SF is the center of the global IT industry and is a gateway to Asia
Miami is a gateway to Latin America
Boston is really the debatable one
Atlanta’s Gross Metropolitan Product (GDP for the city) puts it 10th in the nation - the only one of my cities on that list with a lower GMP is Miami at #11, and I would still assert that its South/Latin America positioning gives it the nod over ATL.
Well, anybody who’s ever flown in an airplane domestically has probably been there, like it or not. 
I went to college in Atlanta. I can’t imagine anybody with a wide variety of educational choices going to college in Charlotte. Is that indicative? (Unless you want a culinary arts degree from Johnson and Wales - I took a class there a year ago and was duly impressed.)
Atlanta has Emory, Georgia State, and Georgia Tech as well as my alma mater (Agnes Scott), an asston of historically black colleges including Morehouse and Spelman, etc. There are more than 30 institutions of higher learning in the Atlanta metro area, most of them actually in town.
Charlotte has… UNC Charlotte? Not even the state’s flagship university? Davidson is nearby, but not in town in any real way. Queens University?
Colleges and universities are a lot of the driving force behind the culture of a city. I’m sure Columbia would be a shithole without USC, as odd as that is to say. I’ve been to Charlotte many times, although I’ve never lived there. There’s no there there. (There is, however, an Ikea and an Apple Store.)
Ted Turner and the Milwaukee Braves really turned things around for Atlanta.
If not for them, Charlotte would’ve been the capital.
No. Wachovia is still in Charlotte. They’re just about to change to color scheme from blue and green to Wells Fargo’s red and gold.
Hopefully without the cybermen.
I see more Charlotte Area Dopers coming out of the woodwork. Maybe it’s time to try another dope-fest?
Another Charlotte tidbit - people from Charlotte have a real hard time winning a statewide election in NC. They have a long track record of losing when they run statewide. Gov. Jim Martin is the 1 exception, he served from 92-2000 but he tried to claim he was from Lake Norman which is just outside Charlotte.
How in the world would being closer to Boston give you points for being the capital of the SOUTH?
According to one radio host, whom I otherwise like, it’s because the rest of the state is Jealous of Charlotte.
Give it time. Didn’t the FBI/DEA just say we were the ‘new Miami’ in terms of drug trafficking?
According to the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Research Network US cities rank as follows:
Alphas - Very important world cities that link major economic regions and states into the world economy
New York
Chicago
Betas - Important world cities that are instrumental in linking their region or state into the world economy
Los Angles
Washington
Atlanta
San Fransisco
Dallas
Boston
Miami
Houston
Gammas - World cities linking smaller regions or states into the world economy, or important world cities whose major global capacity is not in advanced producer services
Denver
Minneapolis
Seattle
Philadelphia
Portland (doesn’t specify which, I am assuming Oregon)
Detroit
San Diego
High Sufficiency - Cities that are not world cities as defined here but they have sufficient services so as not to be overtly dependent on world cities. Two specialised categories of city are common at this level of integration: smaller capital cities, and traditional centres of manufacturing regions
Columbus (also not specified)
Phoenix
Cleveland
Kansas City
Pittsburgh
Orlando
Charlotte
Indianapolis
Baltamore
St Louis
Sacramento
San Jose
Milwaukee
Richmond
Las Vegas
Sufficiency - Cities that are not world cities as defined here but they have sufficient services so as not to be overtly dependent on world cities. Two specialised categories of city are common at this level of integration: smaller capital cities, and traditional centres of manufacturing regions
Memphis
Nashville
Honolulu
Omaha
Raleigh
Hartford
Salt Lake City
Austin
Tulsa
Birmingham
Cincinnati
New Orleans
Buffalo
It is an interesting site. And it has all the base data available as downloadable Excel files. Here for example are some data points between Atlanta and Charlotte (showing why they have ranks they do).
Data Set 11 World City Network: The Basic Data (number and size of Global 100 company offices) - Atlanta: 122, Charlotte: 49
Data Set 21.1 Embassys recieved - Atlanta: 6, Charlotte: 0.
I meant in general the vast East Coast metropolis which would mean it would be a better location for New York or Washington investors.
