Which Two Metros Are There That Are Really In Sync Wth Each other

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by ue

Umm... I think Toronto and San Francisco could dispute that with Chicago. Maybe LA too.

Financial and Insurance GDP 2015 (MSAs):

New York ------- US$ 256 billion
Chicago --------- US$ 64 billion
Los Angeles ----- US$ 53 billion
Philadelphia ---- US$ 43 billion
Boston ---------- US$ 39 billion
Dallas ---------- US$ 34 billion
San Francisco --- US$ 32 billion
Atlanta --------- US$ 29 billion
Minneapolis ----- US$ 24 billion
Charlotte ------- US$ 21 billion
Miami ----------- US$ 21 billion

[Hot Rod]

Good Lord, the idiocy of people on this forum.

What do you think the do in Chicago, sit around? Those massive skyscrapers are there for something. I believe the CME/CBOT is the largest commodities market in the world (larger than the New York based AME).

You really think SF or LA (or TO) more important financial center than Chicago??? The aforementioned list by Yuriangrade shows why people normally say "New York and Chicago", although I'm a bit shocked that Chicago is as low as the list indicates - I thought it'd be around $150B but surely consolidations have taken pieces away that used to be there.

[TimCity2000]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Yep. You beat me to the punch. Chicago and Milwaukee represent one of the strongest big brother/little brother sibling relationships out of all of America's 2M+ metros.

The two cities obviously have their key differences, mostly stemming from the giant size difference because chicago got so fat on the railroads in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, but they sure do share a lot of the same DNA.

One tree grew a lot taller than the other, but they both germinated from the same seeds.

I'd give a similar big brother/little brother nod to Atlanta and Birmingham. Both are Deep South cities. Neither is on a body of water; rather, they sprung up along the railroads. Similar in size for much of the early 20th century until Atlanta took off. Now obviously on very different playing fields. Both played key parts in the Civil Rights Movement as well.

In terms of peer cities, I've long thought Memphis was the most similar city to Birmingham in terms of culture, size, history, etc.

[Razor]

Originally Posted by TimCity2000

I'd give a similar big brother/little brother nod to Atlanta and Birmingham. Both are Deep South cities. Neither is on a body of water; rather, they sprung up along the railroads. Similar in size for much of the early 20th century until Atlanta took off. Now obviously on very different playing fields. Both played key parts in the Civil Rights Movement as well.

In terms of peer cities, I've long thought Memphis was the most similar city to Birmingham in terms of culture, size, history, etc.

How's the interaction between Atlanta and Birmingham?

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by Hot Rod

I believe the CME/CBOT is the largest commodities market in the world (larger than the New York based AME).

The Merc is the world's largest and by far most important futures and commodities exchange. It plays a more pivotal role not just in the US economy but the global economy than any other institution outside the NYC and the Fed itself.

[sbarn]

A few metros that I have found to have strong links:

New York <---> Los Angeles (large media + entertainment markets)
New York <---> San Francisco / Bay Area (large tech markets)
San Francisco / Bay Area <---> Sacramento (strong regional connection)

[SacTownAndy]

San Francisco : Sacramento

Sacramento economic organization makes pact with Bay Area
Sacramento Bee
October 4, 2016
By Dale Kasler and Mary Lynne Vellinga

Greater Sacramento’s economic development organization has touted its early success in recruiting small high-tech companies from the Bay Area.

Now the group has gone a step further, announcing that its economic growth strategy going forward will hinge on being considered part of a Bay Area-Sacramento mega-region.

In July, the Greater Sacramento Economic Council opened an office in Sunnyvale with two staff members. On Wednesday, it will jointly announce a “mega-region” campaign with the Bay Area Council, its counterpart in San Francisco.

The idea is to create a kind of unified Northern California market for companies seeking a place to locate, as well as a unified front against Texas and other competitors seeking to pull business away from the state.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/...#storylink=cpy

[ssiguy]

If I had to use an international comparison I would say Montreal and Boston.

Both are old cities rich in archetectural and cultural heritage. Both bastions of old wealth and have both excellent universities and very large student populations. Both are port cities, have always been leaders in creative thought, and were at one time the leading cities in population on a more historic basis. Both are liberal political bastions.

Both cities have grown after WW11 but lot much of their relative stature due to faster growth in other centres such as the USA West/South and Canada West & Toronto.

