Connectivity

Jim Russell (guesting over at Where Blog, check out his own blog here) makes a very good point:

Globalization, often mischaracterized as the destruction of geography, redefines a place in terms of connectivity. You can map these relationships and easily comprehend how each city has its own profile. A city's global network is how I would define a place ...

This paper by Peter Taylor and Robert Lang examines the connections between global cities finding that:

U.S. cities overall—and particularly non-coastal cities—are generally less globally connected than their European Union and Pacific Asian counterparts. ... Chicago is the only high ranking U.S. city not located in a coastal state.  While important service connections exist among certain U.S. cities and particular global regions, U.S. cities are more strongly linked to other U.S. cities than to cities around the globe. New York is the only U.S. city with more non-U.S. cities than U.S. cities in its top ten list of strongest global connections. Only three non-U.S. cities make Miami's top 10 list, for example, while Pittsburgh's list contains none. Even the most globally-connected U.S. cities are more locally oriented than cities in the EU.

Comments

[Michael Wells]

Yes, with a few geographic and historical cavaets. The US is huge with many major cities (as Jane Jacobs was quoted about on this blog recently.) The internal markets in the world's richest country make international connections less necessary, at least in the short term.

I wonder if Taylor & Lang counted the EU as a single body for this study? It looks like they may have, but if not for Paris to relate to London or Zurich is distance-wise like Denver relating to Chicago.

England, France & Spain had huge empires with historical connections, Holland and Portugal were trading countries. The US by contract was ocean bound and isolationist until the late 1950's.

That said, I agree America needs to be more international, and much of the middle of the country is still isolationist, and this administration is making it difficult.