Power Shift: Cities

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by north 42

Windsor, while the city proper is technically not on Lake Erie, it’s metro is, and as of this year, it’s metro now includes all of Essex County. So that is a metro of about 425K (2021 estimate) on the north shore of Lake Erie.

good point. detroit/windsor is the major lake city for the western end of lake erie, it just happens to be located ~15 miles up a major navigable river instead of directly on the lakeshore itself.

similarly, the two sault ste. marie's are not directly on lake superior itself either, but rather ~5 miles downstream from the lake on the st. mary's river where the falls are, yet everyone considers them "lake superior cities" without question.

so 15 miles vs. 5 miles. when talking about major navigable rivers like the detroit river or the st. mary's river, that's not really much of a difference at all.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

London has the most connected city in the world by a large margin. Pre covid, its airports handled 150 mi passengers against 120 mi from New York. In the past two decades, London in fact grew at New York expenses, reversing the both cities date post WWII.

Whether GaWC is British biased or not, nothing compares to your own (and most of this forum) American bias. Everything single thing must revolve around the US.

London's airspace is much larger than New York's.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

You didn’t quote my whole post. I didn’t say anything about international connectivity, but connection only and I gave the best example available, which is air passengers (domestic + international).

London handles more than any other city in the world, followed by New York, Tokyo and Paris, which is incidentally the widely regarded as world’s 4 more important cities. Or at least those 4 will be mentioned by the most. That’s even more impressive for London as unlike New York it doesn’t have a massive domestic hinterland to cater.

Britain was the center of world’s economy up to WWII despite not being the world’s wealthiest country since the 1880’s. It’s not GDP alone that matters, specially measured in the very inflated USD.

London is not world’s primate city (nor any other city for that matter), but as today, it’s in a much better position vis-à-vis to New York than it was since the end of WWII and the demise of British economic empire. In short, London made gains while New York lost lots of ground since the 1990’s.

The U.K. just set fire to London's competitive advantage. Being a big city in a large market is really important, and London's no longer in a big market.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

It won’t come nowhere close to New York brand decline. As late as the 1990’s, there wouldn’t be any list putting London nowhere near New York. It would be an utter absurd even thinking of it. Maybe a Chicago-tier city, at best.

Now, you are here, few years later, annoyed by those lists that not only consider New York and London, equals, but in most cases London is the chosen one.

London’s rise is one of the most remarkable things in urban geography. The city made an expected comeback, attract billionaires from all corners of the globe, Indians, Arabs, Russians, millions of immigrants and got this new powerful, global brand.

New York didn't decline. London improved. But, to reiterate, that coincides with the U.K. joining the EU in the 1970s. The EU was for a long time the second largest economy in the world, and now is the third largest.

[CityAmateur]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

New York didn't decline. London improved. But, to reiterate, that coincides with the U.K. joining the EU in the 1970s. The EU was for a long time the second largest economy in the world, and now is the third largest.

I don't disagree with you but I think your focus is too narrow if only focussing on the EU.

What really kick-started London's resurgence was the fact that it essentially captured the eurodollar phenom from the 1960s onwards. This a consequence of several factors not least the famously light-touch regulation with the City free to do as it pleased to an extent.

The increasing importance of global insurance, commodities trading and the forex market - all sectors of the international finance world in which London is remarkably strong are also important.

London is "useful". It's remarkable connectivity based on language, law, and crucially GMT, It's forex window, its vast depth of common law legal expertise, Lloyds merely the tip of the vast Insurance panoply run from there etc etc. We'll find that it will weather the Brexit storm.

[Centropolis]

i dont know enough about this shit to speak with any authority - but i really get the sense that london facilitates all of the things that wealthy people do but don’t talk about in polite company. i mean i doubt someone who has done business or their books in the City their entire life is going to pack up for Manhattan or Frankfurt and try to explain everything and hope none of it will end up in the paper.

so i imagine whatever that part is - is safe.

[CityAmateur]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

i dont know enough about this shit to speak with any authority - but i really get the sense that london facilitates all of the things that wealthy people do but don’t talk about in polite company. i mean i doubt someone who has done business or their books in the City their entire life is going to pack up for Manhattan or Frankfurt and try to explain everything and hope none of it will end up in the paper.

so i imagine whatever that part is - is safe.

A grain of truth in what you say but it is also possible to explain it by saying that London excels at the more arcane hidden things....not of necessity shadey but arcane

Most people don't know that Forex is by far the biggest market of all.....dwarfing equities on daily position opening and closing. The London window is the busiest. Insurance, Commodities, legal expertise....all facilitated in London to a far greater extent than elsewhere.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by CityAmateur

I don't disagree with you but I think your focus is too narrow if only focussing on the EU.

What really kick-started London's resurgence was the fact that it essentially captured the eurodollar phenom from the 1960s onwards. This a consequence of several factors not least the famously light-touch regulation with the City free to do as it pleased to an extent.

The increasing importance of global insurance, commodities trading and the forex market - all sectors of the international finance world in which London is remarkably strong are also important.

London is "useful". It's remarkable connectivity based on language, law, and crucially GMT, It's forex window, its vast depth of common law legal expertise, Lloyds merely the tip of the vast Insurance panoply run from there etc etc. We'll find that it will weather the Brexit storm.

I agree that globalism also played a role, but I think being part of the EU in the era of globalism is critical to establishing modern day London. London and the U.K. were an economic disaster post WW2 and all the way into the 1970s. The U.K. pulling itself out of that slump coincided very neatly with forming a single market economy with western Europe.

Globalism also greatly helped New York in the post-industrial era too, btw. And I would argue that New York and London developed into analogous post-industrial cities because they were the two largest English speaking cities on Earth, located in the two largest economies on Earth.

