GaWC: 2018 Classification of Alpha, Beta and Gamma World Cities

[dc_denizen]

Originally Posted by isaidso

Sydney isn't an Alpha+ city. Just because we see something in print, doesn't make it so.

I’m curious why you would think Toronto and Sydney are in different leagues. Both are alpha cities of their respective countries, producing lots of local content, economically heavily reliant on real estate and natural resource industries, and capital flows from China especially ...both have exported many major actors/entertainers to the larger English speaking world. Both have a similar relationship to a senior cultural and linguistic partner (uk/us)

[dc_denizen]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Ottawa is one the list but behind Wellington. Ottawa is triple the size of Wellington, the capitol of a G7 country with 9X more people, and is a high tech powerhouse. Also how can Seattle with all it`s corporate headquarters be well behind much smaller Vancouver which has no head offices of any kind?

No offensive to my Australian friends but how is Sydney ahead of larger Toronto when Toronto is by far the most important financial, economic, cultural, manufacturing, high-tech, and media centre of a larger country who`s influence is not tempered by nearby Melbourne? This is to say nothing of the fact that the TSX is the 8th largest stock exchange in the world.

If you exclude Quebec, over which Toronto has little influence, Australia and Canada are similar in population and economics.

All that stuff about high tech and manufacturing and culture applies to Sydney as well. And Sydney is not next to the USA, which draws many Canadians away from Toronto, for better or worse

[nito]

The problem with The World According to GaWC 2018 is not the GaWC or the research, it is that people don’t read the methodology, research notes, the background of the organisation or its contributors. Ignorance breeds ignorant debate.

Originally Posted by dimondpark

I at least appreciate that they finally make the criteria for this errantly titled ranking clear for all to understand

The background research for The World According to GaWC rankings have always been known; I was critiquing the GaWC’s research bulletins going back over a decade for my dissertation on world cities!

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

When I saw Sydney in the alpha+ list I gave up on this system. Australia is a nice little country occupying all of a desertifying continent and Sydney is its most important city (and a nice one too). But that doesn't give it global importance above either modern economic powerhouses like LA or the SF Bay Area or historic capitals like Vienna or the capital of the most militarily and economically powerful nation of the present day (Washington DC). Sorry.

This isn’t a list on political or military power and it never sets out to be one.

Originally Posted by Lear

(BTW, I hope all readers here know that the UK is the source of most city ranking annually.
The majority of the rankings are meant as marketing tools in order to promote UK based cities internationally )

What a load of inane rubbish, you aren’t even critiquing the research just espousing deluded conspiracy theories with no substance to your comments. In The World According to GaWC 2018 only one British city is ranked as Alpha, you have to get to the list of Beta- cities for the next British city. Ironically this comes from the person with the most pointless all-time city boosterism thread on this sub-forum.

Originally Posted by JManc

When I think of "GaWC"

The GaWC is the preeminent global body in urban geography, globalisation, connectivity and world city research. There are hundreds of researchers and contributors to the GaWC from across the globe, all of whom are highly accomplished academics with thousands of papers and books on urban affairs to their names. It is farcical how people discuss the GaWC and their research.

Originally Posted by Cirrus

IIRC from past threads about this, GAWC is a specifically London-centric methodology. It's basically about how well connected a place is to London financial interests. So if your city is strong in a field that London isn't necessarily bankrolling, you may not score well even if you are very important (hello, San Francisco).

This is flat out wrong. The reason London and New York score so highly above all other cities is because they are the most connected service nodes in the global economy, not because of London financial interests.

Originally Posted by Lear

The introduction and the following global spread of the GAWC ranking is probably the biggest self-marketing stunt the UK (London) has ever achieved.

Jesus wept, see my previous post above where you don’t have a clue about the methodology; I strongly suspect you haven’t even read any of the research papers.

Originally Posted by isaidso

Because it's a British study and Brits are obsessed with Australia. If you lived in the UK you'd think Australia was a super power of 200 million people. It's completely out of whack with reality.

And your empirical evidence of what you talk about in the GaWC research and British society to support your points is where? As noted already, the GaWC might be based in the UK, but it is an international organisation. https://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/contributors.html

Originally Posted by isaidso

As has been pointed out numerous times already it's a very weird list.

There is nothing ‘weird’ with the list, it is that people haven’t read the research notes produced by the GaWC and instead come to inaccurate conclusions on the order.

[dc_denizen]

And yet: the list sucks

[samne]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Economically/culturally, it's probably a wash. Similar sized economies, similar global prominence but Seattle has far greater global corporate presence. Seattle might have the third most prominent corporate presence in NA at this point. They have a solid half dozen globally prominent firms, where even someone in the African bush might be familiar with some of the firms.

Toronto is much bigger, of course, and the undisputed hegemon of a major country.

Culturally. No.

Toronto is home to almost all national television networks and cable, newspapers, publishers, etc.

Canada basically gets its news, information, programming from Toronto.

Seattle cannot claim something like this.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

Seattle suffers from a relative paucity of cultural standouts after the 1990s ended

In that capacity, Portland Oregon is more influential than Seattle

until very recently i very much preferred seattle, culturally, and of course its back catalog.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

If you exclude Quebec, over which Toronto has little influence, Australia and Canada are similar in population and economics.

All that stuff about high tech and manufacturing and culture applies to Sydney as well. And Sydney is not next to the USA, which draws many Canadians away from Toronto, for better or worse

the u.s. feels like a massive cultural annoyance vis-à-vis
the commonwealth. i feel as though canada would be happier without us looming below, such as oceania.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

the u.s. feels like a massive cultural annoyance vis-à-vis
the commonwealth. i feel as though canada would be happier without us looming below, such as oceania.

