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Originally Posted by someone123
People inside the Anglosphere tend to have a huge bias toward assuming the stuff that is most important or notable to them as English speakers is the same for the whole world. It is not unlike how Americans think of #1 in the world as being more or less synonymous with #1 in the US.
Just think of how much more important Canadians tend to think the UK is even though it has a smaller economy than Germany. The UK is closer to France or Italy in terms of global importance than it is to the US or China.
Is London really that much more important than Shanghai or Tokyo? I mean, sure, there's that think tank that produces lists of alpha and beta cities and says London is #1 and Beijing or Paris are one tier down. Guess where they're based? The UK.  |
Despite the loss of empire, London is still a very globally connected and influential metropolis. It utterly dominates the UK even in North America -- when was the last time Hollywood set a film in the UK that wasn't set in London, but instead Sheffield or Liverpool or Cardiff? London leaves everything in the dust and it is a huge economic centre within Europe, and still does maintain old colonial ties. Only Paris really compares, and even then, I still think London dominates. Paris works more of a "Metropolis of Europe" but London is more globally-connected.
It's actually kinda surprising, considering industrialization and the high density of Europe that more huge metropoli didn't appear on the continent, as in Asia or even the Americas. There's a lot of cities, sure, but not many above 7-8 million. It's really just London, Paris, and Moscow. And I guess Istanbul, but it seems more Middle Eastern these days. But despite their wealth and influence, Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands never spawned a Paris or London. Meanwhile, East Asia has Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taipei. The Americas have New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Sao Paolo.