Re: Madison Seaport Hotel
Comparing LA and Boston is like comparing apples and porterhouse steak. Why do it? There is one distinction, however, I find interesting, one that's rarely discussed. Bostonians love their city and are mostly proud of it. Granted, beantown folks are often (wicked) pissed off at it too; its our birth right. LA residents, on the other hand, don't think about their city in possessive terms and really have no love for it. It's just the place they work in and drive through.
GaWC Inventory of World Cities, 1999
An attempt to define and categorise world cities was made in 1999 by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network (GaWC), based primarily at Loughborough University in Loughborough, Leicestershire, England. The roster was outlined in the GaWC Research Bulletin 5[4] and ranked cities based on provision of "advanced producer services" such as accountancy, advertising, finance and law, by international corporations. The GaWC inventory identifies three levels of world cities and several sub-ranks.
Note that this roster generally denotes cities in which there are offices of certain multinational companies providing financial and consulting services rather than other cultural, political, and economic centres. There is a schematic map of GaWC cities at their website.[6]
Alpha world cities / full service world cities[7]
12 points: London, New York City, Paris, Tokyo
10 points: Chicago, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan, Singapore
Beta world cities / major world cities
9 points: San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, Z?rich
8 points: Brussels, Madrid, Mexico City, S?o Paulo
7 points: Moscow, Seoul
Gamma world cities / minor world cities
6 points: Amsterdam,
Boston, Caracas, Dallas, D?sseldorf, Geneva, Houston, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Osaka, Prague, Santiago, Taipei, Washington, D.C.
5 points: Bangkok, Beijing, Montreal, Rome, Stockholm, Warsaw
4 points: Atlanta, Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Miami, Minneapolis, Munich, Shanghai
Evidence of world city formation
Strong evidence
3 points: Athens, Auckland, Dublin, Helsinki, Luxembourg, Lyon, Mumbai, New Delhi, Philadelphia, Rio de Janeiro, Tel Aviv, Vienna
Some evidence
2 points: Abu Dhabi, Almaty, Birmingham (UK), Bogot?, Bratislava, Brisbane, Bucharest, Cairo, Cleveland, Cologne, Detroit, Dubai, Ho Chi Minh City, Kiev, Lima, Lisbon, Manchester, Montevideo, Oslo, Riyadh, Rotterdam, Seattle, Stuttgart, The Hague, Vancouver
Minimal evidence
1 point: Adelaide, Antwerp, Aarhus, Baltimore, Bangalore, Bologna, Bras?lia, Calgary, Cape Town, Colombo, Columbus, Dresden, Edinburgh, Genoa, Glasgow, Gothenburg, Guangzhou, Hanoi, Kansas City, Leeds, Lille, Marseille, Richmond, St. Petersburg, Tashkent, Tehran, Tijuana, Turin, Utrecht, Wellington
GaWC Leading World Cities, 2004
An attempt to redefine and recategorise leading world cities was made by PJ Taylor at GaWC in 2004.
Global Cities [8]
Well rounded global cities
Very large contribution: London and New York City.
Smaller contribution and with cultural strengths: Los Angeles, Paris, and San Francisco.
Incipient global cities: Amsterdam,
Boston, Chicago, Madrid, Milan, Moscow, Toronto.
Global niche cities - specialised global contributions
Financial: Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo.
Political and social: Brussels, Geneva and Washington, D.C.
World Cities
Subnet articulator cities
Cultural: Berlin, Copenhagen, Melbourne, Munich, Oslo, Rome, Stockholm.
Political: Bangkok, Beijing, Vienna.
Social: Manila, Nairobi, Ottawa.
Worldwide leading cities
Primarily economic global contributions: Frankfurt, Miami, Munich, Osaka, Singapore, Sydney, Zurich
Primarily non-economic global contributions: Abidjan, Addis Ababa, Atlanta, Basel, Barcelona, Cairo, Denver, Harare, Lyon, Manila, Mexico City, Mumbai, New Delhi, Shanghai.
