In most countries the largest city is the undisputed cultural nexus of the nation. Why is America such a glaring exception?
In most countries the largest city is the undisputed cultural nexus of the nation.
In most countries the largest city is the undisputed cultural nexus of the nation. Why is America such a glaring exception?
too cold and crowded
This is a history question because it’s asking how did it get this way
America has more capital sized cities than you can count. People see the closest of these as their "regional capital". Not one 2000km away because its 10% bigger
I guess a better question would be why is America so decentralized?
It has to be in order to properly settle and develop such a large territory with minimal revolts and secessionist sentiments. They learned from moronic Spaniards who forced their settlers to rely on local garrisons for protection and Mexicans who imported a bunch of Anglos only to lose Texas within 5 years.
Because the states were all independently governed prior to forming the United States, and people wanted to keep their right to self-determination. That's why the first attempt at forming a nation out of the colonies failed, because it was even more decentralized than the one they finally settled on, to the extent that it simply did not function as a nation.
Something different to most other countries is how the US acquired new states. Where other countries would just conquer the territory outright and then have the central government plan how to divvy it up and administrate it. For America though, the goal was to eventually have newly annexed territories self-organize their own local governments then petition for statehood, which meant adopting a state constitution that ratifies the US constitution.
So every single state, at least on paper, joined the US democratically after organizing its own government and writing its own constitution. But the fact that every state constitution was required to ratify the US constitution shows that the real choice was "conform to US standards or you don't get to have the privileges of a state". Those privileges are the right to limited self-governance, including creation of their own local laws, including taxes, and various other things.
>New York
>Not the cultural nexus of America
>Not the actual capital of the country
>Not the entertainment capital of the country
>Not the technology capital of the country
>Not even the art capital of the country anymore
It's not even the capital of New York state.
High arts yes, popular arts no.
The only idiot, worthless reply in this thread is yours.
New York has been soulless for decades but honestly all major cities are heading the same way. Just compare Paris today to what it was 20 years ago. All modern urban spaces will eventually just be rich people and the help.
It’s not just that New York is “soulless” (it is) but it’s lost so much cultural clout to other cities over the years that you can’t call it the cultural nexus of America anymore.
It isn't. NYC is considered the place to be and make shit happen even for those in great 2nd-tier cities like Chicago or Seattle. I'm pretty sure that 20%+ of all the shows on TV take place in NYC right now.
>source: my ass
Almost the entire entertainment and art industries are in LA and almost the entire technology industry is in the Bay Area now. Both used to be mostly in New York believe it or not.
But New York reigns supreme in terms of finance and still possesses or is very close (New Jersey) ties to entertainment and art and the FAANGs.
>Almost the entire entertainment and art industries are in LA
NYC is the second hub for television/film/electronic media.
It is the primary hub for conventional art (including theatre).
>almost the entire technology industry is in the Bay Area
Not true. Never true. Bay Area has higher concentration of ICT employment but not even a plurality.
Not really, there's loads of other countries in a similar situation. China comes to mind: Its capital- Beijing- is a relatively young city, its cultural heartlands are in the interior cities of the Northern Plains where Chineseness was founded, and Shanghai is its metropolitan face to the world. Its largest city? Chongqing, which nobody outside of China has heard and is only locally famous for being China's emergency capital in WWII and hotpot.
Biggest City = Culturally Important City usually happens in city-states or , supracentralized entities like Japan, France, or modern England.
Everyone says America is like Rome but it actually reminds me a lot more of China for reasons like this.
america being like china is an interesting thought
New York desperately wanted to be the capital, they wrote and petitioned endlessly but were rebuked by Washington who said
"there is too much lead in the water in New York which causes people to become schizo morons who come up with stupid shit, like smallpox isn't real or gdp is tourism, and yammer on and on endlessly about it, just the other day a family was wiped out by smallpox, and how could an economy be 100% equal to tourism? literally just people visiting places for fun, why would someone perpetually insist this is true when clearly and logically it is not. no, we must keep the capital far from New York"
at which point a New Yorker in the crowd absolutely lost his shit and started screeching about how gdp is indeed tourism and shouted more stupid shit like "tourists spend $20k dollars", he was so infuriated at being proven wrong he accidentally shit himself, but Washington had left in his carriage by that point
New York was never under serious consideration to be the capital of America. The capital was originally going to be Philadelphia (which was the largest city in America at the time of independence) but was moved to the south to appease slave owning states.
You forgot the part where he accused Washington of being jidf
>In most countries the largest city is the undisputed cultural nexus of the nation
That is not true. Large cities around the world tend to be more globalized and less traditionally cultural compared to the rest of the nation. The rural areas are the cultural nexus of the nation
I’m talking about high culture
America big
The Boston-Washington megacity with New York as center is the cultural capital of the USA.
The biggest exception to this is Brazil
Sao Paulo is the biggest city, but everybody thinks of Rio de Janeiro when they think of Brazil
Perhaps something similar happens in Spain with Madrid and Barcelona, but it's almost as if they were the capitals of 2 different nations.
America young nation. America BIG nation. Cultural nexus moves as culture evolves. Music, art, literature, entertainment, develop maybe a region attracts cultural types to one area temporarily.
Chicago is nice place to visit (130km to me), not good place to live. Long live Chicago.
I refer to museums, art galleries, classical music venues, educational, architecture etc. with Chicago reference.
Chicago is just a worse version of NYC
How so? Imo Chicago's a "great deal" city in that for what you get access to (9.8 million people economy, fantastic summertime coastline, large rapid and regional transit system, etc., you pay relatively little. Yeah, there's a decent amount of crime, but that's honestly every Midwestern metro greater than ~300,000.
Both are nice to visit, neither to live in. Good to have both for logistics. Long live Chicago and NYC.
Is Chicago #1 in anything? Commodities trading maybe?
Logistics I'd assume. Everything goes through Chicago. That said, Aaron Renn nearly ten years ago now wrote several articles where he basically trashed Chicago and a good point he made was that compared to NYC, LA, Bay Area, Chicago didn't have an industry that it was known for.
It has a lot of things that it's very good at, and it not being the very best at something probably won't ever matter to the 9.8 million people living there, but it's not THE place to be if you want to make it huge. But it's very cheap compared to coastal cities and it's better than all but NYC and LA imo. LA has a pathetic downtown.
It's a big country. Most other big countries like Russia China Nigeria etc. have a lot of big cultural rival cities. Small countries like Kuwait Canada (smaller population than the US but bigger landmass) England and the like.
In Israel the two main cultural centers are the more Westernized and progressive Tel Aviv and the more traditional and conservative Jerusalem.
Haifa may be third place, IDK
>like Russia
Russia has a primate city: Moscow.
St. Petersburg is the self-described 'cultural capital' but still falls short.
Then everything else drops off rapidly.
Given the size of the country, it's rather centralized. Though given its political evolution, that is sensible.
>Bangladesh
Dhaka and that's it.
>Japan
Tokyo then dropoff.
>Nigeria
Lagos then falloff.
>Pakistan
Karachi, Lahore, falloff.
>Canada
Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver. 'Smaller' country that isn't hypercentralized around one core.
>Indonesia
Jakarta then falloff.
Point holds for China, India, Brazil.
I misspoke. I meant that smaller countries tend to have a single main city
I think a weirder split is having an economic capital away from largest city. How tf wouldnt money want to mingle with politics or be in the largest city?
> Milan
> Sao Paolo
> Frankfurt
> Antwerp
Because it's too big
It isn’t.