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  #61  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2020, 11:43 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by svlt View Post
Those who hate the list, can you suggest a better list for us to all peruse and critique? There are dozens of published city lists out there. I think you can poke just as many holes in any of them.

Are city lists then completly pointless? Well, no, because people fund hundreds of different academic think tanks around the world to produce these lists. It's a banal argument to basically ask others to ignore a list with this level of weight and influence because you don't like its placements. You can do that if forumer A just wrote their 10 best cities, but not something as long running as the GaWC.
There are two major issues I see with these rankings. First, what they are actually trying to rank is often not how people read and understand them. GaWC, for example, is to put it simply, trying to rank the most globalized cities in the world, but most people read it as a ranking of the most important or most influential cities in the world. There is certainly correlation between those things, but they are definitely not the same thing.

Secondly, what they are trying to measure is typically, by its nature, open to interpretation. How do you measure interconnectedness of cities? There are a variety of different metrics, and something like the GaWC takes these different indicators and weights them and gets a ranking. The problem is that there's no one right way to do this. A concept like interconnectedness is open to interpretation and the GaWC is only one way to understand it. Something as seemingly concrete as population is already fraught with questions about how you measure and compare between regions, a measure of interconnectedness is even more nebulous.

As a result, you typically get a list that in the key cases tells everyone what they already know - New York and London are at the top of globally interconnected cities and Tashkent isn't, this comes down to the creators of the list tuning it to produce the results they expect - but the insights about other edge cases is less clear. Is Asuncion really less globally interconnected than Vilnius? It probably isn't really even that useful to compare cities like that in the first place.
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  #62  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2020, 12:16 PM
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I ask again, how are Quito and Osaka on the same level? This is like saying Grand Rapids and Shenzhen are on the same level.
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  #63  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2020, 12:32 PM
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It seems intuitively low for Osaka, but we are looking at very narrow criteria of global connectivity. I've always got the impression that Osaka is much more important within the domestic market than it is in an international scope where Tokyo dominates. Something that has no bearing on how interesting the city may be. I haven't been but have heard great things from friends - many of whom say it was their most fun night(s) in Japan.
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  #64  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2020, 1:24 PM
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This is a very specific list based on the concerns and activities of Western private-sector managerial elites. At its lower levels it could probably be gamed by like two McKinsey contracts and an article in 1843.
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  #65  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2020, 2:47 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by svlt View Post
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.
The GaWC ranking of top ~550 cities in the World for 2020 is the most highly respected list of them all, out of all the different city ranking lists out there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city

People are always going to find fault in something like a ranking list they wish weren't true.

Calgary, which runs it's C trains on wind power, has been listed as the Cleanest City in the World several years running and I can almost guarantee there're posters especially from cities like Victoria, Halifax and Montreal (which all dump raw sewage into their waterways) and who are in this forum that are going to take extreme exception to Calgary's top spot, just because.

https://bigseventravel.com/2019/09/10-cleanest-cities/

Something I've noticed on the GaWC list is even though not as small as Hamilton, Bermuda or George Town, Cayman Island that are both on the list, but some of the smaller cities like Hobart, Suva, Reykjavik and Port Moresby is that they may be quite small, but are main cities on islands that are their regions main ports of trade. Regional port cities like Halifax are generally more globally connected which makes sense how they actually get on this list.

Quote:
Originally posted by hipster duck

Well, what can you really do with someone's subjective interpretation of a city's vibrancy, health or success? Successful for whom? Based on what? What else are we missing?

These can be interesting, even thought-provoking discussions, but they're never going to be empirical or replicable so they're going to be of less value for decision-makers.

Being able to measure trade in good X from one year to the next and compare it with another city might be dry, and definitely not perfectly measured, but at least you can benchmark yourself and measure your progress year-over-year. There's more inherent value in that for businesses.
I think that's what it comes down to, GaWC list quantifies cities by their connectivity through four "advanced producer services": accountancy, advertising, banking/finance, and law. Something that can't be easily observed or understood by the nay-sayers of this list.

Quote:
Originally Posted by niwell View Post
It seems intuitively low for Osaka, but we are looking at very narrow criteria of global connectivity. I've always got the impression that Osaka is much more important within the domestic market than it is in an international scope where Tokyo dominates. Something that has no bearing on how interesting the city may be. I haven't been but have heard great things from friends - many of whom say it was their most fun night(s) in Japan.
That's my take on certain cities ranking on the list too.
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  #66  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2020, 2:56 PM
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Originally Posted by hipster duck View Post
Well, what can you really do with someone's subjective interpretation of a city's vibrancy, health or success? Successful for whom? Based on what? What else are we missing?

These can be interesting, even thought-provoking discussions, but they're never going to be empirical or replicable so they're going to be of less value for decision-makers.
Whether or not people enjoy where they're living and find their lives to be enhanced by it is inherently subjective isn't it? It's a matter of how people feel. And that is valuable for those who are making decisions about the design and function of cities. Certainly for planners and politicians, but also for the citizens voting on and otherwise attempting to include such plans. Perhaps we in the forum are not all directly conducting the activism needed to change much, but that's a matter of our actions rather than the subject matter.

