World: London (after NYC, of course...)

Most people couldn't recall Bill deBlasio by name. He's pretty unforgettable. Giuliani/ Bloomberg, when they were still mayor, yes and that was due to being in the spotlight during 9/11. Bloomberg was also well known for his media empire. Chicago mayors are more well known because of who they are not because they are mayors of Chicago; Rahm Emmanuel was famous nationally before taking the job and the Daley's were a well known dynasty for generations. DC had that mayor who smoked crack. That's one way to get attention.

DC is more than just a leader of an industry; it's the center of power of the most powerful country. Can't compare to Houston or Detroit.

Well, they have a KFC across from a Burger King, so it has to be good.

But none of that power is derived from D.C. itself. The most powerful people in D.C. are from other parts of the country.

It's different from places like London and Paris, where the political leaders are also from those cities.

Same with NY :)

sure, you can split up the 4 major macro-regions into their sub-units if you want. these kinds of discussions can scale all the way up to global, or all the way down to state-level. none of it is right or wrong.

i just think it's interesting that two of the US macro-regions (the west and midwest) mostly follow the 1st city/2nd city paradigm, while things get way more complicated in the northeast at the secondary level, and the south is just a total clusterfuck.

Exactly and that's what makes New York and DC so powerful is that they attract top talent from all over. London and Paris comprise a much larger percentage of the UK's and France's population (respectively) where as the US is far far less decentralized population-wise. And Paris and London are New York and DC squeezed into one city.

The power brokers in NY don't have to answer to constituents in other parts of the country.

Then what’s the first? Jacksonville? :haha:

A lot of DC doesn't either. You're thinking elected officials but there's a critical mass of think tanks, policy wonks, lobby groups and other bureaucrats that answer to no one and wield a lot of power and influence.

I would argue the most powerfull and influential city in the world overall is NYC.

DC is powerfull becasue it is the US capitol but it isnt the "center" of things the way NYC is.

Formerly London, which was relegated to 2nd place about 80 years ago.

The bigger difference is that the U.K. and France are unitary states versus our federal system. Federations tend to be decentralized (U.S., Canada, Germany, Brazil, Australia, etc.), and the capital usually serves a single function as just the political center. Off the top of my head, the only federations that I can think of where the capital is also the financial and cultural center are Mexico and Argentina. Berlin has a weird status as the political and cultural center, but not the financial center.

In federations like Canada, Brazil, and Australia, the capital is a geographically isolated and relatively dull place, like it was meant to be in the U.S. (And like it actually was in the U.S. until about the mid-20th century.)

[/QUOTE]Latvia and Estonia seem to more in line with "the capital city and then everything else"[/QUOTE]

Even so, I'd say for Latvia it would be Liepaja, since there was a fairly heated rivalry going on with Riga during the decade or so before WWI.

For Estonia, Tartu is a contender. History, University, culture put it on the map.

yeah, the founding fathers didn't get our capital city far enough away from the east coast.

if they had stuck it out in kentucky or something, it might have had more of the desired effect.

though, the US grew so effing large and globally important in the 20th century, that we likely would have ended up with a big giant capital city wherever it might have been placed.

I think the shareholders might disagree.

St. Louis is the dominant city of Missouri, with an extra 1,000,000 people or whatever in missouri. But I don't think of KC as being the 2nd city of the state, either, as it's in a different region. Springfield is more likely to come to mind, which is yet again in a different region on the Ozark plateau. Missouri isn't a cohesive archetypal midwestern state.

yeah, it doesn't have one main city and then 50,000 sq. miles of corn, like iowa or ilinois or indiana. ;)

The US is a superpower that commands the attention of the entire world. Not only does our federal government have a significant global presence and influence, it's ubiquitous here at home as well which means a vast of concentration of power in DC. You can't compare us to Canada or Brazil.

And London is what it is because it attracts that from all over the EU, which certain political factions want to piss away on some nostalgia trip.

The shareholders are generally in New York, Boston and a handful of other financial centers too. The end investors aren’t paying attention.