Why do so few cities have everything?

{"text":[[{"start":8.23,"text":"A reader gets in touch with a quibble. "},{"start":10.572000000000001,"text":"I wrote last month about the profusion of Michelin stars among restaurants that serve the (once-patronised) food of India, China and Nigeria. "},{"start":18.764000000000003,"text":"I’d connected this to the story of our times: the seepage of power and prestige from the west and its allies. "},{"start":24.457,"text":"Their cuisines used to hog the Guide, as their economies used to hog world GDP. "}],[{"start":29.89,"text":"The Michelin trend is real enough, said this informed reader. "},{"start":33.757,"text":"In London. "},{"start":34.812,"text":"Elsewhere, even in cities of general open-mindedness, the Euro-Japanese grip on the finest end of fine dining hasn’t budged. "}],[{"start":42.59,"text":"I could counter-quibble, but not much. "},{"start":45.182,"text":"Instead, the email set off a broader thought. "},{"start":48.124,"text":"Why, in a growing world, can so few cities make a plausible claim to contain everything? "}],[{"start":54.38,"text":"The global population has doubled over the past 50 years to 8bn. "},{"start":58.697,"text":"Our species now produces over $100 trillion of output per annum in current prices. "},{"start":63.727000000000004,"text":"And this stuff sloshes around with an ease that was unknown in the middle of the last century. "},{"start":68.057,"text":"Thanks to shipping containers, successive tariff-cutting rounds and the mutation of once-communist countries into prolific exporters, almost anything can get almost anywhere. "},{"start":76.712,"text":"So, albeit with more friction, can people. "},{"start":79.929,"text":"Migrants constitute a larger share of the world’s population than in 1960. "}],[{"start":85.42,"text":"Given all this, there should be a multitude of what I am going to call “total cities”. "},{"start":89.887,"text":"A total city is one in which a person can find almost literally anything: any cuisine, at low, middle and extortionate price points; any art form, exhibited or performed to world-class standard; any language spoken, not in scattered households but in communities of appreciable size. "},{"start":105.654,"text":"If you are dating in a total city, you might go out with someone from each continent in one calendar year without pausing to notice the fact. "},{"start":112.459,"text":"I grant that Antarctica requires work. "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

As soon as cities outside of London and New York are named, arguments kick off. Paris? I’d include it. Others wouldn’t. Tokyo?

"}],[{"start":115.86,"text":"In an 8bn world, there should be lots of cities that readers agree are total. "},{"start":120.452,"text":"Instead, well, would it take more than one hand to count them off? "},{"start":124.469,"text":"Would you get past the index finger before starting a fight among ourselves? "},{"start":128.387,"text":"As soon as cities outside of London and New York are named, arguments kick off. "},{"start":132.817,"text":"Paris? "},{"start":133.809,"text":"I’d include it. "},{"start":134.902,"text":"Others wouldn’t. "},{"start":136.057,"text":"Tokyo? "},{"start":137.087,"text":"Not heterogeneous enough for some. "},{"start":139.34199999999998,"text":"Dubai? "},{"start":140.372,"text":"You can eat almost anything, meet almost anyone but not yet see a Vermeer on a whim. "},{"start":145.214,"text":"Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Sydney, Bangkok, Toronto: each incurs dissent. "},{"start":151.969,"text":"Is the number of cities who meet the criteria much higher than when the world held 4bn souls? "}],[{"start":157.92000000000002,"text":"Now, a few disclaimers. "},{"start":160.24900000000002,"text":"I don’t suggest “total” means “better”. "},{"start":162.25400000000002,"text":"Houston, with its abundance and range of migrants, and no lack of art, has a stronger claim to total-ness than most European capitals. "},{"start":169.834,"text":"You can still favour Rome, though. "},{"start":172.16400000000002,"text":"Total needn’t even mean good. "},{"start":174.007,"text":"The average person doesn’t become, as I do, a claustrophobic diva when denied immediate access to everything (“I can’t believe there are just four Uzbek-Galician wine bars in this dump”) or the ambient sound of foreign voices. "},{"start":186.21200000000002,"text":"As various elections over the past decade have shown, wanting the world on one’s doorstep isn’t a universal taste. "}],[{"start":193.21,"text":"It is strange, though, that the world can grow and grow while the agreed-upon world cities remain more or less consistent. "},{"start":200.03900000000002,"text":"True, some things, such as access to visual art, are naturally constrained. "},{"start":204.994,"text":"Canonical paintings are few, and one in the Met is one that can’t at the same time be in the São Paulo Museum of Art. "},{"start":211.274,"text":"But most things that make urban life great are, as economists put it, non-rivalrous. "}],[{"start":217.27,"text":"We are left with a puzzle, then. "},{"start":219.762,"text":"In the end, a total city relies on three things: raw numbers of people (nearer 10mn than 5mn, I suggest), openness (a foreign-born share of perhaps a third), and enough wealth to sustain all those amenities. "},{"start":232.767,"text":"It follows that a world that has undergone steep population growth, mass migration and steady enrichment throughout my life should have thrown up, I don’t know, a dozen or so uncontested total cities by now. "},{"start":243.497,"text":"Instead, consensus falls apart after one or two. "},{"start":246.764,"text":"Given the present reversals of globalisation, it is conceivable that no one reading this will live to see another. "}],[{"start":252.52,"text":""}]],"url":"https://creatives.ftacademy.cn/album/158178-1717892467.mp3"}