is a narrow strip of a few blocks in width by maybe a half-mile in length that just divides "poor blacks" to the north and "rich whites" to the south. There are literally a HANDFUL of other city proper neighborhoods that have achieved a great level of racial and socioeconomic integration; however, they comprise maybe 10%-15% of city neighborhoods overall. MOST of the metro area's Southeast Asian population resides in a very tight radius around the universities/hospitals in the Oakland, Shadyside, and Squirrel Hill neighborhoods. That is also one of the densest concentrations of South Asians in the metro area outside of a few suburban clusters in places like Scott Township and Franklin Park. There are some pockets of Bhutanese refugees. The Hispanic population locally is nearly non-existent and is concentrated in the Beechview and Brookline city neighborhoods.
3.) St. Louis: While more diverse than Pittsburgh I'd argue it's the least racially- and ethnically-harmonious of these three. Like Pittsburgh the city proper has a lot of segregation along racial and socioeconomic lines, but I feel it is more visibly pronounced in St. Louis's city proper than it is in Pittsburgh's city proper. While "diversity on paper" is one thing, how that diversity works out in real life when thrown into a snow globe and shaken is another thing entirely. St. Louis does have some greatly integrated suburbs, just like Cleveland, but whereas ~50% of Cleveland's suburbs seem to be well-integrated along racial lines that percentage seems to be much lower in Greater St. Louis.
GLOBAL/INTERNATIONAL:
I combined these two categories because international prestige and recognition in terms of economic power and cultural/institutional prowess often go hand-in-hand.
1.) Pittsburgh: This will UNDOUBTEDLY cause a lot of angst and debate, and I welcome that discussion. However, I feel like Pittsburgh being home to both Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the University of Pittsburgh (along with the critically-acclaimed related University of Pittsburgh Medical Center---UPMC) has given Pittsburgh the current edge in terms of international recognition, especially in Asia. CMU is just a step below Stanford or MIT, and it churns out such brilliant minds, ~50% of whom are derived from other nations, that UBER has selected Pittsburgh to develop its self-driving car technology. I've already seen the cars out and about in the Strip District, which is the neighborhood adjacent to my own, and not only do they have an office there, but they are expanding to a much larger facility in the Hazelwood neighborhood, nearer to Oakland/CMU/Pitt. Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Disney, and Intel also all have offices here of varying size and importance, based largely upon drawing from the talent pool churned out by CMU and Pitt. Pittsburgh's economy, while currently in stagnation, performed much better than most of the rest of the nation during the Great Recession and powered OUT of it more rapidly than the rest of the Rust Belt. While not as important as in the past in regards to Fortune 1000 companies it is still home to GNC, PNC, Mylan, PPG, U.S. Steel, ALCOA, Kennametal, Big Heart Pet Brands, Dick's Sporting Goods, American Eagle Outfitters, FedEx Ground, KraftHeinz, EDMC, and other larger companies. All of the "Big 4" accounting firms have large presences here. It is an economy that is now VERY resilient and should only continue to strengthen in the coming years.
2.) Cleveland: It is no slouch with Case Western Reserve University (CWR) and the Cleveland Clinic (CC); however, I feel like CMU/Pitt/UPMC > CWR/CC when it comes to international recognition. I love visiting the CWR campus, and it has a very cosmopolitan flair, but while it may be superior in the humanities it in no way can even come close to touching CMU's engineering/science programs. Cleveland has a superior arts museum, in my opinion, and the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame is, of course, internationally-renown. I'm not as familiar with its Fortune 1000 offerings off the top of my head. Sherwin-Williams? Key Bank? Jones Day? Quicken Loans (which I thought was based in Detroit but has the naming rights to the Cavaliers arena in Cleveland)? What else? I'm sure Cleveland boosters will be able to round out the rest.
3.) St. Louis: The fact that I'm struggling to name one Fortune 1000 company based in St. Louis besides Anheuser-Busch, as well as not being able to name one local cultural institution that would be internationally-recognized (other than the iconic Gateway Arch, of course) is worrisome. I know the Defense Finance & Accounting Service (DFAS) is there just because I was a former Federal employee in the DC Metro Area. Nobody else would know that domestically, let alone abroad. A quick Wikipedia search DOES turn up some companies I've heard of, including GrayBar, Monsanto, Wells Fargo (always thought that was HQ'd in Charlotte for some reason) and Express Scripts, along with a large Boeing facility, so while it may actually have a Fortune 1000 edge over Greater Cleveland, I think the lack of having a CMU/Pitt/UPMC or CWR/CC powerhouse "eds"/"meds" duo really hurts it internationally. Washington University just can't compare. Half the world's inhabitants live in Asia, and most of them are well-educated and seem to be more inclined to work in medicine, science, or education rather than finance, so I can't see as many international residents knowing about St. Louis as would know about Cleveland or Pittsburgh.
