If global panjandrums were to pick the world’s largest city, as they did in 1946, the choice would fall on Tokyo, which overtook New York in the pecking order soon after the UN settled there, and now has a population over 30m.
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But size, as they say, isn’t everything.
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Power, economic connections, culture, education—all these things matter, too.
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Throughout history, the world’s largest cities have been dominant not just because of their numbers but because they were capitals of international empires.
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This was true of Rome in the first century, which as far as we know today, was the first city to reach a million people.
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Of Constantinople, now Istanbul in the fifth century.
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Of Chang’an, now called Xi’an, China’s capital in the seventh century.
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Of Baghdad in the tenth century.
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Of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, at the end of the 15th century.
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And of 19th-century London, which was the first city to reach 5m.
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Huge though it is, Tokyo is not in the same category.
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It is not very international and is home to comparatively few foreign residents for a city of its size.
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Power is important, but the capitals of the world’s two most powerful countries.
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The nearest things to imperial cities today, do not quite fit the bill either.
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Beijing is a non-starter as a global city and will continue to be so as long as the Communist Party maintains its iron grip.
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In New York and London, between a quarter and a third of residents were born abroad.
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In Beijing the share is below 1%.
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Outsiders have to have a stake in a city if it is to get global status.
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Washington, DC, looks a more plausible candidate for that.
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It contains more people who take the rest of the world seriously than any other place.
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The IMF and World Bank, the two prime international financial institutions, are based there.
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Washington takes itself seriously too, but so it should: as in 19th-century London
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Decisions made there matter more to the rest of the world than those taken elsewhere.
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Powertown has the capacity to make and unmake wars, to rescue or cripple economies.
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Yet there is more to being a dominant city than political authority or a multitude of think-tanks.
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Washington, a city of “northern charm and southern efficiency”, as John F. Kennedy said.
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Has little going for it except the authority of the United States, and that is slipping.
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It is international without being cosmopolitan;
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It inspires respect but not imitation.
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It has political power.
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But not the power of example.
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In 1957, five years after the UN moved into its headquarters on East 42nd Street, Jack Kerouac was finishing his book “On the Road” a few blocks away in Times Square.
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After returning from a trip round America, he found himself at rush hour amid “the absolute madness and fantastic hot-air of New York with its millions and millions hustling forever for a buck amongst themselves,
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The mad dream—grabbing, taking, giving, sighing, dying.” Kerouac was criticising 1950s consumerism, of course.
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But his description captures what makes a city thrive: millions hustling for a buck.
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And the more things people have to hustle over.
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The more occasions they have for grabbing, taking and giving—
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The more their city becomes truly international.
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Cities are products of trade.
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Market towns trade crops
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Second cities trade manufactures.
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International cities design and trade everything, especially services
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And global cities
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A category comprising only New York, London and Tokyo
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Specialise in international financial services.
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Over the past 50 years, the world has seen a trading revolution.
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Cities used to send each other finished goods, cars, say, or computers.
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Now they trade services and parts as well as spark plugs, or recording heads for hard drives.
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Every step in the production process is broken down
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Parts are made separately and shipped for assembly.
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The result is that trade around the world has boomed.
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The number of international cities has boomed with it.
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And more are vying to join this select global club.
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Hence any short list of potential capitals of the world ought to include not just the established trio, plus Washington, but the fast-growing metropolises of the fastest-growing economies:
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Shanghai and Beijing, Mumbai and Delhi,
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São Paulo, Mexico City.
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This means excluding places which are great cities in their own right
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Paris, Berlin, Los Angeles—but do not quite fit our definition. Sorry, continental Europe.
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Of those that do, all except London and Washington have populations of 15m or more.
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Unless you want your global capital to trade exclusively in government services
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To be a glorified Canberra, in short, then this emerges as a threshold of sorts
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But, as with population, so with economics and trade
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Size still isn’t everything.
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Over the centuries, cities such as Baghdad and Constantinople waxed great upon their reputation for learning, the fame of their educational establishments.
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Their openness to new ideas and their ability to attract the best minds to teach and think in their schools and courts
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Some of these attributes can be measured, by looking at how many universities a city has
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How many of its residents were born abroad, how many languages are spoken there.
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So Intelligent Life has subjected the contenders to a scoring system that rates them on five attributes (see table below).
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These are:
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Power and influence (mostly political)
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Income and wealth.
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Educational standards (universities and graduates)
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Cultural life (theatre, publishing, an art scene).
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And global connections (foreign residents, airports, tourists.
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Foreign languages taught at school, phone calls, internet connections and so on.
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We have tried to make the scores impartial but some, such as those for power and culture, are inevitably subjective.
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The results suggest the dominant cities are still those of the rich world.
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Not yet the up-and-coming one.
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On our list, four cities are in industrialised countries, five in emerging markets.
