In the long run, I actually see this as a negative. Despite all their other problems and inconveniences, people flock to the aforementioned cities because they each embody a certain mythology. Silicon Valley is the place to do a startup and disrupt the world through high-tech. Paris is the place to push the boundaries of style in food, fashion, and art. It’s almost as if these self-perpetuating mythologies alone can continue to draw people year after year, ensuring their continued relevance. I have to wonder if any global city can really attain a sustainable niche for decades and even centuries without such a powerful core idea. (Something more powerful than just ‘branding’ which almost has the connotation of a simple marketing campaign…)

This is why I question whether Chicago’s image as a great place for global business, and a great place to enjoy life is really enough of a draw to keep attracting people over the next several decades. Many cities can make the same claim. It’s kind of vanilla.

Therefore, does Chicago have any such mythology, grounded in its own history, on which to build? One thing to consider – each of the aforementioned cities embodies a certain idea around which industries grew, and I have to wonder whether Chicago’s is not the abstract ideal of cities themselves. In other words, should Chicago be making a greater push as THE place to be for people who want to define (from all angles) what the ideal 21st century should look like. One can argue that it did so for the 20th century. Will it continue to do so in the 22nd century, 23rd, etc. ? If this is truly a self-perpetuating idea that continues drawing new generations of architects, planners, artists, engineers, business leaders, etc. , then yes. In this sense, Chicago’s diverse and balanced economy becomes an even greater strength, since such a multifaceted idea – the pursuit of perfection in a city – requires the participation of all industries.

Chicago is a place where Daniel Burnham and architecture are revered, civic pride is enormous, and there is such a historically-demonstrated desire to continually reinvent and redefine what the ideal city should be. My two cents.

Likewise, for a typical US worker they now compete globally, which exerts downward pressure on US wages. I think those dynamics are fairly well established.

No, those dynamics aren’t established at all. In fact, American incomes were rising at their normal rate until 2000, and American labor productivity has actually grown faster in the last 15 years than in the previous 20 years.

What is established is that trade causes a small but measurable rise in inequality – about 10-15% of the total rise in US inequality over the last 40 years can be attributed to trade. But there’s a long way from there to “downward pressure on US wages.”

However, the value that the top tier bring to the global table is their ability to influence access to the wealth generating industries “under” them in the general economy. If that wealth generating engine erodes and is relocated to other nations their value evaporates.

The other countervailing trend is globalization itself. Other nations who want access to the US national wealth do not have to go through top tier middlemen in Global Cities – they connect directly to the wealth at the wellhead as it were and the brokers loose influence and the ability to tax the transactions.

The hopeful answer to globalization is, in many ways, right here in these columns and others like them. The resurgence of economic vitality in the “rest of the country” along with the new interest in local farming, manufacturing, thrift, etc.

Now for my potentially controversial hypothesis. The Top Tier will continue to flock to Global cities in order to gain access to the global market and therefore keep their wages moving up. This will continue to drive prices up in global tier cities (and therefore continue to grow the equality gap with those who aren’t able to access the top tier global wage scale). I would take this one step farther – the top tier will continue to move to global cities (and avoid second tier) in order access the escalating wages available in a global city. The wage gap between global and non-global cities will continue to widen as a result.

The same applies to Los Angeles in many ways. There are more than 200 cities that call “Los Angeles” home.

The “wealth gap” you talk about is a very real problem for a nation like the US where the myth that “anybody can become president” persists. Without wealth generating industries that can compete on a global stage and have a place for low education entry level workers who can work up through them to middle class and up I fear that your examples will get worse and worse.

No constraints?

Both Southern California and the Bay Area have the constraint of an ocean on the west, plus both areas are marked by hills.

(Yes, even the hills are densely developed with housing for hills, but along with the high prices, homeowners have to worry about the burden of slides and — especially in Southern California — brush fires.)

There are certainly elements of a more constrained core, but regionally there is plenty of room for growth. California has some of the strictest development rules in America, making it very difficult to build there.

Except that California encourages promiscuous creation of municipalities and specialized districts. That’s one of the proudest traditions of the Midwesterners who moved west.

The development rules are frustrating, but savvy developers never have an empty dance card. The consequence of having so many small entities is that developers can get denied in one area then find a pliant municipality to “break the back” of the denying entity.

Southern California was able to suburbanize the Inland Empire (western San Bernardino and Riverside counties outside of the desert) and exurbanize the Antelope Valley with the help of tract home builders.

Developers in Northern California developed the Delta region and the northern San Joaquin Valley, effectively connecting the Bay Area mega-region with Sacramento as a single commute and labor shed area.

It’s the homeowners in the really wealthy areas such as Marin County and the southern Peninsula that have exaggerated the de facto ban on development. It’s a positive feedback loop. The desire of suburban cities to stop sprawl has created an artificial land shortage that further inflates real estate prices. This in turn has made homeowners extremely wealthy, and they seek to constrain development further.

There’s no countervailing force apart from bypassing the jurisdiction entirely into either a growth-hungry exurb or a poor city looking for any economic boost it can get.

Effectively, land use policies have turned homeowners into a landed gentry. Also, there is no countervailing force that can be used to break this anti-development vise grip. There is no plenary hierarchy for development and laws generally favor restrictive growth. Laws are intended to stop sprawl, yet end up enabling it.

Not sure how Boston doesn’t have geographic constraints–would be interesting to hear how you’ve come to this conclusion. The original city rests on a peninsula. This phenomenon you describe applies more intensely in in Boston as well. I was amazed when I learned recently that, for such a wealthy city, the median household income in Cambridge MA is only exactly on par with that of the country, if not a bit lower. All the students could account for this, as well as the significant amounts of subsidized housing, but even those fail to account for how profoundly wealthy the Talented Tenth is there. Median home prices in Cambridge do a much better job, something like $700,000 from the last I heard. The wage/home cost gap is so great that, from what I’ve heard, starting Harvard professors qualify for workforce housing; otherwise they cannot afford to live there.

I was referring to US domestic migration. I’d bet most people would be surprised by the out-migration rates (not to be confused with net out-migration rates) of most US cities. Rust Belt cities tend to have relatively low out-migration rates.

For the middle class, the push factor tends to be fear (e.g. crime). The pull factor tends to be school district reputation and jobs.

In some cities, you do see some emigration if prices rise too much, but population rebounds as prices fall. It happened in Tokyo in the 1980s and 90s, and it’s happened in Los Angeles this decade. But this effect is small compared to the difference between the growth rate of e.g. Tokyo and Osaka, or Los Angeles and Atlanta.