Me or Crawford? ^^
I see what you mean but arguably politically, domestically and internationally Moscow is a more reknowned city. Financially it compares poorly to Frankfurt but both are world cities and as I pointed out before, Frankfurt is a top ranked city which has become a benchmark for the councils of Brum and Dam to aspire to.
However, we seem to be missing the point. Frankfurt is not the capital of Germany but has found its way as one of the leading cities in Europe and the world in terms of highrise accomodation and high quality office developments.
As you can see by the link Jonas has given us, Rotterdam and Birmingham have only notched 2 points a piece. In my experience both are a above Dublin which has 3 points but you could argue thats due to its status as the capital of one of the richest countries in Europe.
Both councils aim to become a top 30 city. This means both have to become as influential, diverse and domestically reliable as the likes of Amsterdam, Prague, Washington, Dusseldorf and Melbourne. Is a 20 year time frame just to short for these cities to progress this much?
The French call Birmingham the Shanghai of Europe. Its has £13 billion worth of redevelopment within its city core, its just announced Europes largest city masterplan in the post war era expanding it by ten fold with the possibilty of grand lakes and even a 90m pyramid. Its all well and good having aspirations and beg my pardon as im not all to familair with the exact development of Rotterdam but are these aims un-realistic?
To me, to get into the top 10 cities in Europe, which I see as, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Moscow, Rome, Barcelona, Berlin, Istanbul, Warsaw and Madrid both cities are going to have to push extremely hard and develop like crazy over the next decade, even if it means building speculatively to attract major tnc's.
P.S Whats Rotterdam's largest known project?
