And where does Dallas fit in?

Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic of the LA Times:

The idea that major cities of the world, rather than the nations they belong to, will be the rising powers of the 21st century is a fashionable one these days. … Distinct from the so-called mega-cities–those sprawling and often poverty-ridden metropolitan centers with more than 10 million people, such as Lagos or Cairo–is a new class of “super-cities” that includes London, New York and Shanghai. These wealthy cities set the world agenda in finance and fashion and just about everything in between. Instead of military power or the muscle of a national government, their influence relies on their ability to stay nimble in a quickly changing world economy and to lure a young and talented workforce.

In the fully connected era of globalization, London is infinitely more relevant to the rest of the world, not to mention a lot richer, than the United Kingdom as a whole. (As urban scholar Richard Sennett puts it, “London belongs to a country composed of itself and New York.”)… Miami, meanwhile, has emerged in the last decade as the de facto capital of Latin America.

The new Age of Cities is also, not surprisingly, an Age of Mayors. London has the remarkable Ken Livingstone, who has made planning and design the priorities of his administration and, not coincidentally, landed the 2012 Olympics. New York has Michael Bloomberg, who has taken more of an interest in urbanism, transit and architecture than any Gotham mayor since John Lindsay. … And Chicago has Richard Daley, the scion of a political machine who has made sustainability and green architecture programs the centerpiece of an aggressive, inventive push to make his city a world player.

Get the full story from the LATimes Magazine here.