Power Shift: Cities

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

It's interesting how there's no sizable Canadian city on Lake Erie...

I heard that the lake is very shallow on the Canadian side, and consequently lacks good natural harbors.

[MolsonExport]

Lake Huron lacks big cities on both sides. The largest city on Lake Huron is in Canada (Sarnia, ~78K).

[Crawford]

Yeah, Lake Huron is pretty undeveloped. And I wouldn't even count Sarnia, which is really a river town that sorta borders the southern tip of Lake Huron.

Excepting the Sarnia-like Port Huron, the biggest city on the U.S. side is Alpena, which is a semi-depressed former lumber town. There's really no major settlement on the eastern half of Michigan's lower peninsula north of the Saginaw-Bay City area.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Sorry, I didn't complete that thought. It should've read:

"for all of its great lakes shoreline, ontario only developed two large cities of consequence on the lakes, and both of them on the west end of lake ontario several dozen miles from each other."


Windsor, sarnia, sault ste. marie, and thunder bay aren't exactly nothing, but they're all relatively small potatoes compared to toronto and hamilton. For whatever reason, big great lakes cities like chicago, detroit, cleveland, and Milwaukee, never happened in canada above niagara. It must've been a big road block back in the day, whereas the US bypassed that shit with the erie canal into NYC.

No worries. I totally get what you mean.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

I heard that the lake is very shallow on the Canadian side, and consequently lacks good natural harbors.

That could be a part of it. A port was built for lake freighters carrying iron ore to the large steel plant at nanticoke, and there's port colbourne, the entrance to the welland canal, but those are the only large frieghter ports on the canadian side of lake erie that I'm familiar with.

Generally speaking, lake erie is just very shallow overall compared to the other great lakes.


Max depth:

Superior - 1,333'
Michigan - 925'
Ontario - 804'
Huron - 748'
Erie - 210'



Average depth:

Superior - 483'
Ontario - 283'
Michigan - 279'
Huron - 195'
Erie - 62'

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Lake Huron lacks big cities on both sides. The largest city on Lake Huron is in Canada (Sarnia, ~78K).

Yep, huron, superior, and upper michigan became centers of resource extraction and never developed large cities.

Ontario, erie and lower michigan became centers of resource processing and hence they got the big cities.


Visual demonstration:


Source: https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2017/0...ht-from-space/

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Do Americans even know a lot about Cleveland? It just seems to rarely come up.

it’s a temporal thing with the rustbelt. watch a movie from the 70s, even early 90s (look at the “important” cities up on the harvard law board in the Firm for instance). ask like older boomers or something.

but then it was like the water all went out of the pool within a 1/2 generation.

to answer your question probably not.

[Razor]

Thanks for posting that lite Brite satellite pic again Steely Dan. I find it fascinating! Cleveland to Pittsburgh really lights up, as does Detroit, and obviously Chicago- Milwaukee. Toronto - Hamilton doesn't light up as much as I thought it should though. Is it because of our lighting regulations up here ?(kidding)..Both Sarnia and Syracuse seem to light up pretty good as well.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Razor

Toronto - Hamilton doesn't light up as much as I thought it should though.

Yeah, the growth boundaries of canadian cities are on full display here.

US rustbelt metros have sprawled themselves to near oblivion. Essentially stagnant on the population front for decades, but now occupying 4x the land area.

Originally Posted by Centropolis

it’s a temporal thing with the rustbelt. watch a movie from the 70s, even early 90s (look at the “important” cities up on the harvard law board in the Firm for instance). ask like older boomers or something.

but then it was like the water all went out of the pool within a 1/2 generation.

to answer your question probably not.

For joe six-pack types (like me), king james kinda put cleveland back "on the map" for a little bit.

But that's obviously already fading.

[Razor]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

for sure it is Ottawa (2nd "standalone" big city of Ontario, after Toronto). Hamilton for third, but with KW and London nipping at its heels, and Windsor being nothing to slouch at.

That sounds about right..Toronto- Ottawa is sort of like the NYC-Buffalo comparison, only in that both Buffalo and Ottawa are both large enough to have pro sports and their own semi major markets away from the alpha city.. The difference being that Buffalo is less isolated and is part of a larger market to draw from if you factor in the Canadian side. Ontario has a decent list of next tier cities for sure..Hamilton, London, Kitchener/Waterloo and Windsor.

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Yeah, the growth boundaries of canadian cities are on full display here.

Absolutely! There's maybe 7-8 million people in that corridor, and you wouldn't know it from looking at that satellite picture. Lights out at 11:00!
re: Chicago, and just as a side note, my only experience with Chicago was flying over it at night, and it was well lit up and seemed to go on forever until boom! we hit the lake and total darkness below..Just the sudden contrast.

[SFBruin]

Getting back to the topic at hand, I think that SF and LA have one of the most intense city rivalries that I have seen.

LA has the edge in population (and by a pretty wide margin), but, economically, the cities are pretty neck and neck.

