San Francisco 2nd ONLY to New York in terms of influence (bigger, population)

[18Montclair]

Wrong again. Los Angeles is the financial center of the Western US.

List of cities by GDP - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1. New York, NY
2. Los Angeles, CA
3. Chicago, IL
4. Philadelphia, PA
5. Washington, DC
6. Boston, MA
7. Dallas, TX
8. San Francisco, CA
9. Atlanta, GA
10. Houston, TX

This is not a ranking of finance but a ranking of gross product. Two different things altogether.

San Francisco is indeed the largest financial center in the Western US as far as bank deposits, concentration of regional and national HQs for banks, finance and insurance companies and SF is the location of the Federal Reserve Bank for the entire West.

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by s63

More influence than San Francisco? Technically, yes.

Mexico City's GDP is $315 Billion according to that link, however, the SF Bay Area's GDP is closer to half a trillion dollars.

And as far as San Francisco's area of influence, Northern California has a GDP of $600-$700 Billion.

[18Montclair]

Furthermore, as far as influence on Culture & Economy on a worldwide scale, SF does quite well in this survey:

THE WORLD'S MOST WELL ROUNDED CITIES by GaWC released in 2004

Quote:
Five levels of global city are identified. First, and clearly above all others, there are London and New York. All previous research has highlighted the dominance of these two cities in the world city hierarchy (Taylor 2004a) and they emerge here as the most important 'all-round' global contributors. They are followed by three cities that make smaller all-round contribution and with particular cultural strengths: Los Angeles, Paris and San Francisco. Finally, among 'all-rounders' there are seven incipient world cities identified in Table 11. In the second category of global niche cities, the three leading Pacific Asian cities are critical economic nodes in the world city network and there are also three critical nodes that are non-economic: Brussels, Geneva and Washington, DC. Thus a total of 18 cities are deemed to be global, actual or incipient.

The remaining world cities encompass articulator and niche cities. The former are focussed upon subnets and there are 13 distributed between the three non-economic spheres. Classic examples are Vienna at the centre of a UN agency subnet and Nairobi at the centre of a NGO subnet. There are 21niche world cities identified of which seven have important concentrations of economic activities and 14 concentrations of non-economic activities. Frankfurt is typical of the first group with its concentration of banks while Manila is typical of the second group with its concentration of NGOs.

These two sets of cities represent the upper echelons of the hierarchical tendencies in world city networks. To reiterate a point made in the introduction, they do not encompass all globalization processes, all cities as so involved, but they are the key locales that network formation agents are using in their everyday activities that are creating world city networks.
GLOBAL CITIES

Well rounded global
Very large contribution: London and New York Smaller contribution and with cultural bias: Los Angeles, Paris and San Francisco

ii Incipient global cities: Amsterdam, Boston, Chicago, Madrid, Milan, Moscow, Toronto

Global niche cities - specialised global contributions

i Economic: Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo

ii Political and social: Brussels, Geneva, and Washington

WORLD CITIES

Subnet articulator cities

i Cultural: Berlin, Copenhagen, Melbourne, Munich, Oslo, Rome, Stockholm Political: Bangkok, Beijing, Vienna

ii Social: Manila, Nairobi, Ottawa

Worldwide leading cities

i Primarily economic global contributions: Frankfurt, Miami, Munich, Osaka, Singapore, Sydney, Zurich

ii Primarily non-economic global contributions: Abidjan, Addis Ababa, Atlanta, Basle, Barcelona, Cairo, Denver, Harare, Lyon, Manila, Mexico City, Mumbai, New Delhi, Shanghai

GaWC Research Bulletin 146

[EastSideMKE]

Originally Posted by johntremaine

How has Chicago been culturally influential in any way? Ever?

Chicagoland has produced several prominent political figures such as Donald Rumsfeld, John ********, Richard Daley, Betty Ford, Jesse Jackson, and Barack Obama that have been very influential.

Authors like Ernest Hemingway, Ray Bradbury, and Michael Chrichton are from Chicago.

Famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright lived in Chicago for much of his career.

Originally Posted by johntremaine

What kind of cultural movement, music scene, etc. has ever come out of Chicago?

I guess you've never heard of House Music before.

[roboto]

Wait, so the same people arguing 2pac IS from the bay are saying Barack is NOT from Chicago? Hahahaha, how does that make any sense at all?

