Cities ranked by ultra high net worth population and growth

[the urban politician]

^ Dude, this is absolutely, positively dick measuring in every sense of the word.

If people (like yourself) are going out of the way to try to show how many millionaires your city has, there is a reason for it. It's not "geekiness", that's a copout and I'm getting too old to be BS'd so easily.

I can understand this behavior among 22 year olds, but when we are still doing this kind of stuff in our late 30s and 40s this "stick in the butt" kind of behavior just starts getting baked into a person.

It's not about how beautiful or how fun, or how cultural, how historic, how progressive, etc etc our cities are. Who cares, right? All that matters is that we have more HNW people than you do, and somehow I'm internalizing that as if it somehow makes me better off.

[The North One]

I don't think anybody should be offended about this, it's just data, at least it's not one of those worthless opinionated lists with dubious criteria used by a website to promote themselves. I found it to be quite informative. If Chicago was at the top of the data set I somehow doubt you'd be throwing such a fit. Everyone already knows the Bay Area is filled with extreme wealth and poverty.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ Dude, this is absolutely, positively dick measuring in every sense of the word.

If people (like yourself) are going out of the way to try to show how many millionaires your city has, there is a reason for it. It's not "geekiness", that's a copout and I'm getting too old to be BS'd so easily.

I can understand this behavior among 22 year olds, but when we are still doing this kind of stuff in our late 30s and 40s this "stick in the butt" kind of behavior just starts getting baked into a person.

It's not about how beautiful or how fun, or how cultural, how historic, how progressive, etc etc our cities are. Who cares, right? All that matters is that we have more HNW people than you do, and somehow I'm internalizing that as if it somehow makes me better off.

This kind of ranking that is produced by many reputable entities, and is followed by lots of people for various reasons, so for you to vainly attempt to cybershame others who find this interesting, is quite frankly, ridiculous.

Pray tell, who are you to tell us, what qualifies as worthwhile topics of discussion?

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by The North One

I don't think anybody should be offended about this, it's just data, at least it's not one of those worthless opinionated lists with dubious criteria used by a website to promote themselves. I found it to be quite informative. If Chicago was at the top of the data set I somehow doubt you'd be throwing such a fit. Everyone already knows the Bay Area is filled with extreme wealth and poverty.

Basically.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Jonesy55

All this dick-measuring over where has the most insanely rich individuals just seems pointless to me. Does it really make your city a better place to live for 99.9% of residents if you have 1,500 rather than 900 super-rich people on the list?

It could and the hope is it will although so far for many cties the hope hasn't been fulfilled. Throughout history art and public grandeur has always been something created by and for the rich, whether you are talking about Rome or Renaissance Florence or modern cities. In late 19th century America some of the rich like Mellons and Carnegies and Rockefellers (maybe to a lesser extent) did gift their cities important things like Carnegie's libraries and universities and hospitals. In modern San Francisco the Benioffs and now the Zuckerbergs are giving hundreds of millions of $ for similar things (both those 2 have given 9-figures to UCSF hospitals) while the SF Museum of Modern Art has benefitted immeasurably from the 100-year loan (and hopefully, eventual gift) of Gap (clothing) founder Don Fisher's art collection. I know New York's richest person and former Mayor Mike Bloomberg has given several hundreds of millions to our mutual alma mater, Johns Hopkins U. and New York City in general is repleat with public edifices gifted by dead plutocrats. London, of course, woudn't be London without the left-over creations of aristocrats of Britain's past.

So far Benioff, Gates and Zuckerberg seem to be leading the pack among the very rich technorati in improving life in their (adopted) cities, but most of these people are piling up money at a prodigious rate and eventually a lot of it may benefit the public.

[bnk]

Originally Posted by The North One

I don't think anybody should be offended about this, it's just data, at least it's not one of those worthless opinionated lists with dubious criteria used by a website to promote themselves. I found it to be quite informative. If Chicago was at the top of the data set I somehow doubt you'd be throwing such a fit. Everyone already knows the Bay Area is filled with extreme wealth and poverty.

Are you daft?

[mhays]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ Dude, this is absolutely, positively dick measuring in every sense of the word.

If people (like yourself) are going out of the way to try to show how many millionaires your city has, there is a reason for it. It's not "geekiness", that's a copout and I'm getting too old to be BS'd so easily.

