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Before I get flak about DC being high crime too, let me add that DC just like LA changed a whole lot, while Baltimore like San Bernardino has murder spikes since 2016.... if we include the southeast DC area is like the small peice of south central LA where most murders happen more often.. PG county itself is like SB county (i.e high desert area) but PG county has much more wealth like Orange County or Riverside.. so its a blend of both while SB city is like Baltimore city.
1. New York
- Capital of the world
- U.S. Financial Capital
- Logistics
- Manufacturing
2. Washington
-U.S. Capital
3. Los Angeles
- Cultural Capital
- Logistics
4. San Francisco Bay Area
- Technology Capital
5. Chicago
- Commercial Hub of the U.S.
- Secondary Financial powerhouse
- Secondary Manufacturing Powerhouse
- Logistics(O'Hare airport #1 in value of goods among all ports )
6. Boston
- Biotechnology Capital
- Higher Education Powerhouse
7. Houston
- Energy Capital of the world
- #1 Manufacturing/ Industry (Industry Insider)
- Logistics (highest value of trade after NY, Chicago and LA, and ranked #2 overall after NY)
8. Philadelphia
- Pharma Powerhouse
- Biomedical Hub
9. Miami
- not sure what to put here. May be more important to Latin America (Banking and such)
10. Atlanta
- not sure. It's airport trade isn't as high as others
- Cultural Hub
11. Dallas - Fort Worth
- not sure, it's airport trade isn't as notable as others
- it's big
12. Seattle
-Secondary Tech Hub
- Logistics Hub
I think Seattle has a bigger claim to being in the top 10 than the 3 preceding it. I think they are just larger and I don't know if that alone makes them more important.
Also I never imagined that the value of Trade through O'Hare would exceed that of the port of Los Angeles.
Atlanta and DFW are regional big shots. Their central location makes them easily accessible to a large portion of the US. They are Secondary Logistics hubs in that they play a bigger role in distribution rather than actual trade such as that from O'Hare, Port of LA, Port of Houston or even the Port of Savanah. ATL and DFW airports each handled about 60B in goods last year ( less than airports in Cleveland and Anchorage).
I also ranked Houston ahead of Dallas and Atlanta because it is #1 in the US for industry. New York is a distant second and Chicago a more distant 3rd. It's a beast in terms of chemical manufacturing, fertilizers, machinery, fabricated metals, food. Houston makes a good case for being on an even tier with Boston in that Houston is the leader in Energy, Manufacturing and top tier for Trade and Logistics.
DFW is so hard to place. It's like grandma used to say, a Jack of all trades, but master of none. It's really difficult for me ranking DFW and Atlanta lower than Seattle because of the size difference but Seattle does well in a variety of Key Industries.
^^
Most pragmatic post in the entire thread.
I’m also surprised by the poll…results for Philadelphia vs. Boston make no sense.
A more likely scenario is that "people outside of the U.S." would not have heard of San Jose, and when they finally get around to Googling it, won't consider it to have anything to do with San Francisco.
Even though the OP specified "cities", this thread is very unsurprisingly a back and forth about large geographic regions and not cities.
Dusseldorf and Cologne are 25 miles apart. I don't see anyone claiming one has anything to do with the other with the same fervor of SF/SJ and DC/Baltimore boosters.
I voted for Houston, the obvious answer to the poll question.
Not quite sure I agree with this? I think someone outside the US that doesn’t know San Jose could/would associate it with San Francisco when looking at a map? I’ve been to Düsseldorf on an extended layover and explored a bit. I have no idea how connected they are with Cologne, but had I been there longer I would’ve checked it out. I 100% would buy anyone that said they’re the same metro. Maybe their boosters are similar to the DC/Baltimore ones?
