What Makes a Great City?

Great cities stand for something or have something that stands for them. The greatest cities do both.

The easiest way for a city to stand for something is to be a capital of a nation. Paris, London, Tokyo, Beijing and others easily stand out in this way. Another way is to stand out as a financial and business capital. Examples of this include Shanghai, New York City and Sydney. That leaves generally only two openings per country. Are the rest of us out of luck? No. 

Cities can also stand out as capitals of industries that capture the public's imagination. This would include Los Angeles (Hollywood) and San Francisco (Silicon Valley). Atlanta used the 1996 Olympics as a tool to position themselves as the business and cultural "capital" of the American Southeast. Being the home of CNN and Coca-Cola also helps.

Is there a good way for the Twin Cities region to stand out via the above criteria? Sort of. While we are leaders in numerous business categories and home to many Fortune 500 corporations, they aren't the kind of industries that generally capture the public imagination. However, they're something from which we can build.

If we really want to stand out, we need to do it through icons. This can be iconic architecture and iconic transportation. London, New York and San Francisco, in addition to being political, business and/or industry capitals, also have both architectural and transit icons.

While the Twin Cities has some really great architecture and a somewhat unique and well-developed skyway system, there's really nothing that someone in, say, Singapore, would immediately think of if you mentioned Minneapolis or Saint Paul. We can change that!