When was the list made?!?! Chicago’s more important then Los Angeles or Washington DC? Kansas City and Orlando are more important then Las Vegas?
Showing my bias as someone in the education field… but as Zsofia said, there are no major colleges or universities in Charlotte. Higher education brings a young workforce (as well as entertainment options, etc.). If Charlotte’s dependent on people moving there for work, rather than having a population of smart people that just decide to stay after college, that seems to be an impediment. (I have a friend who went to UNC Charlotte - at the time it was a pretty small commuter school.)
Chicago is a major port to the midwest. It also has a very important commodity exchange.
Las Vegas is a tourist destination. Orlando has additional industries in addition to the theme parks. Kansas City is a major center in our food supply. Unless you’re buying organic, local grown beef, I guarantee you the meat in you hamburger passed through Kansas City.
Side note — Isn’t Boston about 400 miles from Washington, DC? That’s hardly a megalopolis. DC and Baltimore aren’t even really one entity, and they’re nearly overlapping when you get to the outskirts.
This is the 2008 data set. They currently do a full data review every 4 years. They still have the 2000 and 2004 articles up here. in 2000 LA and Chicago had the same rank and were practically tied. But LA has dropped precipitously in the 2004 and 2008 rankings.
I should make a bit clearer, what exactly is being represented here. This is the connectivity level and relative importance of a city within the global city network. They measure this by trade and transportation links, and the existence of major international entities within the city (corporations, NGOs, UN entities, embassies and the like). There is this interesting note in the 2008 data set, however:
But the USA is a special case with its cities being reported as under-represented in the world city network in 2000 (Taylor 2004; Taylor and Lang 2004) and 2004 (Taylor and Aranya 2008). The 2008 results continue and perhaps accentuate this trend. This appears to be a result of the US home market for advanced producer services being far greater than for any other country. This has two key effects. First, foreign firms find it hard to penetrate the market and tend to represent clients through just a New York office. Second, US service firms have less reason to gamble on global expansion – compare Chicago PR company with an Amsterdam company, the former can make better profits through domestic expansion, the former can only expand through new cross-border work. Both effects lead to a tendency for US cities other than New York being less integrated in the world city network.
This may also account for relative positions of US cities within the network. LA may have become more insular and US centric faster than Chicago. But it is hard to say for sure. Likewise Miami’s relatively high position is probably due to its strong links to the Caribbean and Latin America.
Actually it is the original Megalopolis. Hate using Wiki as a cite but:
The term was used by Lewis Mumford in his 1938 book, The Culture of Cities, which described it as the first stage in urban overdevelopment and social decline. Later, it was used by Jean Gottmann in 1957, to describe the huge metropolitan area along the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. extending from Boston, Massachusetts through New York City; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and ending in Washington, D.C. According to Gottmann, it resulted from changes in work and social habits. The concept was later extended to include the following regions: BosWash (Boston–Washington), ChiPitts (Chicago to Pittsburgh), Quebec City – Windsor Corridor, SanSan, and Bajalta California.
Not really. Most Asian businessmen invest in Los Angeles and it’s area while there are far fewer foreign investors in Chicago.
And your evidence for this is? I provided links and quotes from a organization formed to study city inter-connectivity. They have hundreds of articles and thousands of data points. To counter this you have provided a two sentence statement with no supporting evidence.
Now I am perfectly willing to accept that GaWC may be wrong. But it will take more than an unsupported statement of fact.
Do you actually have a study of some sort to demonstrate preferential Asian investment in the LA area? And do you have any studies that demonstrate that there are more foreign investors in LA than Chicago?
First of all Los Angeles has more people then Chicago.
Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles
as for Chicago: http:
//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago
A gross metropolitan product of 811.7 Billion Dollars to 506 Billion dollars. Hmm
To me, Charlotte has no identity. It’s miles and miles of strip malls and Bojangles. There are some very significant businesses and industries and a large, diverse population, but there is nothing about it that makes you say “That’s so Charlotte.” There isn’t a lot of civic pride or unity or local historical lore. (You go to Atlanta and it’s Braves! and Gone with the Wind, for example.) I think unofficial capitals need to have something special about them, and there is nothing to distinguish Charlotte from any place else.
Charlotte’s not a bad place, but it’s just kind of bland.