Battle of "number two" US cities: LA, Chicago, SF, DC, Houston or Boston? (state, better)
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I see what you and 18montlcair are saying completely.
Sure DC is more important than Ottawa because the US is more globally important than Canada but that is reflected in other cities (i.e. NYC > Toronto).
I think 18Montclair's analogies were very sensible. (Melbourne > Canberra. Rio > Brasillia). Numerous "second cities" are leagues beyond their nations capitals in overall national importance. LA is one of them.
Yes, DC is magnitudes more important when compared to Ottawa...but NYC, LA and Chicago are magnitudes more important than DC when it comes to most things other than politics/government (obviously)...and a city is not made by the presence of politicians and government buildings alone. If DC as a city was on par with Chicago or LA AND it had all the government there, you can bet without a doubt it would be 2nd if not 1st most important city in the nation...but it's not. It's city proper and metro population is smaller than NYC, LA's or Chicago's, and is much closer in size to Boston and San Francisco's.
I understand his line of reasoning, but it's faulty when he's talking about an overall ranking of a city within a nation. Certainly there are other considerations aside from political power, and political power should not get special treatment (whether it be giving it MORE or LESS than its due). However, the amount of political power (and thus, overall power, importance, and influence) that DC has is not comparable to what Sacramento has.
Montclair has put up a strawman by misrepresenting DC's importance as the same as Sacramento's towards SF's--which I haven't said at any point, and irrelevant since we are talking about a city's importance to a country overall. And while a city (Tacoma, for instance) may be more heavily influenced (in whatever form the influence takes) by a larger city central to it (Seattle, in this example), it does not negate that the overall influence and importance of DC in the nation is greater.
DC's importance is weighted heavily towards its political power almost as much as NYC's is weighted heavily towards its financial services, Boston's towards higher education and biomedial sciences, Houston's towards the energy industry, etc. Political power is obviously a legitimate indicator of influence/importance when ranking cities, and DC's political power dwarfs that of Sacramento's. Thus, his throwing in Sacramento doesn't make for a very tight argument against DC's importance.
Ottawa was his example, and I addressed it in kind. And by the line of reasoning, where you insist on the importance of cities within the same country, then it's ridiculous for you to talk about Sacramento's influence which is fairly limited outside of a single state. DC's importance is evident for the entire country. Again, this is a huge difference in scale and scope, and if you are earnest about the importance of cities within a single country (the US), then it shouldn't be so hard for you to recognize that DC is on a separate tier from Sacramento, and you throwing in Sac-town is silly.
I'm gonna try and play peacemaker here. Of course Sac's political sphere of influence is infinitesimal in comparison to DC's. But that wasn't what 18Montclair was trying to look at. He could have just as easily used Albany vs. NYC. If this were the verbal section of an SAT test, a question easily could be posed asking, "DC is to the United States as Sacramento is to California." And the answer to that question would be "yes." It wasn't intended to equate CA to the US, but only as a tool to highlight a point.
The real point he was trying to make (as I've interpreted it) was that aside from the governmental factor that DC has, which of course is major, the city itself doesn't offer as much as LA or Chicago, or maybe some others. If the governmental factor is being focused on, then DC is #1 without question, even edging out NYC for no city is more important than our nation's capitol. But in a city-to-city comparison, this status should be more debatable, and this is why the Sac example was being used. Its CA's most important city in that its our capitol, but most would agree that LA is CA's most important single city. The same would apply here in regards to what DC means to the US, but most everyone would agree that NYC is our nations most important city overall. For me, the analogy works. Depending on how you want to look at it, DC either should be our #1 city, or it should fall somewhere below NYC, LA and Chicago.
I see what you and 18montlcair are saying completely.
Sure DC is more important than Ottawa because the US is more globally important than Canada but that is reflected in other cities (i.e. NYC > Toronto).
I think 18Montclair's analogies were very sensible. (Melbourne > Canberra. Rio > Brasillia). Numerous "second cities" are leagues beyond their nations capitals in overall national importance. LA is one of them.
That isn't the argument we're having--Montclair's just been throwing up tangents that aren't relevant to the discussion. If you read back, it was his comparison of DC to Sacramento that started this off. It's undeniable that the most important city does not have to be the capital--it's been repeated by both sides of the argument and is irrelevant since we're talking about how silly it is to equate Sacramento's influence on CA to DC's influence on the nation when talking about overall power and influence.
The difference between the two tiers of government is ridiculously large--we are talking about a team captain of a minor league player (Sacramento) being compared to a team captain of a major league player (DC, and where being team captain doesn't mean you're necessarily the best player) on the grounds of being a team captain, and then dismissing both they hold similar titles in different leagues when we're talking about who is the best player. It's unreasonable.
