yr favorite 'tier 1' world city

just as well u got it right then

the one with the most outlying suburbs, natch

suggest banlieue

that's probably nyc if you go by the definition which includes most of long island and bits of connecticut

+ an entire state

never had the slightest interest in tokyo

cant forget paris

been to 3/4, but Paris was only as a kid/teen. suspect I'd like it even more now.

also think Tokyo/japan (unvisited) holds the most appeal to me personally. voting NYC cuz I'm american and its the right thing to do

9/11 auspicious poll date imo

I want to visit Tokyo really badly but I know once I do, I'll smash the bubble of romanticism I've put around the place and it will never be the same. never consummate

This is tough, i've underrated London criminally in the past but all 4 of these rule for so many reasons it's crazy.

Scarily enough, I've been to PARIS the most (more than a dozen visits) and LONDON the fewest (four visits).

Remind me again the criteria?

yr favorite

yr favourite!

only done london and paris, both several times but paris since mid-90's and london not til a couple years ago.

new york wins for having the best rap music

what about grime

new york wins for having new york

I'm from London, what else would I vote for?

But unfair this though as London is probably the city with the most ILXORS in the world.

been to 3 of these but sorry NYC rules all

I've lived in London, voting NYC

I probably should have included a "this, but I haven't been to toyko" option

tokyo

when I visited london it seemed like the raddest place ever but people who live there seem glum about it a lot more than nyc-ers w/ nyc. the weather was fantastic during my entire trip and maybe that affected my perception a tiny bit.

anyway voted paris.

i'm super fond of tokyo and all but london is p much the love of my life (no objectum-sexualito), so

Been to all, voted Paris.

lol @ no objectum-sexualito

I spent time in London during the 80s and loved it though I haven't been there since, I'd guess it's changed as much as New York in the last 20 years. I've visited Paris once, briefly and have never been to Tokyo - voting for the city where I've lived my entire adult life (so far) the NYC.

i voted tokyo. of the four, i've had the most fun there. it's overwhelming initially, trying to figure out how to get around etc.

tokyo opens itself up slowly. i went there once a month for a few years and i wouldn't have voted for it after the first year. but the more i got to know it and the more i searched out new neighborhoods the more i liked it. it's an easy place to be quiet in; that massive of a city and my silence, good combo

born & raised in Paris, lived in London, been countless times to NYC and once to Tokyo - think I'll vote for the latter as it's the one that I'd be most excited to live in right now. a bit puzzled by people voting for their hometown on principle

anyway, pretty much love all these places except London

Been to all and could vote for any - but frankly, would feel pretty stupid not voting for the other three, they're all brilliant. I'll see if I can figure out a way of gaming this and casting four votes instead.

never been to any of these

London is very difficult to love unless you're from there, and even then it's not easy, but it's just fucking exciting. It doesn't feel like a city built with loveability in mind, which Paris certainly is, but that obsession with the city's image is to Paris's detriment I think.

New York I loved when I visited it, but I only visited the bits that tourists typically see. The worst and most deprived parts of NY are surely worse than the worst parts of London, maybe even Paris.

Tokyo I can't really comment on, but it looks fun. I suppose only New York and London have that feel of 'whatever you're interested in, you can do it here' and maybe NY has the slight edge on that one. Voting London, only because I'd be crushed if I left and was told I could never come back, whereas with NY that wouldn't bother me.

Good test. I'd have to go for London on that basis too (but then that's probably because we're talking five years' familiarity vs a few weeks or days visiting the others)

been putting off going to ny for more than a year now... have sort of built it up as more epic than london. and the more iconic bits of london don't interest me. h8/<3 it, really, but it kind of lacks romance. the unremitting greyness of the last while isn't helping.

It is more epic than London, even though London is bigger. There are drawbacks to that, those buildings don't half cut out the light. First thing I noticed when I got back to London from New York is how open and light everything seemed, and that was in December.

