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It is worth pointing out that importance and urbanity are separate and relatively unrelated attributes.
Baltimore or Milwaukee are significantly more urban than Phoenix, Houston or Dallas on a street level but I don't think anyone would consider them more important.
In my eyes the most important U.S. CSA's, along with their primary powerhouse contributions, are:
1.) NYC (Finance)
2.) San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose (Tech)
3.) Washington, DC (Government)
4.) Los Angeles (Entertainment)
5.) Houston (Energy)
I mean this country has many other very important CSA's (Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle, Dallas/Fort Worth, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Phoenix, Denver, Charlotte, Atlanta, etc.), but I feel like the country would feel the most "wounded" in terms of ripple effects if one of those Top 5 was obliterated.
Government outranks entertainment?
Of those, film and television is pretty much the only industry in which people have to come here to participate in it. The others are pretty much generic activities that go on everywhere, even at a higher level than they do here.
Tech is a great example....sure people will relocate to the Bay Area for a salary, but as we see everyday, newer and more sophisticated tech can come from anywhere.
DC actually is more important than both Tbh. This as evidenced on a daily basis. The auto industry collapsed who bails them out? Wall Street fails, who provides the stimulus? Farmers in Iowa experiencing a drought or losing money due to a trade war, who provided them a stimulus? WTF can San Francisco do for farmers in Iowa?
EVERYTHING is run from DC and then radiates outward. NYC is it's own beast because the most important banks in the world are all there and money rules, so I give them the benefit of the doubt.
As stated above, what's done in the Bay when it's all said and done is superficial to our country's existence. We don't "need" tech. It provides us the opportunity to have "first world problems". DC and New York finance and manage the nation regardless of what industry or era that any of us will live through. This is because "Money" and "Power" are where success begins and ends. Tech is about as unique to the US as making cars, which aligns the area in importance with Detroit. Or one could say entertainment with LA, those are luxuries and not needed for our nation to survive.
If D.C. is important because of government (lol) well, then I guess Sacramento is the big dog in California-after all "everything is run from there and then radiates outward", or so I hear. I mean, its the capital of the biggest state!
What world city has even come close to rivaling Los Angeles in film/tv production in the last 110 years? There aren't any.
If there was a #2 for film, I would say its London. What else is London? A national capital! See you can be a capital and have something to talk about other than government (unlike D.C.).
If D.C. is such a world powerhouse city, they should be able to get known for something other than government bureaucracy, right? Oh you mean they haven't in over 100 years?
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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^^^ what the city is known for means zip. You and everyone commenting here should know that government isn’t the only thing in existence in the DC area. DC has tech, DC has life sciences, and media, but you all will never comment on that here. London is not the capital of the most powerful country on Earth, DC is. Washington DC is more powerful than London, because America is more powerful than the UK. This is not bragging about anything, it’s just reality. Is DC a better city than London? Of course not.
What in any of these cities compares to having:
DOD
DOJ
FDA
FCC
FBI
CIA
DEA
SEC
DOT
FAA
TSA
NSA
IMF
OIG
World Bank
Planned Parenthood
Human Rights Campaign
Fannie Mae
Freddie Mac
Pentagon
Supreme Court
US Senate and House of Representatives
Vice President
POTUS
If any of these go down, all of us are in big trouble! DC is pretty much the most important city in the World...(Bwahaha evil laugh)
Last edited by the resident09; 11-26-2019 at 04:26 PM..
If D.C. is important because of government (lol) well, then I guess Sacramento is the big dog in California-after all "everything is run from there and then radiates outward", or so I hear. I mean, its the capital of the biggest state!
What world city has even come close to rivaling Los Angeles in film/tv production in the last 110 years? There aren't any.
If there was a #2 for film, I would say its London. What else is London? A national capital! See you can be a capital and have something to talk about other than government (unlike D.C.).
If D.C. is such a world powerhouse city, they should be able to get known for something other than government bureaucracy, right? Oh you mean they haven't in over 100 years?
Ask a Latin American when their country elects a left of center government if DC is important.
^ I'm going to back 18Montclair up on this one. The Bay Area is the world's tech powerhouse. Nearly 8,000,000,000 live on Earth. Billions of them are middle-class or higher in developed nations. ALL of THOSE people are attuned to the tech output of the Bay Area.
I personally disagree with 18Montclair that the Bay Area (Tech) > NYC (Finance), but placing them competitively is something I do not have an issue with.
There is “only” ~3 billion internet users on the planet so the majority of the world is actually not attuned with The Bay... which in the grand scheme of things caters to a very specific type of tech.
There is a tech sector for almost every thing whether it be Medical, Automotive, Aeronautics, etc.. none of which are based in The Bay and are incredibly transient location wise.
They may have the same relative reach, but at their core provide very different services and fill veryyy different needs which whether people want to admit to it or not do have a hierarchy. Tech supplements the political, financial & resources markets which are the underlying foundation of how modern economies function. It will always be an axillary market that supports the formers.
[quote=18Montclair;56726654]The Bay Area has the 3rd largest economy but as far as relevance and importance, the Bay Area economy is probably 1st at this time, just look at market cap numbers from Wall Street as well as any ranking of global brands-The Bay Area dominates global consciousness and is the biggest driver of the global economy at this time(let's keep this 100).
This notion that anyone here sits around trying to downplay Chicago or anywhere else for that matter is laughable(nobody cares) as we outgrew Chicago a long time ago and our real competition isnt even in the US but rather foreign rivals like Beijing, Shenzhen and Bengaluru, cities at the forefront lf global tech innovation.
Instead people bend over backwards to downplay the Bay Area because they just refuse to acknowledge facts.[/QUOTE]
The Bay Area can sure count on you to make up for that, though, right?
If D.C. is such a world powerhouse city, they should be able to get known for something other than government bureaucracy, right? Oh you mean they haven't in over 100 years?
Ask any person from a country that has been tariffed or gone to war with the US about how "unimportant" DC is..
DC doesn't need to be an economic alpha city, when its sole existence is to facilitate and execute the smooth running of the largest economy on the planet.
What are you talking about? And what in that post is the opposite of fact? Arrogance describing how the nation functions? You seem to have a complex going on. Did I say I was more important than you?...Go find another thread if you're unhappy about the contents of this one.
I stand by my statement, and I will post wherever I please.
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