I'm gonna try and play peacemaker here. Of course Sac's political sphere of influence is infinitesimal in comparison to DC's. But that wasn't what 18Montclair was trying to look at. He could have just as easily used Albany vs. NYC. If this were the verbal section of an SAT test, a question easily could be posed asking, "DC is to the United States as Sacramento is to California." And the answer to that question would be "yes." It wasn't intended to equate CA to the US, but only as a tool to highlight a point.
The real point he was trying to make (as I've interpreted it) was that aside from the governmental factor that DC has, which of course is major, the city itself doesn't offer as much as LA or Chicago, or maybe some others. If the governmental factor is being focused on, then DC is #1 without question, even edging out NYC for no city is more important than our nation's capitol. But in a city-to-city comparison, this status should be more debatable, and this is why the Sac example was being used. Its CA's most important city in that its our capitol, but most would agree that LA is CA's most important single city. The same would apply here in regards to what DC means to the US, but most everyone would agree that NYC is our nations most important city overall. For me, the analogy works. Depending on how you want to look at it, DC either should be our #1 city, or it should fall somewhere below NYC, LA and Chicago.
Thanks for playing peacemaker. However, it's closer to Montclair making that analogy when the question is which city is more important. He is bringing up a strawman. I have no problem with DC being ranked lower than quite a few of the bigger cities since there are reasonable stretches possible for a criteria for "most important/influential." Bringing up Sacramento in comparison to DC when talking about overall importance is highlighting a point for an illogical comparison since we are still talking about the overall importance of a city to a nation. I'm sure there are tons of reasonable arguments that can be made for why the Bay Area is more important--that analogy for Sacramento is not one of them.
Your going to back yourself into a corner, because basically what your saying is every capital in each state is on the same level of importance as DC.
No, I think this misunderstanding is the reason for the whole downward spiral this thread has taken. He's not equating the importance of state capitals to national capitols. He just made an analogy to highlight a point. He was attempting to show that political influence only goes so far in what makes a city important.
I believe Oy's arguing that the actual amount of power that DC wields is too strong to discount it, but my view (and I believe that of 18Montclair's as well) is that the lack of diversity in what is important about DC is what would rank DC below LA and Chicago. I think if were factoring in the importance of government and weighing it by how much power it wields, it automatically makes DC #1. In that sense, if DC wanted to shut down and relocate all of NYC to different locations throughout the nation it could, hypothetically speaking. So from that standpoint its #1. But if we're looking at how much a city has to offer, then DC ranks below several other cities of ours.
Scale?
Metro Sacramento is 5% of California's population.
DC-Baltimore is 2.5% of the US population.
Metro Sacramento's GDP is a greater percentage(5.5%) of CAs economy than DC-Baltimore(3.8%) is to the national GDP.
Your right, there is a huge difference in scale. Sacramento is actually bigger to CA than DC is to the US.
Yet DC is exactly to America what Sacramento is to CA. Very important, but not 2nd most important.
Again, you're confusing the scale. You're making a jump in logic when you take Sacramento's importance within a much smaller scale (CA) and insert that into a comparison of the importance of a city (which is the entire point of this topic) in terms of national importance. Sacramento not comparing favorably with SF in terms of power should have no bearing on how DC compares with SF. The political power of these two capitals are within entirely different leagues, so it was silly of you to bring in Sacramento in a topic about overall importance in the US. You went the wrong way on an argument and you were called on it.
No, I think this misunderstanding is the reason for the whole downward spiral this thread has taken. He's not equating the importance of state capitals to national capitols. He just made an analogy to highlight a point. He was attempting to show that political influence only goes so far in what makes a city important.
I believe Oy's arguing that the actual amount of power that DC wields is too strong to discount it, but my view (and I believe that of 18Montclair's as well) is that the lack of diversity in what is important about DC is what would rank DC below LA and Chicago. I think if were factoring in the importance of government and weighing it by how much power it wields, it automatically makes DC #1. In that sense, if DC wanted to shut down and relocate all of NYC to different locations throughout the nation it could, hypothetically speaking. So from that standpoint its #1. But if we're looking at how much a city has to offer, then DC ranks below several other cities of ours.
The line of argument you're making for why other cities could be ranked higher in their "cultural and economic contributions to the nation" is perfectly rational. What isn't rational is to say that Sacramento's power as a state capital only goes so far and can't be compared to SF's, then imply that it can be linked to an argument that DC's power as a national capital only goes so far and can't be compared to SF's.
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