I want to visit Tokyo really badly but I know once I do, I'll smash the bubble of romanticism I've put around the place and it will never be the same. never consummate

^^^^yeah, this.

Obviously I chose London over NYC because I chose to live here, not there, but still. I can't shake the feeling that in many, many ways, NYC is just a more thrilling, exciting, diverse, insane, amazing city - which are all the reasons I don't want to live there any more. (But granted, most of my impressions of NYC are at least 10 to 20 years out of date. I don't know that it is what it was any more.)

Paris is just kind of a pretty pretender who got there through some kind of war-torn plastic surgery in the early 19th Century so as lovely as I've always found it, there's something always kind of "not quite there" about it in the same way as London or NYC.

Tokyo is the wild card because I've never been there.

Paris is just kind of a pretty pretender who got there through some kind of war-torn plastic surgery in the early 19th Century so as lovely as I've always found it, there's something always kind of "not quite there" about it in the same way as London or NYC.

Yeah I feel this way about Paris. Very nice and all, but it just doesn't have that pulse.

Also I was really disappointed by Parisian nightlife when I got there, you'd expect there to me more happening than there actually is.

I thought Berlin had more than Paris, but hey.

hmmm, these points are somewhat valid but I wonder whether if some of these arguments simply come from the fact that most of you were presumably just in town for a few days + language barrier, etc. I'm not criticising, as Paris is def. not the best place for clubbing/nightliving, but portraying it as some kind of quaint 19th century "museum city" is a bit reductive.

tho, yeah, I would rather live in Berlin than any of these 4 so-called "top tier" cities.

That's entirely impossible, as I've only really been to Paris twice, and once under such strange circumstances that I'm not really surprised the city had an unreal quality. The problem is really that I've lived for a number of years in two of the cities on the list, so of course I'm slanted towards my longer and deeper experiences there.

(I don't think I'd live by choice in either of them any more, though if it were at all possible, I think I'd rather like to have the chance to live in Paris for a while.)

ok I personally am not much of a Paris fan but "just kind of a pretty pretender who got there through some kind of war-torn plastic surgery in the early 19th Century" does not make any sense - much as I find its prettiness wearying, you cannot call it a 'pretender', not with its amazing history as a cultural/political centre.

History being the operative word in that sentance.

huh i just looked up the definition of 'pretender' (in monarchic terms) and... i did not realise a former occupant of a throne could be designated a 'pretender' too. EVEN SO.

Yes, that's exactly the sense I meant. (Sorry, I grew up with stories of Auld Pretenders and Young Pretenders echoing in my head.) Like this is a city living on past glories. London, as much as I hate it, still does genuinely seem to have current things, going on in the present.

Perhaps I'd have more of a sense of this happening in Paris if I lived there, but, really, I can't *afford* it.

all these tier 1 cities need to work out their affordable housing situations, stat. paris may already be too far gone. london probably the best in this regard. you got council houses in marylebone, squats in russell square.

yeah wikipedia say they diff but doesnt offer a catchall for subways, although it somewhat halfheartedly endorses 'metro'

they probably just don't care about the concept

like it would not surprise me to learn that people who are most vested in what a world city is also happen to live in these four cities

not enough non-commie whites. Sorry.

tokyo more like tokeno in this poll am I right

subways can be light or heavy rail, but usually when you say subway you mean underground heavy rail. but elevated heavy rail in nyc is still 'the subway' even though it's not sub the way. the muni system is sf goes underground and so it is a subway in those parts. but it's light rail. which means it goes slow and isn't very good.