Now both cities are growing at decent clips and are high-tech meccas and academic centres and are attracting back and retaining many of the young who would have left in prior decades but now are retaining them and welcoming more as they offer new opportunities in future economy in very liveable, likeable, dynamic cities where creative thought and lifestyles are embraced.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Yep. You beat me to the punch. Chicago and Milwaukee represent one of the strongest big brother/little brother sibling relationships out of all of America's 2M+ metros.

The two cities obviously have their key differences, mostly stemming from the giant size difference because chicago got so fat on the railroads in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, but they sure do share a lot of the same DNA.

One tree grew a lot taller than the other, but they both germinated from the same seeds.

This, but also add in Madison for the perfect "Small", "Medium", "Large trifecta.

Originally Posted by Docere

Calgary is like that too, in the Canadian context.

Calgary is Canadian Denver.

Toronto is Canadian Chicago.

Originally Posted by ue

Umm... I think Toronto and San Francisco could dispute that with Chicago. Maybe LA too.

Nope, not even close. At least in terms of caliber of the firms. Volume of insurance company business or whatever maybe, but you don't find certain types of dominant financial institutions outside of maybe half a dozen large cities globally like NYC, London, Chicago, and Hong Kong.

Originally Posted by Shawn

The Merc is the world's largest and by far most important futures and commodities exchange. It plays a more pivotal role not just in the US economy but the global economy than any other institution outside the NYC and the Fed itself.

The CME is arguably more important than any other single exchange in the world including NYSE. Stock markets trade on the value created by the companies on the exchange. Futures markets trade on the value of future economic output or risk. One is a derivative of corporate earning, the other is a derivative of the fundamental risk and output of the economy today and for years into the future. CME totally dominates futures and it's not even remotely close. The difference is that the margins on futures are totally different than on stocks. A stock broker might charge 1 or 2% on a transaction, CME clearing fees are like $0.20-25 per contract for a product that has a face value of $125. They are literally making less than pennies on the dollar, but that's the business. They also trade volume in the quadrillion dollars a year range so that's pretty sweet too.


Then there's options markets. CBOE is the largest player in the world for options. Or Citadel being the fourth or fifth largest (and one of the most respected) hedge funds in the world. Or the fact that Chicago is the center of the proprietary trading industry. But the biggest difference between New York and Chicago and pretty much anywhere else other than London is caliber of financial industry. Chicago has significantly less volume of financial firms, but they all play on the international level and go toe to toe with the competition in the other financial hubs. See CME gobbling up NYMEX or sniffing around LME or LIFFE before letting the competition buy them and building their own system ultimately stealing key clearing processes that were controlled for a long time by these players. This is something you don't see firms from LA or SF or other cities doing.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

This, but also add in Madison for the perfect "Small", "Medium", "Large trifecta.

i don't know about that.

madison is a great town, but it feels very different than milwaukee or chicago with it's "state capital dominated by a behemoth state university" vibe. there are no scorched earth industrial legacy wastelands in madison. there are very few black people in madison, and hence no extreme segregation -> poverty -> violence -> decay cycle like you see in large swaths of chicago and milwaukee.

madison is the epitome of a bloated capital city/college town living large on the tax dollars vacuumed up from the rest of the state, whereas milwaukee and chicago actually have to work their asses off just to keep their heads above water (and even then......).

[Kenneth]

Detroit and Toledo are big brother little brother. Both have been going through the same turmoil for decades, loss of jobs and population, abandonment, poor schools. Both rely on the auto plants, both have downtowns that were decimated. They share the same path and the end result is the same for both cities

[Kenneth]

I compared a few cities based off there layout, infrastructure and neighborhoods.
SD-LA
Seattle-Portland-Vancouver
Denver-Salt Lake
Minneapolis-Dallas
Chicago-Houston
Indy-Columbus
Pitts-Cincy
Nash-Atlanta
Miami-Tampa
New Orleans- St Lo

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Hot Rod

Good Lord, the idiocy of people on this forum.

You really think SF or LA (or TO) more important financial center than Chicago??? The aforementioned list by Yuriangrade shows why people normally say "New York and Chicago", although I'm a bit shocked that Chicago is as low as the list indicates - I thought it'd be around $150B but surely consolidations have taken pieces away that used to be there.

LA and Toronto, no, but SF is a huge center of private equity, VC and hedge funds, has a bigger investment banking presence these days (though all tech) and is probably overall more important in terms of financial industry than Chicago. It's arguably the global capital of VC.

Yes, Chicago has CME. And Boston has mutual funds, Houston has energy banking, DC has financial regulation. There are a number of cities with specialized financial contributions.