COSMOPOLITAN:
1.) Pittsburgh: Cleveland's boosters on here have a very unrealistic view of certain things about THEIR city relative to OTHER cities. One of those things would be skylines. Pittsburgh INARGUABLY has the most impressive skyline out of the three cities. St. Louis would be boring without the assistance of the Gateway Arch, and we struggled to find the "power" in Cleveland's skyline relative to the size of its metropolitan area, even when viewing it from the much-lauded perspectives of Lakewood's lakefront park or the roof of the President Garfield Tomb in Lake View Cemetery. Pittsburgh is just a city of 300,000 within a metropolitan area of less than 2.5 million, yet its skyline rivals a city/metropolitan area twice the size. The Key Tower is taller than the U.S. Steel Tower. Ok. Whoop-de-doo. After that being taken into consideration which city has the larger AND more diverse (in terms of height, architectural design, age, and character) skyline? Pittsburgh. PNC Park is often rated as one of the nation's best MLB parks due to its impressive skyline views. Pittsburgh's city proper knocks the wind out of the sails out of the city propers of either Cleveland OR St. Louis when it comes to cosmopolitan atmosphere outside of Downtown. Show me what part of the city proper of Cleveland or St. Louis could rival Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, the South Side, Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, the Strip District, the Mexican War Streets, Highland Park, Polish Hill, Friendship, or Mt. Washington. Ohio City? Nice? Sure. Small? You betcha! The West Side Market is impressive in Ohio City, but it's pretty much just taking Pittsburgh's entire Strip District marketplace scene on the weekends and shoving it under one (admittedly impressively historic) roof instead of scattering it about an uninterrupted stretch of numerous city blocks.
2.) Cleveland: The Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame? Awesome architectural design and truly incredible exhibits. I can't think of one individual museum in Pittsburgh that would have a broader international appeal unless you really wanted to see our Andy Warhol Museum. Downtown Cleveland's Euclid Avenue between Public Square and Playhouse Square features a lot of impressive architecture, interesting public spaces (including a massive chandelier suspended over the street), AND the most impressive urban grocery store I've ever visited, including NYC, Heinen's. Ohio City is cool, as I said, but the way the Cleveland boosters pump it up on here you'd think you were in Greenwich Village in NYC or at least Pittsburgh's South Side or Shadyside when it is VERY underwhelming compared to the "fluff" those on here infuse it with. It is home to the West Side Market and Great Lakes Brewing, along with a great coffeehouse, ice cream parlor, cool taqueria, and a few other businesses. It DOES seem like the epicenter of the new "hip" Cleveland scene, but it's so small relative to the sheer size of the city proper and entire metropolitan area that it doesn't impress me in the least. Tremont is another Cleveland neighborhood that its boosters boast about as being cosmopolitan, hip, trendy, amazing, etc., but I just don't see it. Same with Detroit-Shoreway. I don't see how any of those neighborhoods can be considered "better" than Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, or the South Side in Pittsburgh in terms of walkability, urbanity, etc. I love Cleveland overall, but some of the boosters on here really do a disservice when they inflate the reputations of totally unremarkable neighborhoods because there is arguably more vitality in many of its streetcar suburbs than in the city proper neighborhoods (outside Downtown) whereas Pittsburgh's vitality is mostly in its largely intact URBAN neighborhoods while Metro Pittsburgh's suburbs, save for Mt. Lebanon, largely suck due to poor long-range urban planning.
3.) Downtown St. Louis is cool and feels cosmopolitan, albeit with a somewhat underwhelming skyline considering it anchors a large metropolitan area (the edge city of Clayton with its own competing skyline can be blamed for this). Soulard is an awesome neighborhood with a great eponymous public market space. The Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis is GORGEOUS and is right up there with the Cathedral in St. Paul for being among one of my favorite religious institutional buildings in the U.S. The French-inspired architecture of Lafayette Square gives a very unique European flair to that part of the city. St. Louis gives Pittsburgh a run for its money in terms of architecture and built environment whereas Cleveland destroyed too much of its historic architecture over the years to really compare favorably with either city.
Witchita is 160 sq mi with 390k people in it. Grand Rapids is 44sq mi with 195k people. If Grand Rapids were 160 sq mi it would have over 450k people in it. Same goes for all of the cities on that list if the were to reach that mass of land.
And? Every city on the list is a different size. So are the metros. I see no reason to cherrypick.
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