← Notes

What are the big 4 cities

I really like asking this question, because it's easy to ask anyone—even people you've just met—and it leads to interesting conversations

The first question is "What are the big 4 American cities"

Sometimes people will ask you to clarify the metric you're measuring by, but it's purposefully vague and this is part of the question

Usually there's consensus on the first 3: New York City, LA, Chicago. The 4th is always up for debate. Some candidates I've heard in the past:

  • Boston
  • San Francisco
  • Miami
  • Atlanta
  • Dallas
  • Houston
  • New Orleans

The metric I usually bias most towards is cultural relevance / impact. It's hard for me to accurately gauge the relevance and impact of San Francisco. Of course, it has a major impact for myself and most people I surround myself with (when I'm not in the Bay Area), but how can I factor that out? Am I overcorrecting by not including SF in the top 4?

At some point someone mentioned Paris should be in the list, because of how it's the fashion capital of the world. And even if I didn't care, it has an impact on many people. That led me to thinking, San Francisco should squarely be placed in the top 4. The current disruptors of the world, Anthropic and OpenAI, aren't just located in SF, but are based strongly on SF culture. Sam Altman used to be President of YC, which is a huge advocate of SF and the SF tech culture. Before the AI boom, most major social media company was born out of the same tech culture centered in SF. Even before that, the semiconductor revolution. And unlike the fashion coming out of Paris, no one can ignore these.

The next question is, "what are the big 4 cities of the world"

Some candidates I've heard

  • NYC
  • LA
  • SF
  • London
  • Tokyo
  • Singapore

Chinese cities are hard to include because from my understanding, there is no 1 major Chinese city. So even if China itself has a sizeable global impact as well as many large cities, if we are strictly talking about big 4 cities then it doesn't make sense to include a Chinese city to represent China at large.

Again, I'm in a bubble. I also have mostly a Western perspective — would someone from China agree?

I had the chance ask someone I met at Startup School, who is a Chinese citizen that has been in the US for 1 year for his undergrad.

His big 4 were:

  • San Francisco
  • NYC
  • London
  • Singapore

His metric biased pretty heavily towards tech relevance. He said Singapore, citing Google's Asia headquarters being there.

Sounds very tech bro pilled, but I can definitely see merit in that