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I don’t get the need to split the Bay Area into two parts. It functions as a single region, even if a spread out one. Heck, the SF 49ers are basically located in San Jose.
In 2010, Rand McNally ranked Seattle in the same tier as Oklahoma City and Indianapolis, and below Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Shows how clueless they are and how pointless these rankings are.
In 2010, Microsoft and Amazon were already well established in the Seattle area.
I’d just slide it down to the middle of your “B” grouping. Maybe one above Pittsburgh since Johns Hopkins is a slightly better university than CMU. I think your rankings and grouping is really accurate other than Baltimore. I’d certainly put Austin, Charlotte, and St Louis above it for various reasons. Charlotte is now a banking center. St Louis is the regional powerhouse. Austin is now tech. I guess you could debate Charlotte since it lacks the top university but the presence of two enormous national banks counterbalances that to some degree.
Why?
Baltimore still has a more diverse and larger economy then all the cities you just listed. You act as if it doesn’t have multiple regional and nationally important/renowned companies and or institutions headquartered there.
T. Rowe Price is the largest asset management firm outside of NYC. Johns Hopkins and the NSA are globally relevant and should be self explanatory. The Naval Acadamy is in Annapolis. The United States Social Security Administration (SSA) is headquartered in Woodlawn. The port is #7 on the continent by trade value and #1 for car importation. I’m not even going to get into the cities historic & cultural significance considering the national anthem was written in Fort McHenry.
I don’t get the need to split the Bay Area into two parts. It functions as a single region, even if a spread out one. Heck, the SF 49ers are basically located in San Jose.
Which is exactly why I would group the Bay Area together with Chicago and DC/Baltimore (which also should clearly be combined) in a tier a tad below LA, mainly due to the latter's population, GDP and visibility. NYC is of course unquestionably in its own tier on top.
San Francisco is influential by itself, but I don't think it is as influential as the nation's capital without San Jose.
Boston is not as influential as the nation's capital.
Chicago is certainly not a tier above DC in influence.
New York is the only city as (or more) influential than the capital.
DC should be #2 in Tier A+++ or at the top if Tier A++.
Without San Jose imo San Francisco should be just a Tier A city. I know a lot of posters would want to see SF higher, but I don't think it's stature is that high without SJ. Without SJ, SF still packs a punch. It leads the A+ group in GDP, but the A group has GDPs not far behind. However, this is about influence and not just economics. And although I would say that SF is more influential that the tier A cities, what puts it in a Tier above them is the added push of silicon valley.
I disagree here. Baltimore is always brought up in discussions about crime and policing. Like when people start ranting about politics they always being up Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis.
Baltimore is sort of the step child of the Northeast corridor. It does get overshadowed. But its proximity to the largest and most powerful does help it in ways.
I feel my ranking is justified. I feel Baltimore receives plenty of positive attention outside of sports. National Aquarium, Zoo, Edgar Allen Poe, USA National Anthem, major port during 1700's-1800's, Under Armor, the harbor. It has a major sized economy too. Lot of old money/stately mansions along the harbor.
You can't say Baltimore is invisible. In 2015 it was probably one of the most discussed cities for the year in the entire country after the Freddie Gray incident. The city was featured in the tv series The Wire.
Btw, I am NOT in any way opening the door to discussing politics here. I'm just saying Baltimore is still highly relevant. Nearby Annapolis MD is super posh, has the Naval Academy. Not sure but I think Annapolis is just outside Baltimore's orbit though.
I'm sticking with my original comment. I like my ranking and I could really only see Portland or Austin outranking Baltimore and that's if you more heavily weight future outlook and name recognition. Really I could see a case for Portland.
Anyway just my two cents. Baltimore is so urban too, look on Google satellite view, Baltimore is a massive pile of concrete. That has to count for something.
