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What do stats have to do with which city is most fascinating?
Of these three, I find Chicago to be the least fascinating because its awe-inspiring characteristics (large skyline, public transit) are all present in NYC to a greater extent. Los Angeles, OTOH, is very different from New York in both look and feel, so I could see the argument there since it's not a straight up comparison between skyline, transit, CBD activity and density (which it would lose). Los Angeles presents a different set of assets and strengths that could arguably make it more fascinating.
So Chicago is like New York when it comes to skyscrapers? Interesting. I thought Chicago invented the concept. Today there is an arms race when it comes to skylines and how tall they can grow. The battle frankly is largely an Asian thing. There is more than a decent chance that the "world's tallest building" title will never leave Asia.
Chances are good. Outside of Asia, I can think of only one city that might gain that title, but that would be highly unlikely. The city is New York. Unlike Asian cities, gaining a prominent profile was not the reason New York rose so high. The reason obviously is the cost of real estate, a preciously small quantity in Manhattan. New York can't Asian-through-the-Stratesphere. Nowhere in Manhattan could you find a space with a large enough base to accommodate a lobby with its elevator shafts.
Of all the cities famed for their skyline that will never have the world's tallest. Or come close...that would be Chicago. And that's where you got Chicago all wrong.
Chicago and skyline is a completely different animal than New York and skyline. Chicago's skyline is about architecture. Chicago's architecture is how and where buildings are physically placed. Chicago's skyline is about actually seeing the buildings that make it what it is. Sure, Chicago buildings look great from afar...but they are designed to be seen and enjoyed up close.
The number two tour in the whole world on attendance is our river architectural tour.
If you tried to put up a development as tightly packed as Hudson Yards, it would never happen. it would be voted down. Sure, we don't have the the expensive type of real estate that 57th St's billionaire row has, but even if we did, no one would ever allow you to build a pencil thin skyscraper rising high above the skyline. Try to put a super tall skyscraper along Michigan Avenue's street wall on Grant Park.
New York's skyline is nothing like ours. New York's skyline works well for New York. Here it would be a disaster. Our skyline depends on open space of the lakefront parks and the endless waters of the lake. Our skyline depends on a most livable density that surrounds it.
Is it worth a trip for anyone to visit the New York and Chicago skylines. Unquestionably. But in doing so, you are seeing two skylines that are vastly different from each other. New York has the skyline it wants. Chicago has the one it wants.
And jeez, man, it has been more my experience that outsiders see Chicago as some "miniature New York" while Chicagoans honestly believe we are nothing like New York. And have no desire to be.
They're like this on r/chicago too. For a while I thought Chicagoans just compared their city to New York a lot, which, although way out of touch, is somewhat understandable I suppose. But Chicagoans really more often just take the next step into oblivion and flat-out claim their city is better. Better than New York City! LMAO.
What does one random person's opinion on a forum have to do with this?
I can dig up all sorts of claims on any of the respective cities forums and post it here too.
I'm certain that there are black and hispanic people in Iowa and Wisconson, and I'm sure plenty of them move to Chicago, too. But what's the point? Since when do black people, many of whom come from families that have been Americans longer than white Chicagoans, make a city global? And Chicago's nearly monolithic Latino population--Mexican, specifically--is quite unlike the rich mix of Latino diversity found in Houston, Miami, and New York, where Dominicans and Cubans and Puerto Ricans and Mexicans ans Venezuelans and even Spanish all make up Latino populations. Instead or bolstering the claim that Chicago is a global city, that its foreign born population is overwhelmingly from one country (that borders the US) actually demonstrates the insularity and non-international characteristic of the city.
You excluded the other cultures of Chicago and made it out to be only Wisconsin and Iowa transplants.
Hmm... If you include the actual metro which is what normal humans do, then you will see that yeah. Chicago is pretty global and the diversity in Asian/European/Middle eastern etc does broaden up.
If this doesn't seem relevant to you in a discussion of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, I beg to differ. Those cities have an exceedingly important thing in common, maybe the most important thing: they're all American. We live in a bubble, an American bubble, between two exceedingly wide ponds. And not to see past our parochial borders is a danger any way you measure it.
A most American of discussions here, putting our three largest cities in a ring together to see who come out on top (spoiler alter: it will be New York).
While New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago vie for top honors, the very American boat they're all sitting in has sprung a leak. And it is sinking. America is not in the race for 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place globally. Ours is the race for the bottom.
And when you pair up the future fortunes of NY, LA, and Chi and pit them against other global cities, the trend of those three will be downward....by comparison.
As we battle it out for # 1 here, I'm left to wonder: in the battle of New York vs. all the other cities in the nation that by measurable metrics are lesser than it, who exactly gets the worse end of things: the other cities? Or New York? That New York exists in such a large and supposedly powerful nation that could only manage to come up with one truly global city....that certainly can't be a good thing for New York.
