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London and New York City are two fundamentally different cities that are somehow alike in character, so I'm not sure the comparison here is substantive.
In comparison to its sister city, London has greater architectural diversity, modernized infrastructure, a cleanlier city center with lower population density, more plentiful green spaces and parks (some of which are truly breathtaking) and vast cultural wealth accrued from operating for centuries as the center of imperium.
London's edge in cultural capital is the key difference between the two cities; a shortfall for New York City that it can't remedy by simply throwing money at the problem:
Last edited by Citizen401; 06-16-2013 at 08:23 AM..
^ An obvious London booster insecure about his city's relevance in the world.
Nice coping response. If my post bothers you, and you have good reasons to disagree, why not actually provide cogent arguments instead of resorting to emotional hand-waving?
Nice coping response. If my post bothers you, and you have good reasons to disagree, why not actually provide cogent arguments instead of resorting to emotional hand-waving?
This thread is not about New York vs London /any other city.
Thanks for the marketing on London, but still think I'd rather travel to Paris.
We're discussing comparisons with New York City, not London.
Paris is far more architecturally beautiful than either London or New York City, and, like London, is endowed with cultural wealth to a degree that renders any broader comparison with New York pointless and arbitrary. The ambience and old world charm of Paris differs far too much, in qualitative terms, for this to be a meaningful comparison.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arxis28
This thread is not about New York vs London /any other city.
You can project into my comment your own insecurities as much as you like, but I've given qualitative reasons why the two cities cannot be compared in a way that is ostensibly on-topic. The fact that I consider London to be the superior city in terms of cultural wealth -- a point that shouldn't really be open to contention -- is not an invitation for city-vs-city polemic.
I'm afraid you're the only one here (judging by your vitriolic response earlier) committed to devolving this into an off-topic polemic.
Last edited by Citizen401; 06-16-2013 at 10:54 AM..
^ An obvious London booster insecure about his city's relevance in the world.
I don't think any Londoner should feel insecure about their city's relevance in the world. 2000+ years after its founding, London may very well be the greatest city on Earth. It is arguably the only city on Earth that can really give New York a run for its money in just about every category, and its long history gives it a wealth of culture and depth that NYC does not have.
That said, I think the two cities are quite distinct, and the similarities that do exist are mostly superficial ones. Both cities are truly one-of-a-kind.
I've been to all three, and I find any similarities superficial.
They are similar in scale, but the urban environment is very different in each. The culture is extremely different. Mexico City has large swaths of slums (not like the slums of India or Asia. Sort of like better organized versions of Rio's favelas; more established, with functioning infrastructure. But massive in scale. Nezahualcoyotl has a population of 1 million, I believe). Mexico City is a sprawling giant, sort of like LA on steroids, but denser, with a beautiful historic core, several high-rise areas that resemble North American downtowns, surrounded by all kinds of mid-rise neighbourhoods where high rises occasionally pierce the skyline. Unlike Tokyo and New York, the DF is an inland city situated in a valley amongst the high plateaus of central Mexico - this is a major contributor to its terrible air quality. Nonetheless, it has many charms, and it is a vital, bustling, thriving metropolis that is - like Tokyo and New York - the indisputable alpha city of its nation and one of the greatest cities on Earth despite a fairly high crime rate, poverty, water shortages, aging infrastructure, and other problems that result from being such a massive, powerful city in a country plagued by corruption, nepotism and incompetence in government, large and powerful organized crime syndicates that occasionally terrorize the public during their regular terrorizing of rival gangs. Mexico City is the best and worst of Mexico. It is a city with much to love, and much to loathe, but undoubtedly one of the great cities of the world.
Tokyo is mostly mid and low-rise development, and filled with back alleys where you can find restaurants, businesses and homes. If you use bird's eye view on Bing Maps to zoom in on any area of Tokyo and its surrounding metropolises, you will see a kind of urban density that boggles the mind. There is nothing like a grid system, so nameless streets twist and turn all over the place, bisected by hundreds of small streets and alleys that can barely be seen through the dense cluster of buildings. Houses are clustered together so tight, they're almost built on top of each other. Walking around random neighbourhoods, you never know what to expect when you turn the corner, and getting lost is a daily occurrence. During my time there I must have spent hours wandering aimlessly trying to find my way to various destinations. From one block to the next you can go from super-modern urban chic, to traditional wooden one-story dwellings that harken to an older Japan, to Shinto shrines and cemeteries - oases of peace, tranquility and nature in the largest and arguably the busiest city on Earth. Unlike the Tri-State, which is a massive urban area that extends for miles in every direction, but becomes suburban and even rural quite quickly, you can spend hours on trains and never leave the massive urban agglomeration that is Tokyo and its dozens of surrounding cities. I remember taking a two-hour train-ride and thinking I would be out in the country when I was awoken and told it was time to get off, but found I still had not left the city behind. We had travelled for two hours on a train and still had not left the incredibly dense urbanity of the Greater Tokyo Area. Speaking of trains, when you superimpose a map of Tokyo's above-ground commuter trains on top of the subway map, you can spend hours studying it and still not understand it. There is nothing like it on Earth. It has to be the greatest public transit system on Earth.
Meanwhile, New York...well, we all know what New York is like. It is a truly great city that equals the DF and Tokyo, and surpasses them in some respects. While DF and Tokyo are both alpha dog cities and even exceed New York's scale, they are very different from New York in many ways. Really, I think New York is one-of-a-kind. Some cities like Phllie, Toronto, London and others have certain similarities, but the differences are far greater. I think New Yorkers should be proud of their city, and the fact that there is no place like it on Earth.
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