bangkok, siagon, sydney etc where do you stop, there was another thread iirc

kinda wanna poll berlin vs lisbon as the last two major european cities i've visited (both awesome) but barely anyone's been to lisbon

maybe berlin vs barcelona but that's so obviously berlin tho

feel like lisbon is sort of hot these days

caracas vs auckland

I would vote for Sibley, Iowa over Berlin even if the poll was "in which city would you prefer to die, nb if you pick Sibley you have to die next week"

your feelings on our teutonic brethren are well-documented

iirc next week is sibley's annual 'celebrate berlin' festival

good thing that berlin is nothing in any way like the rest of germany or even the world

although i've been told cologne goes pretty insane during carnival - they get 6 days of almost-literal orgy to indulge their sins before the next 359 days are spent expiating

listening to some German music on classical radio right now unless I miss my guess...feel bad for the guy who wrote this gorgeous music, he never got to crap on a normal toilet :(

munich > berlin, barca > either tho

before 1900 the germans actually crapped directly onto planks of wood which were then taken away on carts to be dipped in brine and then converted into housing

death by firing squad > munich

never been tbh

but munich's nice, right?

cork > paris fwiw

btw re: cologne

German carnival singers and bands

* Alt-Schuss
* Bernd Stelter
* Bläck Fööss [3]
* Brings [4]
* Colör
* Dä Radschläger
* De Fätzer
* Höhner [5]
* Die 3 Colonias
* De Kläävbotze
* De Klüngelköpp
* Kolibris
* Marie Luise Nikuta
* Paveier
* Paraplüs
* Rabaue
* De Räuber [6]
* Die Rheinländer
* Schmackes Royal (Schmackes Royal, Official Home Page [5])
* Schmitti (Schmitti, Official Home Page [6])
* De Vajabunde
* Köbes Underground

name poll

cork has like 40 people in it

and yeah 40 irish people is way better than 2 million french people but still not a fair comparison

39 of them are there just to make sure ur enjoyin urself

cork is pretty swell tho I prefer dublin, which will probably earn me darraghmac's enmity for life but man dublin for a visitor can be the most fun city around.

almost made it to belfast last year was bummed it didn't work out, haven't ever been to the north

dublin's better than it used be, i must say. Lots of dubs emigrating helped. Belfast's happenin

I don't get the whole spire thing in dublin

have been told that belfast is the next great british city of culture

love the north whenever i'm there tbh. Havent sampled nightlife tho.

tho fo with 'great british' juxtaposition u troll

otm, dublin is the true next great british city

suggest ban this dude with the full fury of 1916

unless he also holds that NYC is a lovely suburb of York I guess

america is a suburb of england

iirc new york is the next great dutch capital of culture

explains all the tulips in Pella I guess

architecture and wanker-quotient wise, dublin's very british, 's'true

Founded by the Vikings, colonised by the English, Dublin is, like, the least Irish Irish city ever.

Anyway, ha ha, I've been feeling that ILX was too American centric recently, so it's nice to see that its centre of gravity still remains in London even if its population doesn't.

I mean, in the Dublin episode of Coast, Neil Oliver walked around in an outraged Celtic froth, complaining about WTF Britannia was doing on the top of all the buildings!

(WTF Coast was doing in Dublin is besides the point now they're continually all over Brittany and Norway and places that are just. not. British. even remotely historically back during the glory days of the Empire or whatevs. Unless you wanna count, like, Calais.)

oh yeah, dublin's gorgeous but hardly irish at all. Get thee to galway i'd say. Or kiltimagh.

Mind you i didnt half kick up a stink when ismael included dublin in his british cities poll.

most irish city- clonmacnoise, mebbe

Teh coos agree

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Clonmacnoise_castle_and_cattle.jpg

Dublin feels like a mediocre British city that happens to be full of Irish people. It's kind of dull.

Does ILX not have an ancient ruins thread? I am almost CERTAIN I have started one before (but I probably called it something silly and unsearchable)

when ur tired of dublin, ur tired of dubs

when ur tired of dublin, ur tired of dubs culchies clogging up the place

jaysus typical shirty dub d'ye respond to the social welfare office as quick d'ye

Quicker than the downward progress of Pee Flynn's flies when he spots a quiet corner....

well honesht ta chrisht thats scandalous