Global Cities Index Despite the financial turmoil of the past few years, New York and London have consistently led the rankings in all three (2008, 2010 and 2012) editions of the Global Cities Index. Paris and Tokyo, although they alternate positions this year, are always far above the rest of the top 10, while changes in ranking among cities in the middle section of the GCI are more volatile—primarily because of the proximity of these cities' scores. This year, for example, Boston (15) rises four places and San Francisco (17) falls five places, although the changes in their absolute scores are not as dramatic. These are among the highlights of the 2012 Global Cities Index, a joint study performed by A.T. The world's top global cities Asia All editions of the Global Cities Index have featured at least three Asian cities in the top 10, demonstrating the stability of Asia's relevance on the world stage.
The Rudest Cities In The World Culture + Commerce: Designs for a Different City | Architecture Foundation EventsSeptember 2013 Courtesy Flickr / James Holloway 'Culture + Commerce: Designs for a Different City' is a three-part series of evening salons. Launched in part in response to the controversy surrounding the removal of the skate park from the Southbank undercroft, and the increasing elision of commerce and culture, the series asks what measures we can take to preserve the city as an affordable site for living, experimentation and cultural production. What strategies might we employ to waylay the transformation of the public realm into a private venture, and of culture into commerce? The Southbank Centre's stalled plans to relocate the skating community from its legendary undercroft location to replace it with retail and cafés could be taken as symptomatic of an ever-growing encroachment of commerce on culture within a global city. ShareThis
What makes a city a city - and does it really matter anyway? | Cities Whatever the perceived strengths and weaknesses of your city's brand, one thing appears unarguable, and that's the value of being identified as a city in the first place. In the US midwest, admittedly, the word "city" has been appended with abandon to any one-brothel main street that once offered relief to travellers across the prairies. Likewise Australia, where Melbourne suburbs style themselves as cities and outback dots such as the City of Dubbo appear on the map. Nowadays, however, towns everywhere seem to have aspirations to brand themselves with city status – and sometimes even that isn't enough, when there is also a "global city" or "city of culture" title to be garnered. And so to fledgling Ebbsfleet Garden City, a clip-on surburb planned in the eastern periphery of London that was recently (re)announced by the UK's chancellor, George Osborne. While utopian in vision, low-density "cities" such as these are, as a concept, profoundly anti-urban. • The worst city tourism videos
Richard Sennett - Quant The Public Realm Richard Sennett The cities everyone wants to live in would be clean and safe, possess efficient public services, support a dynamic economy, provide cultural stimulation, and help heal society's divisions of race, class, and ethnicity. These are not the cities we live in. It's fair to say that most of my professional colleagues share at least the fear that the art of designing cities declined drastically in the course of the 20th century. This is a dilemma which has vexed and defeated me throughout my scholarly and practical career. In this essay I try to do so by drawing a contrast between two kinds of systems, one closed, the other open. There is nothing new in the general contrast I am drawing between these two systems. To the novelist, there would be nothing odd about these biological insights: uncertainty, surprise, and the coordination of change are the basic ingredients of narrative. The Point of Departure: the Public Realm The public realm is, more over, a place.
Every city needs a brand When you think of Indianapolis, what springs to mind? Besides the annual Indianapolis 500 race. Take a minute to sum up the essence, the unique identity, of the Midwest’s second-largest city. It’s hard to do — not because Indianapolis doesn’t have a unique identity, but because if you don’t live in or around it, you probably have no idea what it is. There are lots of cities like this. A few years ago, unless you were a tourist mecca, this didn’t matter so much. But futzing with a city’s identity is tricky business, as Renn illustrated last week in an article about the downward slide of Chicago. Renn cites a constellation of reasons, but perhaps the simplest is that Chicago ran away from its own DNA as the City of Big Shoulders. Chicago’s mistake was chasing a standardized formula for success, says Renn. But too thoroughly scrubbing a city of its “current brand image” can leech a city of the quirks that make it stand out.