I wish the US would join the Commonwealth or start something similar to provide easier access to a wider range of markets.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by nito

The problem with The World According to GaWC 2018 is not the GaWC or the research, it is that people don’t read the methodology, research notes, the background of the organisation or its contributors. Ignorance breeds ignorant debate.

Then fix our ignorance. Tell us how Zagreb or Nicosia ranks ahead of Seattle or Osaka. Tell us how the great Colombo, Sri Lanka ranks above some of the largest first world economies on the planet.

Most of us aren't PhDs, don't have endless free time, and aren't going to rigorously examine the relative merits of academic methodologies. Normal people are gonna read the executive summary, and that's it. There's nothing in the executive summary that explains this bizarre ranking.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by samne

Culturally. No.

Toronto is home to almost all national television networks and cable, newspapers, publishers, etc.

Canada basically gets its news, information, programming from Toronto.

Seattle cannot claim something like this.

Seattle doesn't control any country's culture. But its tech companies have influence globally, a factor Toronto doesn't have. Also Seattle's influence on popular culture is arguably larger (or has been)...global music trend in 1990s, expanding coffee culture to much of the world vs. Toronto's huge but often hidden movie/TV role. (More broadly, Toronto still wins the comparison, but it's a legit debate.)

[mhays]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Then fix our ignorance. Tell us how Zagreb or Nicosia ranks ahead of Seattle or Osaka. Tell us how the great Colombo, Sri Lanka ranks above some of the largest first world economies on the planet.

Most of us aren't PhDs, don't have endless free time, and aren't going to rigorously examine the relative merits of academic methodologies. Normal people are gonna read the executive summary, and that's it. There's nothing in the executive summary that explains this bizarre ranking.

Good point.

Also, regardless of how great they are, they appear to be counting something very different than most of us think. They're not judging influence or power in a broader sense.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by mhays

expanding coffee culture

LOL this is a joke right? Because of shitty Starbucks? That's not "coffee culture" at all. That's like saying Chicago give the US burger culture because of McDonalds.

[mhays]

No, people ate hamburgers before McDonald's. Coffee became a trend in much of the world because it expanded from Seattle. Even in the US, restaurant coffee was crap until a couple decades ago.

It's not just Starbucks. Seattle's brand is tied to the trend. For example when Starbucks first opened in London, they did it by buying the 65 locations of "Seattle Coffee Company". There are plenty of other Seattle-branded coffee outlets, whether they're based here or not.

PS, the coffee trend is also about independents...they have arisen in concert with Starbucks and other corporate outlets. Some argue that it's a symbiotic relationship.

The world has had several food trends/shifts in the last few decades that involved turning a local/national or niche product into something that's common in much of the world, often redefining the product itself along the way. Pizza, burritos/wraps, sushi, and espresso might be at the top of the list, along with a few others. Poke might be next.

[The North One]

And nobody ever drank good coffee before Seattle supposedly invented it? Saying the city played a role in a coffee trend or that it somehow conceived and influenced a culture are two very different things.

The US still has no real coffee culture, any Seattle based chain fails in countries that actually have a coffee culture like Australia. Seattle gave us shitty overpriced chain coffee, yay so influential.

The only real edge Seattle has over Toronto is in it's "tech" but that's only a single aspect and it's not even an area Seattle is anywhere near dominate in so how influential is it really?

[mhays]

In places like London and Tokyo, espresso wasn't common. There were some exceptions, like Italian places in London. This was about new countries joining a worldwide trend for the first time, with commentators wondering if nations of tea drinkers would switch.

As for Australia, the first website I see says the modern culture started in the 1990s...sounds likely to be an offshoot of Seattle's trend from the 1980s.

Seattle has more claims than tech, music, and coffee. We're also a center of global health through organizations such as the University of Washington, the Gates Foundation, Fred Hutch, and World Vision.

The general theme (though I'm still voting for Toronto overall) is that Toronto has more influence in its country, but Seattle has more influence in some major global categories.

[maru2501]

seattle is an outlier with a couple of winning corps that could be anywhere but happen to be there

toronto is annoying. that said canada seems like a less murdery place to live, plus health care once you get shot, which won't happen

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by maru2501

seattle is an outlier with a couple of winning corps that could be anywhere but happen to be there

toronto is annoying. that said canada seems like a less murdery place to live, plus health care once you get shot, which won't happen

Seattle is advantaged by its location just like most cities, whether they have great harbors or are on great river systems or whatever. In Seattle's case it is the combination of the port on Puget Sound and the availability of cheap electric power because of the Columbia and other rivers. Before there was Amazon or Microsoft, there was an aluminum industry because a critical cost in aluminum production is electricity. And the availability of nearby aluminum production attracted the aircraft industry (Boeing).

It's rare something just "happens".

[mhays]

It didn't hurt that Bill Gates and Paul Allen are from here, or that Jeff Bezos moved here. This is all intertwined with the ability to recruit, the lack of income tax, the decent funding (conversely) for local public investments, connections to Asia, and so on.

[Razor]

Weren't people doing the coffee shop thing before Starbucks came around?
The insinuation that Seattle indirectly started the coffee shop culture is silly..
Maybe the couches and lounging chairs that Starbucks brought in was a new thing when it came out dunno.

No knock against Seattle, but comparing it's overall footprint and impact to Toronto is like comparing Minneapolis's to Chicago's. Seriously.

[mhays]

Espresso, as well as decent drip coffee, were both niche things in the US back then, and basically absent in much of the world where they're now popular.

I'm guessing some of you weren't around back then! This isn't news to people of my generation.

Minny vs. Chicago? That's obviously a much wider margin. Though Toronto wins the Seattle comparison.