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When nations were smaller than they are today, Athens could be great with 100,000 people, Renaissance Florence with 60,000, Alexandria with 700,000 and ancient Rome with something like 1,000,000—no more than live in metropolitan Indianapolis now. To represent all the diverse elements of much more populous societies—diversity is one essential of greatness—the city must now have a population of several millions. Cincinnati and Phoenix, to cite two typical American provincial cities, may be agreeable places to live in, but they are simply not large enough to contain, as does New York, the wide variety of types and temperaments that form the American character. Americans and foreigners alike call New York the least American of cities. In fact, it is the most American, reflecting as does no other all aspects of national life. Still, great is not synonymous with big. Calcutta and Bombay have more than enough people, but too many of them live in misery for the cities to be considered great.
It is doubtful that any one nation can claim more than one great city at any given time—great, after all, is a word that implies uniqueness. It is doubtful, too, that the world itself can contain more than half a dozen great cities at once. Indeed, a great city cannot exist in an unimportant country, which is why Urban Planner John Friedmann of U.C.L.A. prefers to call great cities "imperial cities." London and Paris are still great cities, but they lost some of their luster when world politics shifted to Washington, Moscow and Peking—all of which lack at least one ingredient of greatness. Washington may be the political center of the nation, but, except for its superb galleries, cultural life there is as provincial as that of Des Moines or Butte, Mont. Both Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro have an effervescent vitality that suggests the potential of great cities. They may yet fulfill that potential as Mexico and Brazil grow in wealth and influence. After Tokyo, an undeniably great city despite its pedestrian architecture, Hong Kong is the most vibrant metropolis in Asia. It is, however, a city without a country—and therefore lacks greatness. Cairo is the capital of the Moslem world; but it lacks vitality.