To Settle the City Business
Apparently, some of My Dear Readers have got a bee in their bonnets about my negative critiques of Detroit and St. Louis. However, not one of you has chosen to illustrate the positive aspects of those cities, choosing instead to insult my virtue (I think the word "whorish" was mentioned a few times) and directing me to "get raped". Regardless of my sexual proclivities, neither Detroit nor St. Louis register on any list of "World Cities" or "Best Cities".
According to this website, the heirarchy of world cities is as follows:
Full Service World Cities:
Tier 1: London, New York, Paris, Tokyo
Tier 2: Chicago, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan, Singapore
Major World Cities:
Tier 3: San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, Zurich
Tier 4: Brussels, Madrid, Mexico City, Sao Paulo
Tier 5: Moscow, Seoul
Minor World Cities:
Tier 6: Amsterdam, Boston, Caracas, Dallas, Düsseldorf, Geneva, Houston, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Osaka, Prague, Santiago, Taipei, Washington
One has to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the website to find Detroit's name on the list, in the 10th tier, which lists cities with "some evidence of world city formation" (along with Bogota, Almaty, Manchester (UK), Dubai, Cleveland and Ho Chi Minh City, among others).
St. Louis? Doesn't even crack the website. The lowest tier of cities, defined as having "minimal evidence of world city formation", contains (among others) Tehran, Tijuana, Bangalore, Calgary, Richmond (VA), Columbus (OH), Baltimore and Torino.
Yep, sports fans, TIJUANA, land of The Donkey Show and Underaged Co-Eds Buying Knockoff Percocet, beat St. Louis.
But that's just economics.
Both cities fail when taking into account "softer factors" as well. According to Travel & Leisure Magazine's survey of world's best cities in 2006, New York is the 8th best city in the world (the only other American city in the top 10, San Francisco, is 10th. Florence, Rome and Bangkok are the top 3, respectively).
The top 10 North American cities, in order, are: New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Charleston (SC), Santa Fe, Vancouver, Quebec City, Victoria (BC), Montreal and Seattle. Methodology took into account city sights, culture/arts, restaurants/food, people, shopping, and value.
So, again, you can have your World Series, your Bud Lites, your nachos (or, if you're at the Greektown casinos, your saganaki). We'll take what we have.
posted by Plain Jane Jones @ 7:50 AM
5 Comments:
If you couldn't live in Manhattan, where would you live and why?
Also, out of curiosity, what do you honestly think your percent chance of ending up with a guy who will give you the lifestyle you dream of will be?
Are you serious? Detroit? The entire automotive industry was born in Detroit. I think you would struggle to name 5 things that have impacted our culture more than automobiles. And don't give me this garbage about Japanese cars. They didn't invent anything. Asians are like 3M - they don't invent shit, they just copy us and try their best to improve upon it.
Wow, anonymous, that's a pretty ignorant statement to make about Asians. Way to fight ignorance with ignorance...
I can't believe you rely on a web report to back what you believe are the best cities in the world. If you think NYC is so great, that's fine but don't use internet research to back up your subjective valuation of a city's worth.
What makes one city great to one person makes it the worst place in the world to another. For example, you could triple your pay and make my job nailing Scarlett Johanson, and I'd still never live in NYC. I've been there many times, and I still think it's a shithole. However, I don't rag on it b/c I know one man's shithole is another's paradise.
"I can't believe you rely on a web report to back what you believe are the best cities in the world."
Why not? Do you disagree with the methodology of the various web reports?
"If you couldn't live in Manhattan, where would you live and why?"
Probably London or Hong Kong. If I had to pick rural areas, then somewhere in the southwestern part of France, within driving distance to the sea. If I had to pick anywhere within the U.S., then San Francisco or Chicago for a large city, Austin for a mid-sized city and probably somewhere in rural New England for a small town.
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