Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I agree that Torontonians overrate Toronto, but Canadians in general discount it (Toronto is much-hated in the rest of Canada.)
I suspect constructing a list like this is doomed to failure, since few of us have actually been to all the major cities on the planet. And therefore we rely on hearsay.
But it's obvious to me that a short-list would include (asterisk means I've been there):
*New York
*London
Hong Kong
*Rio de Janiero
*Rome
*Paris
Tokyo
and a longer list would include:
*San Francisco
*Barcelona
*Istanbul
Berlin
*Amsterdam
*Lisbon
Sydney
*Quebec City
Madrid
*Vancouver and *Toronto would be down there in a lower-level list that would perhaps include Chicago, Seattle, ULos Angeles, Cairo, Buenes Aires, etc..
I love your list, and I almost agree 100%, but I can't take the list completely seriously without including Los Angeles, albeit last, on your top list of world class cities. I don't even think Rome or Rio should be included on that top tier, but definitely part of your longer list. I've been to most of those cities as well.
Why Los Angeles? It's a city with over 150 languages, and dozens of large enclaves ('towns) with different ethnic cultures.
I'm just curious why you would not include it high on your list?
Right you are... I don't know if I would rate it as high as Buenos Aires -- after all, BA is almost 3 times the size, is a very cosmopolitan city and scores very highly on most of these metrics as well (though it has more poverty too) -- but I have never been to St Petersburg so I can't tell for sure. I did just talk to someone from the Soviet block who said that it's a more impressive city than Moscow and described it as one huge outdoor museum that requires days and days of walking to just scratch the surface. So yeah...
Buenos Aires is third worldish with an extremely low per capita GDP
Buenos Aires is third worldish with an extremely low per capita GDP
Using the UN's Human Development Index, Buenos Aires has a 0.908 out 1.0 which ranks in the Very High category (the highest category possible). Its GDP per capita is US$ 34,200 which doesn't really count as extremely low or even low. "Third World" conditions can be really bad and BA doesn't fit the bill. A really low per capita GDP is the kind where large swathes of the population live off of less than $2 a day and generally comes with astronomical rates of malnutrition and infant mortality as well as a greatly reduced life expectancy which BA does not have. If BA were the definition of the kind of life that third world and extremely low per capita GDP gets you, then I think the world is actually in incredibly great shape.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 05-24-2013 at 12:38 PM..
New York, London
Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, L.A.
San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, Chicago, Singapore, Seoul, Sydney
Dubai, Zurich, Rome, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Berlin, Shanghai, Beijing, Melbourne
Geneva, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Stockholm, Zurich, Madrid, Barcelona, Brussels
(Close, but not quite: Prague, Seattle, Miami, Oslo, Milan, Istanbul)
Nothing else.
Zurich, Geneva, Stockholm, Oslo, Prague, and Brussels more world class than Boston!?
*San Francisco
*Barcelona
*Istanbul
Berlin
*Amsterdam
*Lisbon
Sydney
*Quebec City
Madrid
*Vancouver and *Toronto would be down there in a lower-level list that would perhaps include Chicago, Seattle, ULos Angeles, Cairo, Buenes Aires, etc..
As a Quebec City native, what the hell is it doing on that list?
Buenos Aires is not 3rd worldish for gods sake. It is more 1st world than a lot of American, Brazilian, Chinese cities.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