I can understand this behavior among 22 year olds, but when we are still doing this kind of stuff in our late 30s and 40s this "stick in the butt" kind of behavior just starts getting baked into a person.

It's not about how beautiful or how fun, or how cultural, how historic, how progressive, etc etc our cities are. Who cares, right? All that matters is that we have more HNW people than you do, and somehow I'm internalizing that as if it somehow makes me better off.

Oh, someone could have a field day psychoanalyzing you. Scolding geeks for being geeky on a geek board. Wow.

[pico44]

Originally Posted by The North One

I don't think anybody should be offended about this, it's just data, at least it's not one of those worthless opinionated lists with dubious criteria used by a website to promote themselves. I found it to be quite informative. If Chicago was at the top of the data set I somehow doubt you'd be throwing such a fit. Everyone already knows the Bay Area is filled with extreme wealth and poverty.

Exactly correct. I'll go one step further. If Chicago were on the top of this list, he would have been the one to post it. he would have been over the moon. He is one of many promoting a certain narrative about chitown in which they are getting rid of all their worthless poor people and adding rich people like crazy. In this way Chicago is outperforming the country in spite of their shrinking population. This is, of course, insane and this list proves that with brutally cold efficiency. We all know the reason he is upset with all the "pointless dick measuring".

[the urban politician]

^ Huh? Chicago is doing quite well on this list, did you even look at it? But I would still never post it.

And I still think this is silly dick measuring.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I think the two numbers would generally be closely correlated. Why wouldn't they be? Certainly Dallas is gaining HNW faster than Philly, because the overall population is growing faster. You're gonna get more rich folks when the overall pie increases.

Of course there's some correlation, but why doesn't Sao Paulo show better, then? Or Mexico City. Or Delhi. Or why does The Bay Area have more than LA despite LA having twice as many people? Or why Zurich has twice as many as Seoul despite being less than a fifth as populous? As I said, of course there is some correlation, but population alone is a really poor indicator of how many "rich people" live in a given area. Perhaps you don't understand what "correlation" means?

Originally Posted by Crawford

... it isn't clear why a downtown construction boom would have anything to do with relative growth of HNW.

Are you saying that much of the HNW population in Chicagoland is employed in the development and construction industries, so a development boom is a proxy for a wealth boom? Not really plausible, and Chicago, if anything, is a relative development laggard.
...

Oh for crying out loud, who said anything about development? The word "boom" doesn't only mean development, and I thought by talking about population readers would understand I was talking about population growth with the word "boom," but perhaps I was expecting too much of you?

I'm talking population, and where that population is choosing to locate. The development is only a symptom and is happening because people want to move downtown. The development is not a driver and I never said or even implied that it was - you did all that reading-into on your own.

People want to move to downtown Chicago because that part of Chicago is popular and that part of Chicago is playing a large part in creating and growing Chicago's wealth and income. Certainly if the parts of Chicago that are growing are where it takes wealth and income to live, it's an indicator that wealthy, high income people like Chicago and that at least some of them are relocating here or becoming wealthy while here - the growth in demand in the Central Area cannot only be explained by movement within the metro area.

[10023]

Again, you can almost take these lists as a proxy for "major cities where people live by choice". That's a somewhat useful thing. It's very different than largest cities by population (obviously), or even cities ranked by GDP (wherein enormous cities in the developing world can rank highly by virtue of sheer size).

[the urban politician]

I ate at The Silo in Lake Bluff, IL.

This place has been in continuous operation since 1968!

Holy moly, this place makes a damn good pie! It was heaven, and one of the best crusts I've ever eaten.

The pizza Gods blessed Chicago's burbs, let alone the city itself. I made a beer offering in thanks

[Encolpius]

Originally Posted by 10023

Again, you can almost take these lists as a proxy for "major cities where people live by choice". That's a somewhat useful thing. It's very different than largest cities by population (obviously), or even cities ranked by GDP (wherein enormous cities in the developing world can rank highly by virtue of sheer size).

I could accept the logic of this if it didn't lead to the conclusion that people would rather live in Nagoya, Singapore or Minneapolis than say Shanghai, Vienna or St Petersburg.

[pico44]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ Huh? Chicago is doing quite well on this list, did you even look at it? But I would still never post it.

And I still think this is silly dick measuring.

