Which city would you declare as the US cultural capital if there is one?

[Shawn]

There's no answer to this question.

NYC may very well be "quintessential America", but it's not representative of the majority of Americans' lived experiences.

LA may very well be where consumption culture is manufactured, but a substantial amount of the creators and producers living in LA moved there from outside California, bringing their cultural frameworks with them.

And that's about it. Only NYC and LA could reasonably be positioned as the singular cultural capital of the entire country, and neither truly fits the bill.

There is no Paris, Kyoto, or Rio of the United States in this regard. We're better off for it, too.