So we need to pick a city to be the world’s capital. Our main requirement is that it looks the part; it needs to be spectacularly grand and modern.
And it mustn’t have a shanty town within a stone’s throw of the skyscrapers (perhaps some of the poll options aren’t applicable for this reason…educate me).
You know, we have some out-of-planeters visiting soon; it’s the first place they’re going to go and we want to impress them.
Conversely, we don’t care so much about the language spoken there, whether the city is within a wealthy/powerful country or its distance from any other significant population centres.
As I have only been to seven of those listed (and three of those was just to get off and on a plane), I’m not the best qualified to answer, but I think Sydney is the best choice here. It meets all the criteria, and although most of the others beat it in terms of skyscrapers, it is visually stunning.
I voted for NYC. Undoubtedly as an American I suffer from some bias, but NYC does have the United Nations, which I think makes it the closest thing to a functional world capital city at present.
I went with Singapore, based on looking the part. You can’t say it’s not modern. Wide-spread fluency in diverse languages is also a bonus for a world capital.
Funnily-enough Boston was one I really wasn’t sure whether to put in the list or not. By just about any measure of economic output, it makes the top 15 in the world, and the top 10 in many cases. I just can’t see it as a capital, but maybe my mental image needs updating.
The finalists are London or New York, IMHO. I’d go with New York, because:
NYC is not already a capital. Having a world capital and the capital of a kingdom in the same city diminishes both.
NYC is incredibly diverse: I can think of no other major city with no majority ethnic group. London, I hear, is close, but still has a white majority. New York has always been an immigrant city, and that will serve it well as the world’s capital.
Thats a plus. We want our global-bureaucrats inside working, not out taking long lunches in the park to enjoy the weather.
That said, NYC is already one of the most dense urban areas in the world. I’m not sure trying to cram a couple hundred-thousand civil servants and lobbyists into the city, and having to pay them enough to live there, is a particularly efficient idea.
Abu Dhabi! Aliens aren’t going to care about earth history; London is just going to look like a sprawling mess, Paris is going to look dull, NYC is going to look cramped. But in Abu Dhabi we can show them how we took an unimpressive bit of desert and made it our bitch. Skyscrapers! Cleverly shaped islands! Indoor skiing!