Yup. Chicago is doing very well in terms of adding high net worth individuals. Just as most American cities are doing very well. In fact, according to this list, American cities are gaining so much wealth that--as well as Chicago is doing--it only ranks 12th out of the 16 American cities listed by percentage growth. Either it is something to be happy about or it isn't. I think it's probably a good thing and I suspect you do too; as I feel certain I have seen you write gleefully about Chicago adding rich people to offset the exodus of poor black people. This list seems to lend credence to that belief. But the list also destroys the idea that this makes Chicago special relative to the rest of the country.

[10023]

Originally Posted by Encolpius

I could accept the logic of this if it didn't lead to the conclusion that people would rather live in Nagoya, Singapore or Minneapolis than say Shanghai, Vienna or St Petersburg.

Umm, I expect that they would?

Now I would rather live in Shanghai than Singapore (which is boring aside from the food), but only for a couple of years. St. Petersburg is an appealing place to visit but certainly not to live.

But it's certainly interesting to look at these alongside population or GDP rankings, where cities like Lagos or Mumbai are near the top of the list. Next to no one wants to live in Lagos; people live there because they're a) Nigerian or b) expats working in the oil industry and receiving hardship pay to live on that oppressively hot and humid island.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by pico44

Yup. Chicago is doing very well in terms of adding high net worth individuals. Just as most American cities are doing very well. In fact, according to this list, American cities are gaining so much wealth that--as well as Chicago is doing--it only ranks 12th out of the 16 American cities listed by percentage growth. Either it is something to be happy about or it isn't. I think it's probably a good thing and I suspect you do too; as I feel certain I have seen you write gleefully about Chicago adding rich people to offset the exodus of poor black people. This list seems to lend credence to that belief. But the list also destroys the idea that this makes Chicago special relative to the rest of the country.

This list does absolutely nothing to support or destroy anything I've posited here, at least pertaining to your last sentence there. . I would get into why, but I'm not interested in pursuing the argument further. Feel free to PM me if you wish for me to explain.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Crawford

No way are these numbers correct.

How did London lose 15% of it's HNW households in one year? That's like wartime catastrophe numbers. In reality London has been booming with fast population growth.

And it isn't Brexit. These numbers are pre-Brexit.

As people pointed out already, the households don't need to physically leave London to be dropped from that list -- they don't even need to lose net wealth in GBP to be dropped, since the list is in USD.

The US dollar has been going up against the pound since way before Brexit, I'm pretty sure. So at first sight, it's very possible for most of that drop in London-based wealth to be simply due to the declining pound.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by emathias

Of course there's some correlation, but why doesn't Sao Paulo show better, then? Or Mexico City. Or Delhi. Or why does The Bay Area have more than LA despite LA having twice as many people? Or why Zurich has twice as many as Seoul despite being less than a fifth as populous? As I said, of course there is some correlation, but population alone is a really poor indicator of how many "rich people" live in a given area. Perhaps you don't understand what "correlation" means?

Exactly, otherwise, Jakarta, Lagos, and Sao Paulo would be the wealthiest cities in the world. It's got very little to do with the overall raw population numbers.

It has a bit more of a correlation for the US because it's mostly a consistently wealthy country.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by lio45

As people pointed out already, the households don't need to physically leave London to be dropped from that list -- they don't even need to lose net wealth in GBP to be dropped, since the list is in USD.

The US dollar has been going up against the pound since way before Brexit, I'm pretty sure. So at first sight, it's very possible for most of that drop in London-based wealth to be simply due to the declining pound.

Except one has to wonder how many of London's UHNW individuals are British and/or have most of their wealth in pounds. These days even foreign government investment consortia have a high percentage in US (and Euro zone and Chinese) stocks, businesses and real estate for example.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by emathias

Of course there's some correlation, but why doesn't Sao Paulo show better, then? Or Mexico City. Or Delhi.

Sao Paulo and Mexico City are very slow growing. Mexico City (proper) barely grows. I would be surprised if they showed major HNW growth, especially given that the Brazilian economy is in a depression.

Originally Posted by emathias

Oh for crying out loud, who said anything about development? The word "boom" doesn't only mean development, and I thought by talking about population readers would understand I was talking about population growth with the word "boom," but perhaps I was expecting too much of you?

Putting aside the fact that there is no "boom" relative to other cities, you still haven't explained why Chicago would have a HNW "boom" if development or population would be concentrated in the core as opposed to elsewhere.

Why would someone's Vanguard fund or paycheck show outsized growth if they lived in River North as opposed to Winnetka? Makes no sense.