Detroit's World City Ranking

[DetroitPole]

That said, Detroit's spot as a global city is definitely in jeopardy. It is hard to believe considering the cities ranked above us. Portland, Minneapolis, Seattle, San Jose, Denver, and Atlanta all rank higher than Detroit.

Not to mention, we are outranked by a number of what I would consider bullshit, 3rd world cities. How can places like Kalkota [[India), Bratislava [[Slovakia), Guadalajara [[Mexico), Santo Domingo [[Dominican Rep.), and Guatemala City [[Guatemala) rank higher than Detroit?

It gets worse when you consider all of "WTF!" places that rank higher than Detroit. Does anyone even know where these cities are: Ljubljana, Zagreb, Manama, and Nicosia. No offense, but even a beat-up Detroit should rank higher.

Why? Because it is in the United States?

Ljubijana
http://frysingerreunion.org/gc09/ljubijana114.jpg

Zagreb
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-h-T9TXo7qg...00/zagreb1.jpg

Bratislava
http://www.wt-fischbacher.at/spitzer...bratislava.jpg

Bullshit to who? To you, as an American? These cities have been around for hundreds of years more than Detroit. They may not have gigantic interstate freeways where in the suburbs everyone owns 3 cars but they are very livable and beautiful places. And those three cities don't fit the traditional definition of third world anyway [[second world, as former communist, to be exact).

Unfortunately all Metro Detroit really has keeping it where it is at all is the massive amount of wealth that the auto industry generated and the economy it has created. All in all there isn't much quality of life here, just kind of a gigantic, grey, flat, sprawling mess.

It's like how people wail and gnash their teeth that some filmmaker would rather be killing time in Krakow. Yeah, because Metro Detroit sucks, guys. We could learn something from Bratislava. I feel like some people here have never been outside of the midwest.