However, there are plenty of things that aren't simply subjective interpretations. Transportation planning for instance directly affects the ability of normal people - and businesses - to thrive. And subcategories like traffic congestion, pedestrian safety, air pollution, energy usage etc. can all be empirically measured.

Sorry but these are tangible and directly relevant issues. I'm not buying these attempts to paint them as some sort of nebulous fluff for which we don't really know who's measuring what for whom or why. That's just nonsense.

Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck View Post
Being able to measure trade in good X from one year to the next and compare it with another city might be dry, and definitely not perfectly measured, but at least you can benchmark yourself and measure your progress year-over-year. There's more inherent value in that for businesses.
Sure. For business. This is not primarily a business forum so it isn't going to be that relevant to many of us.
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  #67  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2020, 3:35 PM
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Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse View Post
Whether or not people enjoy where they're living and find their lives to be enhanced by it is inherently subjective isn't it? It's a matter of how people feel. And that is valuable for those who are making decisions about the design and function of cities. Certainly for planners and politicians, but also for the citizens voting on and otherwise attempting to include such plans. Perhaps we in the forum are not all directly conducting the activism needed to change much, but that's a matter of our actions rather than the subject matter.

However, there are plenty of things that aren't simply subjective interpretations. Transportation planning for instance directly affects the ability of normal people - and businesses - to thrive. And subcategories like traffic congestion, pedestrian safety, air pollution, energy usage etc. can all be empirically measured.

Sorry but these are tangible and directly relevant issues.
You and I must be on different forums. A cursory glance at the posts on this board and I can boil most posts down to:

- pictures of skylines
- pictures of construction projects
- navel gazing about how French Canadians are different from English Canadians
- Back and forth about how Alberta O&G doesn't get respect
- Lamentations about exterior cladding materials like EIFS and spandrel
- A general philosophy that posits that midrise, sidewalk-hugging 19th century European building forms represent the zenith in urban development and some discussion about which Canadian city is getting there the fastest

This is all good fun, but I don't see any serious planner or urban affairs professional looking at this board and applying it to their job.

Quote:
I'm not buying these attempts to paint them as some sort of nebulous fluff for which we don't really know who's measuring what for whom or why. That's just nonsense.
There are, of course, serious ways of measuring transportation demand or even things like social/health impacts of transportation projects. I never see this on this board, which is okay, because these are highly technical and would probably turn a lot of people off (including me, if I'm coming here to shoot the shit). Talk to the people who run these models, though, and the first thing they'll tell you is that "all models are wrong, but some are useful."

Quote:
Sure. For business. This is not primarily a business forum so it isn't going to be that relevant to many of us.
Yeah, but you made it sound like GaWC does irrelevant work. I'm not the arbiter on what is relevant, but I will say that it costs money to hire people to gather, analyze and report on this kind of macroeconomic data, and they've been around for 20 years so somebody out there probably thinks that what they do is relevant enough to pay for.
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  #68  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2020, 3:50 PM
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  #69  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2020, 4:20 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck View Post
You and I must be on different forums. A cursory glance at the posts on this board and I can boil most posts down to:

- pictures of skylines
- pictures of construction projects
- navel gazing about how French Canadians are different from English Canadians
- Back and forth about how Alberta O&G doesn't get respect
- Lamentations about exterior cladding materials like EIFS and spandrel
- A general philosophy that posits that midrise, sidewalk-hugging 19th century European building forms represent the zenith in urban development and some discussion about which Canadian city is getting there the fastest

This is all good fun, but I don't see any serious planner or urban affairs professional looking at this board and applying it to their job.
Obviously the forum is a mixture of recreation and serious discussion, but I see numerous threads just on transportation for instance. A thread on LRT, passenger rail in the corridor, general public transit, airports, and the decline of the car, all on my main Canada page. Yes a lot of the discussion is in the realm of aesthetics which is more niche and harder to quantity, but construction projects threads directly involve the creation of urban housing which directly affects the lives of real people. But if it actually is true that this forum isn't serious and the list is, that re-enforces the fact that the list isn't relevant to most of us.

In terms of planners. I know enough about the planning profession to understand the importance of public consultation and input. I would argue that the design of communities has become a far more democratic domain than global business (although still not democratic enough). In fact it is considered more important than ever to capture the views and preferences of the public in the planning process. There was (perhaps still is) a Halifax city councillor who participated in the Halifax local forum for instance. Besides, given that the forum is openly viewable to non-members, it doesn't require planners or government officials to participate directly for the forum to shape the views of both its members and other observers through the exchange of ideas. And these people can exert influence independently.

Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck View Post
There are, of course, serious ways of measuring transportation demand or even things like social/health impacts of transportation projects. I never see this on this board, which is okay, because these are highly technical and would probably turn a lot of people off (including me, if I'm coming here to shoot the shit). Talk to the people who run these models, though, and the first thing they'll tell you is that "all models are wrong, but some are useful."



