second cities
From time to time I post the comments a retired San Francisco taxi-driver here. In response to the draft of my posting on the 2009 Power 50, he wrote:
"I've never lived in Brum, but I have lived in two other 'second cities..' Yokohama in 1949 for a few months, and Chicago and suburbs, for several years in the '50s and '60s.
The Japanese are an extraordinarily energetic people. Or at least they were at the time I was there. They didn't walk, they ran. They were frank, upfront, un-self-conscious. Never did I detect envy of the global heavyweight, Tokyo, just across the bay from them. Even their language, their pronunciation, showed impatience of the slow-moving...they didn't live in Yo ko HA ma. They lived in YO-comma. Status was not among their obsessions. It was unproductive, interfered with profit-making.
Chicagoans are keenly aware of their secondary position. It
bothers them, although they make light of it. (By the way, Los Angeles
is now larger than Chicago. I am speaking of 50 years ago.) Their
geographic centrality makes Chicago a natural commercial beehive, an
advantage they take intense pride in. They have a kind of vague
self-consciousness about their strengths...livestock and agricultural
products...compared to the sophisticated specialties of New
York...banking and stock markets. For this reason they know that they
will never enjoy the global reputation of New York although they don't
like to say that out loud. As a counter, they focus on cultural
development...museums, opera, music, fine arts...and in fact do an
impressive job of it.
I see some similarities. What you are tackling and what I am speaking of. Brum will not rival London in a million years, by the measures customary to most people. Nor will it ever achieve the urban felicity of (say) San Francisco...the kind of allure that is never built but simply evolves.
So what am I saying? That your model should be Chicago, not London.