In any case, arguing over the #2 financial center in North America is like arguing over the #2 financial center in the UK, France or Germany, or the #2 city in NY State, Illinois or Massachusetts. There's little difference between, say,#2 and #5; there's an enormous difference between #2 and #1.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

The CME is arguably more important than any other single exchange in the world including NYSE.

Exchanges are largely irrelevant to whether or not cities are financial centers.

ICE is probably the most important exchange on earth and it's technically based in suburban Atlanta. I don't think too many people would argue that Atlanta is a critical financial center because of ICE.

What matters is where talent resides. The Bay Area, over the last 20 years, has vacuumed up much of the world's VC talent and has major tech investment banking operations as well as decent hedge fund and private equity concentrations (moreso than anywhere else in North America excepting NYC).

Chicago has none of this except for Citadel (which has most of its operations outside of Chicago; it's NYC and Chicago offices are basically the same size, and it has big operations all over the globe). In Chicago Citadel is a huge deal because Ken Griffin is probably the richest man in Chicago; in NYC Citadel is one of many dozens of similarly sized firms and Griffin is just another HF billionaire.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Kenneth

Detroit and Toledo are big brother little brother. Both have been going through the same turmoil for decades, loss of jobs and population, abandonment, poor schools. Both rely on the auto plants, both have downtowns that were decimated. They share the same path and the end result is the same for both cities

Yeah, Toledo definitely feels like a Detroit mini-me (in fact moreso than small Michigan cities compared to Detroit). It's a Rust Belt auto industry city, with similar housing stock, geography, ethnicities and layout.

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by Kenneth

I compared a few cities based off there layout, infrastructure and neighborhoods.
SD-LA
Seattle-Portland-Vancouver
Denver-Salt Lake
Minneapolis-Dallas
Chicago-Houston
Indy-Columbus
Pitts-Cincy
Nash-Atlanta
Miami-Tampa
New Orleans- St Lo

I was going to bring up Miami-Tampa as two cities in the US that are close to together that are very weakly linked. There isn't much travel between the two. Miami and Orlando seem to have a much stronger link as well as Orlando and Tampa but not Miami and Tampa.

[cabasse]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Yeah, Toledo definitely feels like a Detroit mini-me (in fact moreso than small Michigan cities compared to Detroit). It's a Rust Belt auto industry city, with similar housing stock, geography, ethnicities and layout.

i remember it being joked about when i lived there that even though ohio won the war for toledo, it's still feels a lot more like SE michigan than anything else in ohio.

Originally Posted by dave8721

I was going to bring up Miami-Tampa as two cities in the US that are close to together that are very weakly linked. There isn't much travel between the two. Miami and Orlando seem to have a much stronger link as well as Orlando and Tampa but not Miami and Tampa.

yeah. something about tampa being on the gulf coast side of the state, versus orlando/miami on the east coast... tampa is also probably the most conservative metro in the state.

[ocman]

Los Angeles and Houston have a lot of back and forth because of the aerospace capital/space city connection.

The cities also share similar immigrant patterns (Mexico/Central America/Vietnam) with family members and their money going back and forth.

[SpawnOfVulcan]

Originally Posted by Razor

How's the interaction between Atlanta and Birmingham?

The two cities, long ago, used to be much similar in scale in terms of population and economic status. However, the primary industrial presences in the two cities were vastly different. After the 60s, Birmingham's steel and mining industries nosedived. Atlanta's economic diversity allowed it to weather the economic change during that era while Birmingham's reliance on industries necessitating African Americans willing to do rough work in steel mills which hastened their desire to leave.

The two cities are linked by I-20 and The Crescent Line. By car, the commute is about 2 hours. Birmingham's sprawl continues to spread to the east (toward Atlanta, slowly...) and Tuscaloosa is considered the western reach of the Piedmont Atlantic Megapolitan Region.

IMO, the only thing preventing Birmingham from being a fully integrated part of the Piedmont Atlantic region are the mountains in Talladega National Forest... a natural border.

[Razor]

Originally Posted by tascalisa

The two cities are linked by I-20 and The Crescent Line. By car, the commute is about 2 hours. Birmingham's sprawl continues to spread to the east (toward Atlanta, slowly...) and Tuscaloosa is considered the western reach of the Piedmont Atlantic Megapolitan Region.

IMO, the only thing preventing Birmingham from being a fully integrated part of the Piedmont Atlantic region are the mountains in Talladega National Forest... a natural border.

Okay ..thanks for the info.. I just googled "Piedmont Atlantic Megapolitan Region" as well ..Interesting.