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I dont know how vienna, munich or even hamburg / copenhagen didnt make the list.
There are at least twice as much more multi-millionaires in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires than in Vienna, Munich, Hamburg and Copenhagen combined!
Strange though. Lists I see have placed Shanghai among top 10. It's slowly transitioning into an extreme powerhouse. San Francisco's feeds off of San Jose. Never seen SF put on any top 10 world lists period no matter what it is. Just Americans trying to overrate SF and underrate a Chinese city that is obviously more powerful.
Re-thinking it, Shanghai may still not have HK's number, but it's still almost just as great of a experience as Hong Kong was.
if i'm talking to someone who has personal experience roaming shanghai's streets and felt that the bustling vibrant atmosphere was comparable to hong kong, i'll take your word for it. shanghai is one of the 6 cities i am desperate to visit during an east asian trip, including hong kong, tokyo, seoul, singapore, and manila. watching Skyfall 007 only validated my yearning.
also, i can see how shanghai is definitely a world financial center since china is now the world's 2nd largest economic power, with gdp exceeding 7-8 trillion, and shanghai is its financial hub. but the city of shanghai itself has a gmp of $300 bil, with 23 million inhabitants. so i'm on the fringe if it would be in my top 10 of world class cities. top 10 financial centers, yes, but other factors are important to me for world class, and unfortunately, western nations still predominantly make up the top 10 to me.
if i'm talking to someone who has personal experience roaming shanghai's streets and felt that the bustling vibrant atmosphere was comparable to hong kong, i'll take your word for it. shanghai is one of the 6 cities i am desperate to visit during an east asian trip, including hong kong, tokyo, seoul, singapore, and manila. watching Skyfall 007 only validated my yearning.
also, i can see how shanghai is definitely a world financial center since china is now the world's 2nd largest economic power, with gdp exceeding 7-8 trillion, and shanghai is its financial hub. but the city of shanghai itself has a gmp of $300 bil, with 23 million inhabitants. so i'm on the fringe if it would be in my top 10 of world class cities. top 10 financial centers, yes, but other factors are important to me for world class, and unfortunately, western nations still predominantly make up the top 10 to me.
A few things with that GMP stat.
One is that the RMB is artificially depreciated, so a lot of assets are actually undervalued.
Shanghai has a huge grey market.
How old is that $300 billion figure? Growth has occurred at a ridiculous pace, so even without the two factors above, that number might already be off.
There is massive inequality in Shanghai, so that $300 billion is mostly going to a smaller portion of people--so yes, there is a very large middle and upper class who by first world standards are making pretty good amounts. There's also a huge number of domestic immigrants that make much, much less.
There are at least twice as much more multi-millionaires in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires than in Vienna, Munich, Hamburg and Copenhagen combined!
Who cares? The average person there is still much poorer.
LOL - when were you Toronto 1965.. or in the dead of winter. Come here from May to October and say that. Maybe you just didn't go out and explore the city. Anyway everyone is entitled to his or her opinion.
However here are some facts for others:
Toronto has the third largest English theatre scene in the world, the most attended film festival in the world, one of the most culturally diverse cities with the food diversity and festival diversity to reflect that. In addition an impressive array of museums and attractions and one of the largest gay populations with the top 5 pride festivities in the world..we also have the second largest fashion week in North America after NYC so boring is relative to the visitor I suppose.
Quote:
Originally Posted by arctic_gardener
I don't agree with Toronto or Vancouver winning out over Seattle, Milan and Istanbul. I've been to all of these except Istanbul, and I'd much rather spend my time in Milan or Seattle than set a foot in Toronto or Vancouver. Boring, boring cities. The only good thing about Vancouver is that it's close to Seattle. And Victoria.
Brussels is kinda boring too, but still way better than Toronto or Vancouver.
Most interesting cities on your list: Barcelona, Berlin, Singapore, San Francisco, Shanghai and New York.
How are Toronto and Vancouver listed but not Montreal? I can maybe understand putting Toronto and not Montreal, but you put Vancouver as well. Montreal was our biggest city here in Canada until only 15 years ago, and it's still the most "established" city (if that makes sense). I'm not saying which city is better or anything, but Toronto and Vancouver are still new, growing, reshaping their identity. World class shouldn't mean how expensive or fast-growing a city is, it should be about its importance in history and culture. Montreal is probably the only major English-French bilingual city in the world, for example. Putting Dubai, Shanghai and Beijing on there is ridiculous. What do those cities have, besides extreme wealth disparity and autocracy?
We should establish criteria in order to rank them properly such as culture, tourist popularity, economy, history etc.
For instance, Rome is rather an "undergog" when it comes to all that "cosmpolitan", "financial", "economic" and "logistic" stuff, however, it has probably one of the most popular monuments and histories worldwide and therefore is way more a real "world class city" than places like Zurich, Brussels, Hong Kong or Toronto...
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