The Most Overrated City in the World? (2014, to move)

[Brave New World]

Originally Posted by NOLA101

and is even lower ranked as a cultural and especially economic hub.

You can go on and on about economics and figures NOLA, however London is not ranked lower as a Cultural Hub.

For goodness sake stop making this stupid assertions.

It's a city with 300 odd Museums, numerous libraries including the vast British Library, home to the Royal Opera House and Royal Ballet, the English National Ballet, the English National Opera, The National Theatre, the Old Vic, the Young Vic, the Southbank Centre, the Barbican, reguarly hosts the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), is home to the world famous BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, is home to five famous symphony Orchestras in terms of the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra as well as numerous Concert Orchestras. The City is home to the Tate, Tate Modern, National Gallery, Royal Academy of the Arts, Royal College of Arts, Courtaulds Art Institute, Institute of Contemporary Art, Royal College of Music, Royal Academy of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Trinity Laban, Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Sadlers Wells, the Royal School of Ballet, Royal Academy of Dance, the West End Theatres etc etc etc etc

London is very very very culturally rich as a City, and you are only demonstrating your own ignorance by making stupid off the cuff remarks.

[pbobcat]

Originally Posted by Brave New World

You can go on and on about economics and figures NOLA, however London is not ranked lower as a Cultural Hub.

For goodness sake stop making this stupid assertions.

It's a city with 300 odd Universitries, home to the Royal Opera House and Royal Ballet, the English National Ballet, the English National Opera, The National Theatre, the Old Vic, the Young Vic, the Southbank Centre, the Barbican, reguarly hosts the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), is home to the world famous BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, is home to five famous symphony Orchestras in terms of the London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra as well as numerous Concert Orchestras. The City is home to the Tate, Tate Modern, National Gallery, Royal Academy of the Arts, Royal College of Arts, Courtaulds Art Institute, Institute of Contemporary Art, Royal College of Music, Royal Academy of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Trinity Laban, Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Sadlers Wells, the Royal School of Ballet, Royal Academy of Dance, the West End Theatres,

Not to mention the large amount of venues hosting rock concerts and the substantial amount of media from music to film and tv being produced here.

[geoking66]

Originally Posted by NOLA101

Wrong. NYC is much wealthier than London. They aren't even close. London's gross economic product is only about half that of NYC

NYC has much higher median and mean income, and is much bigger, so the end result is that there is far more wealth in NYC than in London. 2x the wealth.

Output is not the same as wealth and New York's metro area is still around 5m people larger than London's. Even so, London's per capita GVA is £42,666 ($61,563), whereas it's $52,737 for New York. Additionally, London is the world's top destination for UHNW individuals.

Plenty of cities have far more international share of wealth than London (or NYC, for that matter). It's hardly something to brag about; it means your domestic market is either poor or insignificant. Geneva, Zurich, Monaco, Singapore and Hong Kong all have much higher % of non-domestic wealth than London (or NYC).

Are you really trying to compare city-states such as Singapore and Hong Kong to a city that's part of a 65m-person country? That's intellectually dishonest and incomparable mathematically.

London doesn't have the most expensive real estate on the planet. That would be Hong Kong. In Europe it would be Monaco.

Christie's just ranked London as the most active luxury market on the planet. Property also deals with other types, such as office. London is also the world's most expensive office market and New York doesn't even make the top 10. At the property level, West End and City office properties trade on average far higher in per-square-foot terms than in Manhattan and the two have similar levels of investment even though London has 100 million fewer square feet of office space.

London is a distant second to NYC as a financial hub, and is even lower ranked as a cultural and especially economic hub.

The Global Financial Centres Index, which is compiled by groups including the OECD and the Economist, ranks London as the world's most important financial hub and is the only city to hit the 800-point mark. Others show the two flipping, but London is by far and away the leader in currency trading and foreign investment. New York only really leads in terms of stock market capitalization and absolute investment-banking volumes.

I don't know how you measure "infrastructure and connectivity" but considering the London area has half the economic product as NYC, and considering the share of local spending going to infrastructure/connectivity isn't higher, it's a nonsense statement.

To start, London's air system is the world's busiest. But in terms of infrastructure investment, London completely trounces New York:

• Crossrail: £15.9 billion ($22.9 billion) to bore a 13-mile new railway line underneath Central London with nine new interchange stations and a 10% increase in capacity.
• Thameslink: £5.5 billion ($7.9 billion) to streamline cross-Thames rail links, rebuilding of London Bridge, Blackfriars and Farringdon stations and massively boost inner-suburban railway capacity.
• Northern line extension: £1.0 billion ($1.4 billion) to bring the Northern line to the Nine Elms regeneration area, where more than 20,000 units of high-density housing are being built and are in the pipeline.

This comes along with the Tube upgrade, which saw six lines get huge signalling, speed and capacity upgrades and frequencies have been bumped to 34 trains per hour on the Victoria and Jubilee lines. The subway can't compete with that at all. Even more, the New Tube for London will see the automation of a number of lines and further rolling stock, signalling and capacity upgrades across the network. Planned works include Crossrail 2 (£25 billion, $36.1 billion) and connections to the new national high-speed railway network, HS2, which will see more than £50 billion invested across the UK ($72.2 billion). The Overground network has also seen substantial investment and subsequent surges in ridership, and I haven't even gotten to numerous National Rail improvements, the third runway at Heathrow (on hold at the moment) and incremental improvements elsewhere.