Yeah, but you made it sound like GaWC does irrelevant work. I'm not the arbiter on what is relevant, but I will say that it costs money to hire people to gather, analyze and report on this kind of macroeconomic data, and they've been around for 20 years so somebody out there probably thinks that what they do is relevant enough to pay for.
Yes, i can see why i gave that impression. What I really meant was, irrelevant specifically to most of us on this forum or to those who are interested in things that make for enjoyable or broadly successful cities. When it comes to this list, many of the cities are in the positions that we (urban enthusiasts) would expect because businesses often concentrate in the cities that are the largest, wealthiest, and overall most successful. So we don't need the list to tell us the stature of those cities. But in cases where the placement differs from expectations, it's generally due to business-specific reasons that are mostly separate from livability / quality of life, beauty, culture, history, etc. so any conclusions we try to draw about the things that we care about are met with the inevitable "That's not what the list is measuring!!"

But yes, I concede that the list has value for the people who care about what it measures.
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  #70  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2020, 5:36 PM
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completely clickbaity without any metrics whatsoever.
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  #71  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2020, 7:13 PM
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I actually kind of like some neighbourhood ranking lists viewed in the context that most (the better ones at least) aren't intended to be an objective rating of the world's "coolest" areas or whatever. But rather a highlight of places that are interesting but many may not have heard of before. Otherwise every year would be Bushwick, Shoreditch, Mile-End, Trinity Bellwoods, etc. etc. etc. until they gentrify to a point that new areas take their place.
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  #72  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2020, 7:22 PM
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Time Out's a good publication. And yeah, their annual "coolest neighbourhoods" list is just meant to shine a spotlight on some interesting places around the world - each city's entry changes every year (mine was on the list a couple years ago )
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  #73  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2020, 7:28 PM
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I ask again, how are Quito and Osaka on the same level? This is like saying Grand Rapids and Shenzhen are on the same level.
Its almost like you have something against Quito? Putting aside the criteria for the ranking, here are some attributes you may not know about this city.

-Most modern airport in Latin America, only 5 star airport (skytrax) in south america. 5 consecutive years as South America's leading airport (WTA)

-Currently completing a 23km subway line, leaping decades ahead of much larger capital cities like Bogota in public transportation.

-Currently building a new skyline with several projects U/C from some of the most recognized architects and designers worldwide like Jean Nouvel, Carlos Zapata, Moshe Safdie, Philippe Stark, Bjarke Ingels & others.

Quito is a regional hub with massive influence in the country's economy and with a large presence of international businesses and organizations.

I'm not saying that Quito is more advanced or developed than Osaka, I just want to bring to light attributes that make this city great as well and that certainly give it a place as a global city within the ranking.

Check these out:

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/...-next-frontier

https://archive.curbed.com/2019/11/1...-airport-metro

https://www.airport-suppliers.com/qu...-in-the-world/
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  #74  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2020, 9:09 PM
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somebody has been using the keyword search!

I have nothing against Quito; it is just an illustration of the flaws of the list.
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  #75  
Old Posted Oct 15, 2020, 1:54 AM
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You betcha!

I would never have imagined that Verdun would make the top-20 list of the world's cool neighbourhoods when I bought my house in Verdun, just 15 years ago, moving from the Plateau-Mont-Royal.

At the time Verdun still had a lingering bad rep from the time from the 70's and 80's, when it was mostly known for bikers wars, drug dealing and frequent fires.

What a complete turnaround in a relatively short time.
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  #76  
Old Posted Oct 15, 2020, 2:21 AM
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great to see Verdun doing well. I enjoyed wandering around the streets of Verdun and adjacent areas during the late 90s.
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  #77  
Old Posted Oct 15, 2020, 4:08 PM
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I never suggested that, and you cut off 4/5s of my post where I gave my opinion and contributed to the discussion.
Thanks for the contribution.
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  #78  
Old Posted Oct 15, 2020, 4:12 PM
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Thanks for the contribution.
So merciless. I am very glad you're fan of mine and therefore on my side!
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  #79  
Old Posted Oct 15, 2020, 4:46 PM
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You betcha!

I would never have imagined that Verdun would make the top-20 list of the world's cool neighbourhoods when I bought my house in Verdun, just 15 years ago, moving from the Plateau-Mont-Royal.

At the time Verdun still had a lingering bad rep from the time from the 70's and 80's, when it was mostly known for bikers wars, drug dealing and frequent fires.

What a complete turnaround in a relatively short time.
Verdun is the only part of urban Montreal I have left to visit. It's funny - when I explored Montreal a lot more 10-15 years ago, my impression was that gentrification/hipsterdom would spread east and north from the Plateau outwards.

The general trajectory seemed to go Plateau (the OG neighbourhood) > Mile End > Little Italy > Rosemont > Villeray

So my next expectation would have been that it would have jumped the Met north and moved over to Hoch-Mais before attempting a Napoleonic expedition to conquer the vast hinterlands east of Pie IX.

It looks like there was some of that, but moreso that the "scene" moved towards Saint-Henri and Verdun.
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  #80  
Old Posted Oct 15, 2020, 5:38 PM
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St. Henri is right up close to downtown, and adjacent to the cleaned-up Lachine Canal. Verdun is just a bit farther away, with excellent metro connections.
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