I don’t know how Houston is the obvious answer? Just because it’s the 4th largest city proper in population? If we’re using city propers, then we immediately have to take Atlanta and Miami off the list, and put El Paso and Tucson ahead of them. Houston isn’t even the largest metro in Texas. It may have said “cities†in the title, but everyone considers the metro (maybe not the entire CSA) when judging a city except when it’s convenient not to.
I think a strong argument can be made for San Francisco, Miami, and D.C.. People are going to have their preference/bias no matter what, so it’s a winless argument. Atlanta and Houston are on the next tier.
A more likely scenario is that "people outside of the U.S." would not have heard of San Jose, and when they finally get around to Googling it, won't consider it to have anything to do with San Francisco.
Even though the OP specified "cities", this thread is very unsurprisingly a back and forth about large geographic regions and not cities.
Dusseldorf and Cologne are 25 miles apart. I don't see anyone claiming one has anything to do with the other with the same fervor of SF/SJ and DC/Baltimore boosters.
I voted for Houston, the obvious answer to the poll question.
The Rhine-Ruhr is considered the biggest metro in Germany by Germans. They certainly associate with each other. Even if they consider themselves a region rather than a city
That's what the urbanization ringing SF Bay looks like. It is obviously contiguous and in a way that DC and Baltimore are not. Talks about the population density of the respective MSAs makes little sense since so much of the counties aside from San Francisco County (coterminous with San Francisco city) are preserved natural areas where there is little to no development. It's nonsense to not see this as one metropolitan area, albeit oddly shaped given how it rings around the bay.
This urban development pattern and its history has also meant that the communities along it have a strong regional identity. Yes, there are subregions that are distinct from each other as sort of a local rivalry, but that happens elsewhere, too, without the arguments of whether they are all part of the same metropolitan area.
Does this mean that the Bay Area should automatically be slotted above DC? No, but it is reasonable to make the argument that the comparison when ranking them is one of the Washington metropolitan area versus the San Francisco Bay Area metropolitan area rather than the census-defined SF MSA.
I'd say DC and SF are roughly tied for this and that, at this point, they are basically in same tier (that 3/4/5) as Chicago is. Granted, that's contextual and describing the metropolitan region of course, if it were just city, existing in a vacuum, then it would be a totally different story, and I might actually be inclined to vote for Philadelphia, but I think it's kinda hard to do that.
That's what the urbanization ringing SF Bay looks like. It is obviously contiguous and in a way that DC and Baltimore are not. Talks about the population density of the respective MSAs makes little sense since so much of the counties aside from San Francisco County (coterminous with San Francisco city) are preserved natural areas where there is little to no development. It's nonsense to not see this as one metropolitan area, albeit oddly shaped given how it rings around the bay.
This urban development pattern and its history has also meant that the communities along it have a strong regional identity. Yes, there are subregions that are distinct from each other as sort of a local rivalry, but that happens elsewhere, too, without the arguments of whether they are all part of the same metropolitan area.
Does this mean that the Bay Area should automatically be slotted above DC? No, but it is reasonable to make the argument that the comparison when ranking them is one of the Washington metropolitan area versus the San Francisco Bay Area metropolitan area rather than the census-defined SF MSA.
Right--that's the border along the peninsula side and it's similarly contiguous on the eastern shore of the bay.
MSAs and CSAs work based on commuter share on the county level. However, counties can have massive variations in size and don't always hew that close to settlement patterns a century after the creation of those county lines and these county lines were set over a century and a half ago.
The Rhine-Ruhr is considered the biggest metro in Germany by Germans. They certainly associate with each other. Even if they consider themselves a region rather than a city
This fact is not in dispute.
Lots of big international news these days.
When was the last time you heard "Rhine-Ruhr" said on TV news in the context of discussing major world cities/spheres of influence?
Its a great example of how there are large urban agglomerations that maintain boundaries/separation elsewhere in the world, while at the same time a large part of this forum is posters frantically trying to justify the arrangement cities up to 70 miles apart from each other as one entity to claim primacy over a rival on the opposite coast.
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