That $68.3 billion of current and proposed investment is far higher than the combined total of the Second Avenue Subway, 7 extension, East Side Access, Fulton Center and WTC Hub, which total $22.3 and the latter two having minimal capacity improvements. CBTC signalling is indefinitely delayed, the second set of Hudson River tunnels is still stalled and the current staet of infrastructure in the city is, well, bad. Even if you discount plans, London is currently pouring far more into its transportation network than New York. LaGuardia will still be bad after $2.5 billion in reconstruction, and JFK and Newark aren't much better. Meanwhile, Heathrow has had two new terminals built and is better connected to the rest of the city and region; Gatwick, Luton, City and Stansted Airports are all seeing capital improvements as well either underway or imminently.

I've lived in both London and New York. I know them intimately and New York is certainly lagging nowadays despite having been easily ahead up through the '90s.

[Whywontthisjustwork]

Originally Posted by NOLA101

Wrong. NYC is much wealthier than London. They aren't even close. London's gross economic product is only about half that of NYC

NYC has much higher median and mean income, and is much bigger, so the end result is that there is far more wealth in NYC than in London. 2x the wealth.



None of this is true.

Plenty of cities have far more international share of wealth than London (or NYC, for that matter). It's hardly something to brag about; it means your domestic market is either poor or insignificant. Geneva, Zurich, Monaco, Singapore and Hong Kong all have much higher % of non-domestic wealth than London (or NYC).

London doesn't have the most expensive real estate on the planet. That would be Hong Kong. In Europe it would be Monaco.

London is a distant second to NYC as a financial hub, and is even lower ranked as a cultural and especially economic hub.

I don't know how you measure "infrastructure and connectivity" but considering the London area has half the economic product as NYC, and considering the share of local spending going to infrastructure/connectivity isn't higher, it's a nonsense statement.

You have no idea what you're talking about. People who can't accept that New York just isn't what it used to be in relation to the rest of the world are starting to sound like the high school athlete who's about to turn thirty and can't get over his glory days.

[CTDominion]

Kind of related to the sub-topic of global standing, London just overtook New York in AT Kearney's Global Cities report for 2016.

For reference, that was one of the few remaining global city indexes (in 2015) that had New York in the lead over its sister city.

[improb]

Originally Posted by Warszawa

What is "The Hood" in Napoli? Im kinda curious to check it out on Google Maps. I remember one time I ran into some really sketchy place but dont remember the name

Depends. You have Scampia, Rione Terzo Mondo (both the film and the tv series Gomorrah were shot amongst these couple places). This is the Bronx instead located in the other side of the city, overall the sketchy neighbourhoods in Naples are mostly housing complexes located near each other in two areas (the one to the North where there are the first two neighbourhoods and the one to the east where there's the third neighbourhood)

Originally Posted by NOLA101

I know that the Bronx still has this reputation, but it's extremely outdated at this point. Again, the Bronx has a lower crime rate than most U.S. cities (in fact far lower crime rate than many U.S. cities) and is fast-growing and economically healthy. This has been true for a few decades now.

The Bronx underwent a shocking decline in the 1970's, and this spurred a huge amount of urban blight movies, usually focused on the South Bronx, which indeed was burning down and horrible for a number of years. But even in the 1970's, it was only one part of the Bronx that was bad; the rest was fine.

But it's been a long time since it was among the more troubled areas in the U.S. In fact the Bronx doesn't even have the worst neighborhoods in NYC anymore. The highest poverty/crime part of NYC is in a Brooklyn neighborhood.

If you go to the Bronx in 2016, there is absolutely no neighborhood that meets the old stereotype. No area has empty buildings and rubble; it's all been filled in with immigrants and affordable housing towers.

I understand that but unfortunately it takes years to shake a decade long reputation. Hosting an international event is usually the best way to change one's place reputation for the better or to put it on the world's map. By the way, although they aren't as known Compton and South Chicago are getting a similar reputation

Originally Posted by NOLA101

Obviously "better" is subjective, but there is no neighborhood anywhere in Australia that has similar demand from global elites as in NYC.

The fact is that there are more wealthy people in Manhattan than anywhere else in the planet. So the market has determined that there is nothing in Australia as desirable as in Manhattan.

Now if you want to say a random area is "nicer" than another, that's your prerogative. But it's not based on anything but personal preferences.

Is the market right though? It hardly is, it means only that Manhattan is the place to be and not so much a more desiderable place than the above

[irene-69]

london, for a city that diverse, big and rich, it surely feels underwhelming borderline meh.

[pbobcat]

Originally Posted by irene-69

london, for a city that diverse, big and rich, it surely feels underwhelming borderline meh.

Oh put a sock in it Irene. I imagine your account will be deleted for the tenth time before you spout any more nonsense anyway.

[Ethereal]

Antalya? Pattaya? Mecca? They're not even that popular. Well, Antalya may be to Turks who want a vacation. And Mecca to Muslims. But generally, or in a worldwide sense, they're not overrated.

[Davy-040]

Originally Posted by Ethereal

Antalya? Pattaya? Mecca? They're not even that popular. Well, Antalya may be to Turks who want a vacation. And Mecca to Muslims. But generally, or in a worldwide sense, they're not overrated.

You clearly don't know what your talking about.
Most Turks don't even care for Antalya, Antalya ranks in the top 15 for multiple years in a row as the most visited destination in the world. Basically everyone from Northwestern Europe and Urban Russia know at least 1 person that went there.

Pattaya is the prostitution capital of the world, almost half of the tourists in Thailand go there.
Where do you got the idea that its not that popular?

The city of Mecca might not be overrated but the word is.