Quote:
Originally Posted by ZTrade
Vancouver: Drop it to Beta. I don't know as much about Vancouver as I do the above but it doesn't strike me at the same level of the likes of Cairo, Atlanta (over double the metro population), Denver or Copenhagen.
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Atlanta yes, the rest, debatable. Vancouver could reasonably be on the same tier if we are going by global connectivity, its proximity to Asia and the investment dollars that funnel through the city in resource projects as noted above probably help the argument. That Seattle is ranked below is the
real head scratcher there, they should at least be on the same tier.
This list has sort of been the "gold standard" of city ranking list and is oft ridiculed but still cited all the time. Academic and general publications use terms like "Alpha city" in reference to this list. It's worth debating, disparaging and disagreeing with many of the placements on the GaWC, but it's just too commonly referenced of a publication to ignore. Someone even bothered to put the whole list with links and ranking changes on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization_and_World_Cities_Research_Network
I took an Urban Studies class in the early 2000s where we had studied this list and yes, I recall Tokyo used to be in the same tier as NY/London and Dubai was nowhere near Alpha territory. So the list does evolve over time and some cities get dropped entirely. As I mentioned in another thread it was a nice mini point of validation to see Saskatoon make its first entrance, though I was hoping for the (Canadian) Hamilton and Victoria.