http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city

I stumbled across this wiipedia page which is about various measures of importance of cities globally.

The GaWC study interested me the most, of the British cities mentioned...

London is classified as Alpha++

Manchester is Beta

Birmingham is Beta-

Glasgow, Bristol and Edinburgh are Gamma+

Leeds are Gamma

Belfast and Southampton are Gamma-

Liverpool and Newcastle are rated as having high sufficiency

Aberdeen, Nottingham, Sheffield and Norwich are rated as being sufficient.

Cardiff aren't listed.

I noticed that article myself not that long ago.

My other city is number 64, with a score of 47.4 on the global competitiveness scale.

It is a sad fact that Cardiff isn't on it. Yes London tends to eclipse all other British cities, and to an extent, all other European cities. But all of the other major cities in the U.K. are making a name for themselves, though not us!

I don't know who to blame, and frankly I don't care. We need to all stop bickering and focus on becoming the city that we want to be.

Agree totally regarding the blame game, it is neither original nor particularly interesting.

Cardiff probably suffers on this list by not representing a strong economic area, if the output of the region picked up then it'd be a more noteworthy city.

I thought that Europe's youngest Capitol would at least be on a par with Newcastle economically??

I'm not sure about these lists. Rather surprised to see Bristol above Leeds. But anyway, how do they measure these things? Seems in part to reflect size but with the likes of Aberdeen and Norwich on there and Southampton on one of the higher rungs, Cardiff's omission is a bit concerning.

I wouldn't be too fussed and would say either its a simple mistaken omission, or other cities are on there somewhat mistakenly. For instance, there is no way that Southampton on its own is above Liverpool or Newcastle.. perhaps it also includes Portsmouth, Winchester etc? Norwich is a strange one, as that doesn't really have any nearby urban areas to bolster it.

I would have expected Belfast, Liverpool, Newcastle and maybe Nottingham and Sheffield to be above the UK as they all form part of larger more concretely defined metro areas than does Cardiff. "Tyneside" or "Merseyside", and even "Greater Belfast" are more coherent metropolitan areas than "South East Wales", for instance.

It is rather strange, but Welsh companies aren't exactly the biggest or best. We have only two companies which annual takings of over £1Bn Iceland and Admiral, only one of which is based in Cardiff, whilst Scotland has around 10 and England has quite a few more. I do feel that in time Cardiff will become more competitive, but I feel that we haven't really found our niche yet.