One was born in NYC, moved around A LOT, went to highschool in Baltimore, started his rap career in Marin city when he moved there at 17 (but noone knew who the hell he was until he was 20 and rapping with digital underground), moved to Oakland a couple years later, went to jail for almost 2 years, got out and then moved to another city LA, actually blew up in that city, and repped it until he died at age 25, but is somehow still FROM the bay area? The other, grew up as a child in Hawaii and Indonesia, went to school as a teen in LA, then NYC, then moved to southside Chicago in the late 70's. Later went to grad school in Harvard (Boston area), but moved back shortly after that to southside chicago to work as a civil rights attorney, started his political career there 12 years later in the 90's representing a southside Chicago district in state government, marries his wife who is from Chicago in Chicago, has two kids there, becomes senator of Illinois an additional 12 years later(mind hes been in chicago already longer than Pac lived his entire life), becomes president but keeps his home in Kenwood, Chicago, but is somehow not a Chicagoan? AHahahahahahaha!!!

Anyways, its not debateable what is the 2nd most culturally influential city in America - its LA. Im not even a huge fan of LA, or American culture, but thats what it is.

Plus, House music was created in Chicago (and a new form of Blues), and thats all over the world especially europe. Detroit gave us all cars and the motown sound. New Orleans gave us modern Jazz. Hell, Philly gave us our constitution.

Tons of cities have their claim to fame. But the entertainment industry is HQ'd in LA, and the finance sector is HQ'd in NYC. And, wether you or I like it or not, these are the two most important aspects of culture in America - money and entertainment.

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by roboto

Wait, so the same people arguing 2pac IS from the bay are saying Barack is NOT from Chicago? Hahahaha, how does that make any sense at all?

One was born in NYC, moved around A LOT, lived in Baltimore, started his rap career in Marin city at 17, moved to Oakland a couple years later, went to jail for almost 2 years, got out and then moved to another city LA, actually blew up in that city, and repped it until he died at age 25, but is somehow still FROM the bay area? The other, grew up as a child in Hawaii and Indonesia, went to school as a teen in LA, then NYC, then moved to southside Chicago in the late 70's. Later went to grad school in Harvard (Boston area), but moved back shortly after that to southside chicago to work as a civil rights attorney, started his political career there 12 years later in the 90's representing a southside Chicago district in state government, marries his wife who is from Chicago in Chicago, has two kids there, becomes senator of Illinois an additional 12 years later(mind hes been in chicago already longer than Pac lived his entire life), becomes president but keeps his home in Kenwood, Chicago, but is somehow not a Chicagoan? AHahahahahahaha!!!

Anyways, its not debateable what is the 2nd most culturally influential city in America - its LA. Im not even a huge fan of LA, or American culture, but thats what it is.

Barack Obama did not attend school as a kid in LA. He graduated HS from Punahou, a prestigious prep school in Honolulu. My neice is currently attending there now and just gushes over their most famous alum. LOL

[EastSideMKE]

Originally Posted by AcroJimmy

That was listed among many other reasons: The 60's hippie movement (do you think there would have been a Woodstock without SF?) and Berkeley protest culture, the gay movement, the internet, etc. etc...

How was San Francisco responsible for a music festival that took place in New York State?

[tmac9wr]

^^ Because bruh! SF influences everything fo sheezy! Didn't you know that!? If it weren't for SF we wouldn't even have hella sweet computers and talk so awesome!

They've provided us with a band which did tons of acid man, and smoked tons of pot and sniffed kilos of cocaine! How isn't this influential on your life and American culture as a hole?!

They also claim a popular rapper who went to jail and bragged about killing, selling drugs and beating women was cool! Then he got gunned down on the streets of Las Vegas! AWESOME! We owe our entire existence to the Bay Area!


In all seriousness, this thread is ridiculous. San Francisco is an amazing city and the Bay Area is spectacular, but the "cultural importance" some of the forumers from SF have been boasting has been growing exponentially in the past week. This started in the Top 5 most important cities, where many people were saying SF would be the 5th most important...now it's jumped Washington DC, Chicago and Los Angeles...calm down fellas.

[roboto]

Originally Posted by 18Montclair

Barack Obama did not attend school as a kid in LA. He graduated HS from Punahou, a prestigious prep school in Honolulu. My neice is currently attending there now and just gushes over their most famous alum. LOL

"Following high school, he moved to Los Angeles to attend Occidental College.[23] ". He was still 18, thats a teenager, and yes, still a kid as you said. He did go to high school in Hawaii also, so they are not mutually exclusive.

[downtown1]

Can you provide us some data to back up your argument?

Originally Posted by jjacobeclark

Are you insane? You honestly think San Francisco is more influential than the 2nd largest city on Earth? Perhaps not in the US, but on a worldwide scale Mexico City is far more important than San Francisco.