I think that only time will tell what happens in the future.

[sopas ej]

Silly me.

*Delete*

[CityAmateur]

Originally Posted by jbermingham123

Exactly. Size and status vary orthogonally. Texas cities can grow as big as they want, but global status is a different game entirely.

The problem for any city in Texas in terms of global status is that they will always be behind NYC and LA in terms of global impact and there is only room for 2 or arguably 3 ( Chicago? ) American cities.

Ditto in Europe there are many wonderful cities with superb cultural and economic attributes but London and Paris are the Big 2 and it is impossible to imagine that change. Even the likes of Berlin and Madrid feel essentially provincial when compared to London and Paris which are just on a bigger scale in every way.

Ask a man in the street to name cities in China and he will name Peking, Shanghai and Hong Kong and then start to struggle. No matter how populous or importnat the others are they are not in the global imagination.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by CityAmateur

The problem for any city in Texas in terms of global status is that they will always be behind NYC and LA in terms of global impact and there is only room for 2 or arguably 3 ( Chicago? ) American cities.

another issue that compounds the situation in texas is that the state spawned two nearly identical in size super-cities in dallas and houston, diluting the overall impact of both.

if urban texas had coalesced around 1 single major city that now had a metro population of ~14 million, then it'd be easier for that city to start making more of a name for itself on the world stage as the lone alpha dog of the lone star state.

[CityAmateur]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

another issue that compounds the situation in texas is that the state spawned two nearly identical in size super-cities in dallas and houston, diluting the overall impact of both.

if urban texas had coalesced around 1 single major city that now had a metro population of ~14 million, then it'd be easier for that city to start making more of a name for itself on the world stage as the lone alpha dog of the lone star state.

Very true. Arguably California is the only US state with the size and wealth to house 2 alpha cities and even then SF is a high status Beta rather than an alpha.

The thing is it depends on what one means by a "great city". What is "great"?

EG I love Chicago but is it a "great" city in the sense that say London or NY are great? It arguably is not.

[iheartthed]

L.A. isn't really an alpha city in the same way that New York and London are. And while Chicago isn't New York, Tokyo, or London, Chicago IS the second greatest urban place in the U.S. right now. That may not always be the case, but I don't think anyone is really that close to displacing it. Philadelphia is probably third, and fourth would be a tie between Boston, S.F., and D.C.

[JManc]

Texas is more like Germany; no one city really stands out over the rest (in Germany or Europe) while Paris and London clearly dominate their respective countries as well as Europe in Germany in general. Texas will be multimodal unless we can take out Dallas. Or give them to Oklahoma.

[CityAmateur]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

L.A. isn't really an alpha city in the same way that New York and London are. And while Chicago isn't New York, Tokyo, or London, Chicago IS the second greatest urban place in the U.S. right now. That may not always be the case, but I don't think anyone is really that close to displacing it. Philadelphia is probably third, and fourth would be a tie between Boston, S.F., and D.C.

To an extent, I think there is a difference in "city" and "urban place".

As an "urban place" I wholly agree with you. Downtown Chicago ( Let's say from Division down to Roosevelt has the superb skyline and is the only "urban place" in the USA to even begin to bear some comparison to Manhattan or London City/West End as a retail/financial/cultural center. LA does not have that feel.

However, in terms of population, wealth creation and global footprint LA is probably ahead of Chicago and is just more globally famous through Hollywood.

[DCReid]

Here's an interesting ranking of cities from a Wiki article -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global..._Network#Alpha


It's surprising that Montreal ranks higher than DC, and on par with SF, and San Jose ranks on the same level as Austin and Detroit.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by CityAmateur

To an extent, I think there is a difference in "city" and "urban place".

As an "urban place" I wholly agree with you. Downtown Chicago ( Let's say from Division down to Roosevelt has the superb skyline and is the only "urban place" in the USA to even begin to bear some comparison to Manhattan or London City/West End as a retail/financial/cultural center. LA does not have that feel.

However, in terms of population, wealth creation and global footprint LA is probably ahead of Chicago and is just more globally famous through Hollywood.

In terms of the things you mentioned, as well as GDP and international/global trade, LA is most definitely ahead of Chicago.

[CityAmateur]

Originally Posted by DCReid

Here's an interesting ranking of cities from a Wiki article -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global..._Network#Alpha


It's surprising that Montreal ranks higher than DC, and on par with SF, and San Jose ranks on the same level as Austin and Detroit.

One could quibble with some placements but its near enough.

Most people will accept that London and New York ( the NYLON twins ) represent the ultimate global reach metros. I worked for 12 to 13 years in London and still do business there and it always felt and feels like the world and its money flows through it. The amount of money traded there daily is utterly insane.

Most accept that there exists a tiny handful including the likes of Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris that are not far behind but London and NYC benefit from being English speaking.

NY as alpha ++ with LA and Chicago as alpha + seems right.