Do you agree with the following GaWC Inventory of World Cities?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_City - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_City

GaWC Inventory of World Cities

An influential attempt to define and categorise world cities, was made by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group & Network (GaWC), based primarily at Loughborough University in England. The roster was outlined in the GaWC Research Bulletin 5 [1] and ranked cities based on their provision of "advanced producer services" such as accountancy, advertising, finance and law. The Inventory identifies three levels of world cities and several sub-ranks.

There is a schematic map of the GaWC cities at their website, [2].

• 12 points: London, New York City, Paris, Tokyo

• 10 points: Chicago, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan, Singapore

• 9 points: San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, Zurich

• 8 points: Brussels, Madrid, Mexico City, Sao Paulo

• 7 points: Moscow, Seoul

• 6 points: Amsterdam, Boston, Caracas, Dallas, Dusseldorf, Geneva, Houston, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Osaka, Prague, Santiago, Taipei, Washington, DC

• 5 points: Bangkok, Beijing, Montreal, Rome, Stockholm, Warsaw

• 4 points: Atlanta, Barcelona, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Budapest, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Miami, Minneapolis, Munich, Shanghai

• 3 points: Athens, Auckland, Dublin, Helsinki, Luxembourg, Lyon, Mumbai, New Delhi, Philadelphia, Rio de Janeiro, Tel Aviv, Vienna

• 2 points: Abu Dhabi, Almaty, Birmingham (UK), Bogota, 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

• 1 point: Adelaide, Antwerp, Arhus, Baltimore, Bangalore, Bologna, Brasilia, 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

This doesn't take into account the cultural, political and social organisation etc. as you mentioned. Anyone going to Sydney will see it is bigger and has more commercial activity than Melbourne, but it is less successful in integrating foreign cultures and being cosmopolitan. Cost of living in Sydney is higher, but Melbourne outdoes Sydney commercially in many areas if we apply PPP adjustment.

Or maybe im just being bitter.......

You are right. There's definitely an economic bias here.

I also find it extremely intriguing that the two Chinese megacities, Beijing and Shanghai, are only "gamma cities", with Beijing being in the same league as Montreal (!!!!) and Shanghai in the same league as Manila?!?!? Surely they are not alpha cities - yet. But I think they should at least be treated as beta cities.

Originally posted by Aloeverate Originally posted by Constantine XI Or maybe im just being bitter....... Ahh the old sydney-melbourne rivalry which is life and death in the east and faint amusement for the rational people of the west.  I wonder if there are polls which take culture and quality of life into account as well. Hard to measure i guess though. I would have though Osaka, beijing and Shanghai would be higher though. Number of skyscrapers also seems a dubious statistic to measure a world city by, just look at London.

Interesting that you mention happiness and quality of life. Victoria is considered the happiest state in the country, according to an article I read on ninemsn yesterday. Sydney was the most unhappy city, while Western Australia was the most unhappy state. Some poor backwater in Queensland was the happiest community.

I hereby disclaim anything to do with this, despite the acronym.

Graham Albert William Cleverley.

Maju you are wrong!!!! (I am so glad I am finally able to say this with such confidence   .) Chicago is NOT just a provincial city. As Cywr mentioned, thanks to its central location (it's almost located in the very center of the North American continent), Chicago (which used to be America's second largest city) is still one of America's most important financial, commercial, transportation, political, and cultural centres. Its population is no less cosmopolitan than that of San Francisco or Miami's. Anything that happens in Chicago can still potentially affect the entire world, an indication of its importance in the international scene. And anyone who has been to Chicago's downtown region can really FEEL what a world-class city is like.

In an earlier post of mine, I disputed Maju's description of Chicago. However, I came across an article entitled "Urban Hinterworlds: Geographies of Corporate Service Provision under Conditions of Contemporary Globalization" by P.J. Taylor and he has something very interesting to say about Chicago (and Los Angeles) that seems to be in agreement with Maju's point.

Chicago and Los Angeles. Chicago has by far the least intensive of all alpha city hinterworlds. Its only area of strengths are other US cities and western European cities. Other alpha cities are conspicuously low in this hinterworld. Chicago seems to be the major victim of the New York shadow effect (Beaverstock, Smith and Taylor, 2000a) and suspicions of its high level world city status (Abu-Lughod, 1995) seem to be justified on this evidence. Although having a more intense hinterworld, Los Angeles shares many of Chicago's characteristics notably the low levels for eastern European cities and even relatively low levels for Latin American cities. Los Angeles has higher intensity of services with other alpha cities but its main difference with Chicago is the greater coverage of Pacific Asia cities.

The article is extremely interesting. So for anyone who's interested in urban geography, it's definitely worth checking out.

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/rb/rb17.html - http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/rb/rb17.html

It definitely should have a different perception of skyscrapers, considering that it had put Istanbul onto that list...Istanbul has some but,in order get into top ten, they should have considered 15-floor buildings as skyscrapers eiter

Well, there are some logical stuff inside it, but I don't really agree with the table, which gives 10 points to a city like Milan and 4 to Berlin/Munich, 3 to Athens/Delhi/Vienna...Strange criteria..

my rank in europe

1-london

2-rome

3-budapeste

in usa

1-san fransisco

2-new york

3-seattle

in asia

1-hon kong

2-sydney

3-dubai