What's Exactly Alpha++ etc Cities?

[Propfam 2,286]

Hello,

According to Wikipedia, an alpha city is a city as a primary node in the global economic network. Another name of that kind of city is a world-class city. Some criteria may include the influence to the world economy, the existence of MNCs and major stock exchange and the political power of the city. There are alpha cities, beta cities, and gamma cities with subcategories in them. The list is in here. But, there are some anomalies here.

1. Why is DC in the Beta+ list? I think most of the world-changing decision are made here. Same with Beijing. I think Beijing is a bit overrated and not considering Shenzhen and Macau. It's easier to found a startup in Shenzhen than in Beijing for number of reasons.
2. Why is SF in the Alpha- list compared to Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur? I don't think you can found a startup as easy as in SF in those cities. Even Southeast Asian ridesharing app Grab migrated to Singapore for a reason. Jakarta's startup can't be grown as easy due to lack of VCs.
3. Why are Jakarta and KL in the Alpha list? Livability in those cities aren't even as high as even the "inferior" SF and DC. Even the famous and prestigious Rome is in Beta+ list. I don't think you can found so many yachts in Jakarta as many as even Rome. Sure, Pantai Mutiara has not-so-few yachts. But not as many as Rome. Oh yeah, by that mean, Monaco isn't as great as Mumbai, right? I don't think many HNWI parked their yachts in Monaco, or is it? Another instance is Atlanta and Dallas. They hosted the 1996 Olympics and home of the famous Texas Instrument respectively and yet they're placed lower than Delhi and Manila. Delhi didn't even host a single Olympics yet and Manila is as far as I know doesn't have a fab, maybe only some fabless companies here and there.

Unfortunately, the global city index has some flaws. It doesn't even consider the quality of life. They're only consider the power of those cities to the world. What do you think? Should we be critical to the rating? Let me know. Sorry for my words. Thanks.

[MissVanleider 1,850]

My view is that the human desire to categorise, list and rank is part of the reason we have created such an impressive, planet spanning civilisation with great cities in the first place.

However, i would also argue that any such ranking will cause discussion about what are the most important factors to be included in such a ranking, and no ranking will ever be perfect.

I have seen other rankings of global cities which are much tighter than this, with less than 5 cities in the highest tier. It totally depends on the criteria used as you correctly pointed out above.

Also it's important to note that the list of 2021 will be quite different from the list of 1921, and the difference between those 2 lists is possibly greater than the change between the list of 0021 CE and 1021 CE. Also things are accelerating all the time. I think London would appear on a number of different rankings of 'Alpha' city in 2021, but i'm not sure that it will still be in 2051.

For me, I think the most important way of answering the question of alpha cities is to ask if an alien being landed on earth, where would they visit first to find out the most about our species. I do think this gives the more multicultural cities an advantage in such a ranking, because there is simply more variety of humanity in a city like London, New York or Shanghai or even Dubai than in a city like Roma or KL. For me the national and even global political power in a city such as Washington DC or Beijing is less important than the shared humanity of the citizens themselves.

It also shows that cities such as Roma or Alexandria which were once considered alpha +++ are able to fall down the scale, but Roma didnt fall down the scale because the politicial power left, the political power left because Roma fell down the scale, if that makes sense. 

Similarly, political capital cities such as Washington, Canberra, Brasillia etc. Were deliberately chosen as capitals, sometimes constructed specifically for the task because they had no pre-exisiting cultural 'baggage' so even the act of moving the political capital is, in a way, an admission that the cultural capitals have their own importance, often predating the current political structure of a given nation.

[alvinofdiaspar 26]

There are some very specific definition based on "network connectivity" - see the follow article from the GaWC (which basically came up with the scheme):

https://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/rb/rb300.html

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Yeah they took 175 of the top service firms (25 from 4 types and then 75 from a finance category they made by combining anything related to money) and looked at their websites to see where they have offices, and that's what the ranking is.

If you're the HQ of several large financial companies, but they're not in the top 75 in the world, then they don't count. You can be the HQ for some of the biggest tech and manufacturing companies in the world but those don't count. You can have government and universities but those don't count. But if you happen to have a regional branch for HSBC or something then you do count.

[Turnstyled 485]

This subforum isn't exactly my cup of my tea, but the most recent post was about "Alpha++" cities and I clicked to it because I thought that it might've been something that had to do with software. That human need to categorize things that @MissVanleider mentioned is something that exhausts me. Unlike most people, I don't feel a need to define everything.