Ranking of Most Important US Cities (how much, statistics, offices)

[openedskittles]

I noticed how hard it is to pick the top 10 most prominent US cities. Any kind of poll is subject to regional bias and simple name recognition issues. The population of a city is no longer useful in the US due to edge cities accompanied by rarely noticeable edges of city limits. Even metropolitan area population isn't always the best indicator of economic importance. If you try to evaluate that aspect by examining where fortune 500 companies are located, you will find high concentrations in cities like New York and Houston, but others like Los Angeles and Chicago will seem strangely lacking.

Therefore, I have come up with my own formula for determining which are the most important cities in the US. I looked up the top 4 consulting firms and top 8 investment banks (as ranked by vault) and noted which cities they have chosen to open one of their few US offices in. I chose these numbers because it is where the ratings become the most comparable between the two industries and stops just short of companies that have dozens of US offices (these probably average about a dozen with a couple that have only 6 and one that has about 20.)

This is a good way to determine the importance of a city because these companies employ very bright minds to find the most globally and regionally influential cities where they are near large populations and strong local economies in which they wish to extend their exclusive network. I think the results speak for themselves and form a list of cities that have strong name recognition, large populations as well as very strong and diverse economies where this type of company can succeed.

This is the top 10 list under my method:
1. New York (12/12)
2. Houston (12/12)
3. San Francisco (12/12)
4. Los Angeles (12/12)
5. Chicago (11/12)
6. Atlanta (10/12)
7. Boston (10/12)
8. Dallas (10/12)
9. Washington DC (8/12)
10. Philadelphia (6/12)

The fraction represents the number of firms out of the 12 that had offices in each city. The tie for the first four was broken by looking at the # of fortune 500 HQs, but the tie for the 10's was broken by looking at the rankings of the companies there. For example, the difference between Dallas and Atlanta was that Atlanta had a Lazard office (there are ten total in the US) but not a Greenhill & Co. office (of which there are only six), and the opposite is true for Dallas. However, Lazard is ranked 1 spot better in the industry, so Atlanta wins the tie.

Compare my ranking to the ranking of (2000 census) city population (least useful):
1. New York (8.4m)
2. Los Angeles (3.8m)
3. Chicago (2.9m)
4. Houston (2.2m)
5. Phoenix (1.6m)
6. Philadelphia (1.5m)
7. San Antonio (1.4m)
8. Dallas (1.3m)
9. San Diego (1.3m)
10. San Jose (0.9m)
This method drops San Francisco (12/12), Atlanta (10/12), Boston (10/12) and Washington DC (8/12) for Phoenix (0/12), San Antonio (0/12), San Diego (0/12) and San Jose (which could be up to 4/12 depending on how much of Silicon Valley counts as their metro area).

...and ranking of metropolitan area population (moderately useful):
1. New York (19m)
2. Los Angeles (12.9m)
3. Chicago (9.6m)
4. Dallas (6.3m)
5. Philadelphia (5.9m)
6. Houston (5.7m)
7. Miami (5.5m)
8. Atlanta (5.4m)
9. Washington DC (5.4m)
10. Boston (4.5m)
The missing San Francisco area is #13 on this list with 4.3 million people; Miami is #7 here, but was about #14 in my ranking with 3/12 offices.

[manny9manny]

i would rank Americas most important cities, or cities most likely to get nuked, from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, San Francisco, Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Houston and Miami.

[NOLA101]

Your method makes little sense, IMO. Consulting firms and investment banks are like .25% of U.S. employment, your methodology makes no allowance for the relative size of such offices, and basically all major cities will have such offices (as your methodology shows). In practice it's silly. Goldman Sachs may have lots of U.S. offices, but they have 90% of top employees in one city. Why weight all cities where they have at least one employee equally?

If, by some chance, a city didn't have such an office, I don't get why it would be less "important". I'm not getting the connection here.

If you want to rank cities by economic importance, the Bureau of Labor statistics already has done the heavy lifting. They have tons of data on economic might by metro area.

[Tall Traveler]

1. NYC
2. DC
3. SF
4. LA
5. Houston
6. Chicago
7. Atlanta
8. Seattle
9. Dallas
Boston