We seem to live in a time when there is no time. No past. No future. In the moment. If the US has "the world's greatest city" (and, yes, New York can be argued as such), how long has it had that status? Rome is known as the Eternal City. Does anyone say that about New York? If you flash back a mere 100 years ago, was anyone calling New York "the greatest city in the world" or the US "the greatest country"? Things are ephemeral; they do not last. When we came out of WWII in a shattered world, the US and NY were #1, Europe and East Asia were in tatters. Yet today, a nation we defeated, Germany, is by many seen as the leader of the free world or at least of western Europe. The US lost that distinction; we may have been trumped by a higher card.
Maybe I couldn't make a compelling argument here that the power structure of the world, the order in place since WWII, centered around the North Atlantic has changed. The Axis of the future and quite frankly it may be the present as well, is my far the world's most important piece of land, stretching across the Eurasian land mass from Japan to Britain, by far the longest group of latitudes anywhere on the planet. And these are the favored latitudes: those not too hot or not too cold.
The US is a product of Europe. It created us. And it made that North Atlantic association make so much sense: we were alike. We built on power on the labor and backs of others. The real source of our greatness was our ability to capture the greatest number of natural resources any civilization on earth ever gathered. And in the less than half of a millennium, we've managed to destroy those very resources that others had responsibly passed on from generation to generation.
Robert Reich, our former Secretary of Labor, is a brilliant man in my book. And a patriotic American who loves
I offer you here something in his own words that I could not do justice to:
a short (less than 4 minutes) easy to follow video on youtube, told clearly and simply in cartoon fashion that asks with good reason: Is American becoming a third world nation?
Most of you would say no. My sense is that many people around the world think we are. I find Reich brilliant. Many of you will not. He is definitely not on the "right" side of that Maginot Line that divides the US like a knife. But I will tell you this: he not only does not bash the left; he doesn't bash the right either. What he does attack is our owners and handlers. Spoiler alert: he does go after the power structure.
New York, Los Angeles and Chicago better all be in this together....or surely each will sink on its own.
I can't stop laughing my ass off at the assertion that Los Angeles isn't close to NY's level, while in the same response documenting that many American cities havent yet peaked. The hilarity...
LA for sure hasn't yet peaked and has gained ground as a global power in a way few cities here have ever done in such a short period. I don't think anybody will argue that Los Angeles is still behind New York, but the gap is without a doubt smaller in reality than CD Land would have one believe...
CD never fails to show its city inferiority complex, no more than when guys disparage LA. It's the #2 city here by a virtual consensus and people really don't like that LA has hopscotched all of the older and earlier developed cities in the nation to get there, some of which arguably have peaked....
Keep in mind that Los Angeles had only begun to think about building skyscrapers at the time it passed Chicago up, and Metro was not yet built.
I'm struggling to grasp what exactly is fascinating about NYC. It's a big city that....looks like the other ones.
It's funny to watch everyone trip over each other in their haste to proclaim NYC as the biggest and greatest of anything in these threads.
Ask anyone who just moved out of NYC what they miss about it....99% of the time the only answer you get is "pizza."
Fascinating.
By the 1910's, Los Angeles had a) completed a spectacular feat of civil engineering that brought water to an area that had been passed over for settlement for hundreds of years, b) consolidated the vast majority of the global film market and b) become a mecca for religious expression and practice.
Twenty years before that it had looked like a random cow town in Montana.
I'm from LA. I have been to NYC many many times, I have also been to Chicago a few times.
I would say NYC is by far the most fascinating city in the country. NYC itself is in a league of its own, NYC represents a way of life, NYC is a belief, a culture and a religion. I can’t say the same about LA and Chicago.
NYC is the only city in the country that can be compared with the likes of London, Tokyo, Paris globally. LA and Chicago are not quite at that level.
I would say in terms of global influence, NYC is clearly number 1 by a very very large margin, then followed by LA as the number 2 then SF Bay Area as number 3, Chicago is more like a number 4
I truly think people exaggerate the gap between the two. Clearly NYC is more influential globally, but LA holds it's own and I find it hard to believe that there are many who know about one and not the other. LA's brand is very iconic/global.
Last edited by Gfitz1010; 08-15-2019 at 07:26 PM..
This sounds harsh, but yes Chicago is probably the 5th or 6th most "global city" by most measures in the US. Still global however.
Ummm... NYC, has DC, Boston, and Philadelphia all within a 240 mile stretch. It's not on an island out there, plus the US is still much younger as a nation, many of our cities haven't peaked yet.
Very true Rust Belt Cities, NYC and maybe some Midwest cities are the only ones who peaked.
I honestly find LA the most fascinating. It's definitely the most unique of the three. Different weather, landsape, plants and vegetation, architecture, layout, growth and history. I even find its black history fascinating, most which I had no clue of until I moved here. What city has a mountain range slicing through the middle of the city? What city has several cities within its city limits? So many cool and unique things I love about this place.
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