I pretty much agree with your description of Baltimore above, especially that "stepchild of the Northeast Corridor" comment. But I will note that Annapolis does (or did) have its rundown parts. They just happen to lie away from the major visitor draws. (When my ex and I stayed in Annapolis during a swing through the mid-Atlantic, our hotel sat right on the border between posh, touristy Annapolis and that other Annapolis. And it wasn't a fleabag hotel, either, but a decent outpost of a major chain. But this was the early 1990s, and things may have changed a great deal since then.)
Annapolis is roughly equidistant from Baltimore and Washington, but its county (Anne Arundel) is part of the Baltimore MSA, and it struck me that the city felt more closely tied to Baltimore than Washington.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffD
I’d just slide it down to the middle of your “B” grouping. Maybe one above Pittsburgh since Johns Hopkins is a slightly better university than CMU. I think your rankings and grouping is really accurate other than Baltimore. I’d certainly put Austin, Charlotte, and St Louis above it for various reasons. Charlotte is now a banking center. St Louis is the regional powerhouse. Austin is now tech. I guess you could debate Charlotte since it lacks the top university but the presence of two enormous national banks counterbalances that to some degree.
Indeed, St. Louis remains the principal city of the Central Plains region, but Kansas City is gaining on it, and the latter punches above its weight. (However: St. Louis will quite likely always have the edge over Kansas City in education because of the quality and age of its colleges and universities.) I would agree, though, that g500 put them in the right tiers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Heel82
I don’t get the need to split the Bay Area into two parts. It functions as a single region, even if a spread out one. Heck, the SF 49ers are basically located in San Jose.
Over on another thread, someone pointed out that Oakland doesn't consider itself a "satellite" of San Francisco but a metropolitan center in its own.
Baltimore still has a more diverse and larger economy then all the cities you just listed. You act as if it doesn’t have multiple regional and nationally important/renowned companies and or institutions headquartered there.
T. Rowe Price is the largest asset management firm outside of NYC. Johns Hopkins and the NSA are globally relevant and should be self explanatory. The Naval Acadamy is in Annapolis. The United States Social Security Administration (SSA) is headquartered in Woodlawn. The port is #7 on the continent by trade value and #1 for car importation. I’m not even going to get into the cities historic & cultural significance considering the national anthem was written in Fort McHenry.
It’s placed just fine.
OK. It's #19 ranking in this list aligns pretty well with GDP for the metro. I think I'm letting the vast slums influence my opinion. Baltimore is pretty far down the gentrification curve compared to the larger Northeast Corridor cities. It's also less than half the GDP of Philly, Boston, and DC so it's easy to think of it as comparatively small. I do mildly object to lumping Annapolis into Baltimore. Annapolis is the same distance from Baltimore as Washington DC. I tend to lump anything south of BWI as DC.
I disagree here. Baltimore is always brought up in discussions about crime and policing. Like when people start ranting about politics they are always being up Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis.
I have to politely disagree with you. Baltimore has been receiving more negative attention than ever to the ghettos that plague the city. That attention is not positive and it's making an otherwise lesser-known city look bad to the public; unfortunately overshadowing all the good things about the city. Baltimore has had a crime problem as long as these past 4 generations can remember and that says something because it hasn't necessarily gotten better.
Yes, Chicago has bad crime problems primarily in the south but it is so well known for other positive things because it's one of the largest cities in America. Baltimore however does not have as much publicity as Chicago or even St. Louis or Detriot. Those cities even have notable suburbs like Winnetka, IL, Naperville/Aurora, IL, Ann Arbor, MI, Clayton, MO, East. St Louis, MO, etc.
Most people on this forum could probably not even name one Baltimore suburb (except for Annapolis in some cases). Baltimore isn't just on the same level as Houston, Atlanta, Philidelphia, etc.
I don’t get the need to split the Bay Area into two parts. It functions as a single region, even if a spread out one. Heck, the SF 49ers are basically located in San Jose.
The Bay Area defies simple categorization. It's a single overarching region but with several interdependent nodes that are still their own thing that can be assessed by themselves statistically, depending on the occasion. That said, for the purposes of this discussion, I agree that it's probably easiest to simply consider the region as a whole.
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