[JDRCRASH]

Originally Posted by CityAmateur

There is probably a more or less defined line on the map between "Giants land" and Dodgers land and that more or less defines the cultural hinterland of both cities.

I've always thought of the Big Sur Los Padres forest area as the true halfway point between SoCal and NorCal both geographic and cultural standpoint. For a good +100 miles from Monterey/Salinas to Morro Bay/Paso Robles it almost feels like complete wilderness.

[dc_denizen]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

i dont know enough about this shit to speak with any authority - but i really get the sense that london facilitates all of the things that wealthy people do but don’t talk about in polite company. i mean i doubt someone who has done business or their books in the City their entire life is going to pack up for Manhattan or Frankfurt and try to explain everything and hope none of it will end up in the paper.

so i imagine whatever that part is - is safe.

London is more lenient on money laundering , that’s a certainty

Russian and Saudi oligarchs don’t want their assets under the nose of the IRS and FBI. Thus London

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

London is more lenient on money laundering , that’s a certainty

Russian and Saudi oligarchs don’t want their assets under the nose of the IRS and FBI. Thus London

That's more Switzerland than London. London was an easy way into the EU for them, though.

[CityAmateur]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

That's more Switzerland than London. London was an easy way into the EU for them, though.

The traditional difference between sheltering hot money in Switzerland or London is that in Switzerland money could be shielded and saved but in London it was easier to put it to work whilst keeping it away from prying eyes and grasping hands.

[shadyunltd]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Ok, you can do better. In fact I was sure you would come up with Atlanta...

Atlanta is an air hub. London, New York, Tokyo and Paris are mostly final destinations. Hub move from Atlanta, and its passengers traffic would be cut by half or 2/3 as it happens often in the US: St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, etc.

Air traffic is the best metric available. It states how many people, coming from far away, have relations or are interested in a given city. That goes regardless you wanting the US to be the centre of universe or London being an irrelevant village.

GDP is not all that matter. Money is God for some cultures, but society is much more complex than a yearly economic output, heavily deformed by volatile exchange rates. In any case, London/Southeast England would rank high up in a such list.

You do realise GDP on purchasing power parity exists, right?

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by shadyunltd

You do realise GDP on purchasing power parity exists, right?

And it's really naive to think you can really apply PPP for real. Variables are massive, involving millions of products or services. PPP it's a mere educated guess.

[nito]

Originally Posted by Manitopiaaa

There have been tons of discussions on SSC about GaWC over 15 years. The methodology is very outdated and it's largely considered a very poor ranking since it is essentially based on (a) ties to London through global capital, and (b) importance in accountancy, advertising, banking/finance, insurance, law, and management consultancy:

A recurring issue with the GaWC alpha-beta-gamma ranking isn’t the methodology or the ranking itself, it is the crude interpretation and discussion around it. The initial project did indeed focus on London, but the idea that it still is or a PR exercise is laughably inaccurate. As it says on the tin, the research is around cataloguing connectivity of world cities based on financial and professional service firms. Seeing people devolve into Neanderthals when they see city X is above/below city Y is amusing.

Originally Posted by Crawford

Per GaWC, which is crap. But GaWC and other UK-based entities are always trying to push this ridiculous narrative.

What an embarrassing piece of drivel which probably does more to underline your bias and lack of critical thinking. The GaWC might have been established at a British university, but if you had bothered to undertake some rudimentary research, you would quickly note that it is an umbrella organisation for the leading urban geographers and researchers from across the world.

Originally Posted by Crawford

Airport traffic is a function of location and hub terminals, nothing more. London is very well-located, like Dubai, so will always have heavy air traffic. Also it has crappier rail than the Continent so more domestic traffic. Amsterdam is a huge intl. air hub, but isn't a particularly important city. But it's well located and has an airline hub.

The UK doesn’t yet (not counting HS1) possess a domestic HSR system, but its intercity network moves more people than the intercity networks of France and Germany because it operates a high-frequency competitive service. I struggled to source domestic aviation figures for France, but both the UK and Germany have broadly the same number of domestic air passengers (c.22mn), figures dwarfed by their respective intercity train networks. I was surprised that the UK figure is not higher due to its island and elongated geography. Outside of flights to islands, Northern Ireland and geographical extremities of the mainland, domestic aviation has been suppressed by the competitive intercity rail market and the extreme price of landing slots, which makes domestic trips far less viable.

London’s geographical location certainly helps, and like New York and other international cities, it operates hub facilities. However, if your assumption is that the bulk of arrivals at London’s airports are merely transfers, this would not tally with the volume of leisure and business travellers departing for the city and elsewhere in the UK. If large numbers of people were merely transferring, there wouldn’t be sufficient demand for so many airport train services to multiple airports.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

New York didn't decline. London improved. But, to reiterate, that coincides with the U.K. joining the EU in the 1970s. The EU was for a long time the second largest economy in the world, and now is the third largest.

The rise of London correlated not with EU membership, but with the end of a post-war policy to deliberately hinder development in London (an ill-thought policy to redistribute economic growth to the regions) and market liberalisation. The big winners from EU membership were the regions that were left behind that required regeneration. London in contrast – whilst being a Remain stronghold – is a post-industrial city focused on services which would still today, face barriers to access across the continent. It is part of the reason why non-EU business activity was so strong relative to EU activity across so many sectors.

There are of course issues with leaving the EU that should not be dismissed, but by far the biggest threat to London isn’t Brexit, or Covid-19, it is the persistent undersupply of new housing and infrastructure to support its growing population. Between 2000-18, a staggering 343,436 homes were not built in London, with a further 166,471 not built over the same period in the South East and East of England regions surrounding London.