Chicago - A Global City...?

We talked and read about how Chicago was becoming a ‘global city’ this week, and the different definitions of what constitutes a global city. Before I did the reading I must admit I had never thought of the possibility that a ‘global city’ could have more than one possible definition, but then again, looking back now I am not sure how I would have defined a global city in a singular way. 

From an economical standing, Chicago is global because it is home to an International Airport (O’Hare) and offices and headquarters of international corporations, such as Boeing, Dominick’s and Wrigley (http://www.december.com/places/chi/notable.html).  But from a personal, or street level, view point you can find people from all nationalities within Chicago, most easily illustrated by the existence of so many cultural neighbourhoods (Chinatown, Little Italy, Pilsen, and Humboldt Park), languages and even tourists. When people hear the word Chicago across the world they know that it is situated in America and the images of the ‘Bean’ (Cloud Gate – Millennium Park) and Sears (Willis) Tower are synonymous with Chicago. 

However, I think Chicago is missing the ‘x-factor’ that makes it a truly global city in the same way that New York, Tokyo and London are global. Unfortunately, being the x-factor, I just can’t put my finger on what it is missing. Is it just that the images of Chicago are not as famous as Times Square in New York, or Buckingham Palace in London? Is it they are not in as many films as these cities are? Does it in some way work against Chicago that it is not home to a single major commodity in the same way that other cities are, even though we discussed this as a positive, because Chicago is one of the very few industrial cities in America to survive the transition from the industrial age to the cyber age (look to Detroit, Michigan for example)? All of these things may count towards Chicago, in my eyes at least, not quite being a global city.

Of course that is just my opinion. Chicago fits all the criteria that Fassil Demissie discusses in chapter two of The New Chicago (Koval, 2006), but maybe checking off a list of criteria is not enough, or maybe Chicago just hasn’t had enough time to grow into its global role. It will be interesting to see how the next ten, twenty, fifty years play out, not just for Chicago, but for other cities across the world too.