There’s an odd meme gone viral in social media the past few days, listing a number of preferences for world cities. I suspect most people giving answers about cities they dislike, hate, and most love probably haven’t been to them?

Here I’ll take a stab at my own answers, realizing that these are tentative and that my mind changes about many of them each time I visit. It’s not enough to go to a place once and develop more than a contingent view. Every city has both positives and negatives, and you may experience more of one or the other on a given visit but that doesn’t mean you have a full sense of the place.

If you don’t like someplace, other than Chicago, you should probably go back!

• City I dislike: Denver
  
• City I think is underrated: Singapore, Los Angeles, Falls Church
  
• City I think is overrated: Chicago, Portland, Boston
  
• City I like: Tokyo
  
• City I used to love: Hong Kong
  
• City I begrudgingly respect: New York
  
• City I still need to visit: Ashgabat, Pyongyang, Tehran, Riyadh
  
• City I dream of living in: Austin

New York is badly run, and politicians make excuses blaming others for its problems. It’s too expensive to live in too little space. And yet it brings together large numbers of exceptional and ambitious people – a cluster that makes it where you want to be for the greatest shot at success in many industries. (Sure, the Bay Area still for tech, LA for entertainment, and Boston for biotech, but otherwise New York.)

New York City

New York City

Los Angeles isn’t underrated by the people who live there, they pay a lot to live there, in housing costs, taxes and regulatory expense. But is there a better city in the country for ethnic foods? New York is good for some foods, and so is Houston, but LA is rather unmatched.

Although if there’s a city in the U.S. that comes close for ethnic foods, surely it is Falls Church, Virginia – with its Eden Center (go to any Vietnamese restaurant in the interior corridors); Elephant Jumps (still probably the best Thai restaurant in the United States); and cluster of Korean places in nearby Annandale?

Elephant Jumps

Elephant Jumps

Singapore is also underrated because it’s too often derided as sterile, because English (Singlish) is spoken, and because it’s so accessible. But it too is one of the world’s great food cities at both the high and low end, and it’s incredibly well-run. The smartest people are often part of the bureaucracy there. Where else is that true?

Singapore Hawker Center

Tokyo, too, is one of the world’s great food cities. It has New York’s density and excitement. And as an outsider I’m always amazed.

With Takashi Ono at Jiro Roppongi

Sadly, Hong Kong is a place I watch slide from the perch on which I used to hold it as it turns to the mainland and squeezes the freedoms of its own people – jailing dissidents for speaking out about their city’s future with retroactive application of ‘national security’ laws that China committed would never be applied retroactively, and which renege on commitments the country made when Hong Kong was handed over by the British. “Do You hear the people sing,” by the way, is banned in China.

More than thousand HKers sing Les Miserables' 'Do you hear the people sing?' at HK international airport with their calls for free election and democracy. Here is the Ground Zero in the war against authoritarian rule. That's the reason for us never surrender. pic.twitter.com/1MkTp4BkVg

— Joshua Wong 黃之鋒 (@joshuawongcf) August 10, 2019

Denver is cold. Traffic is a nightmare. Food is overrated. Have you ever stayed in the soulless Tech Center area? It’s far worse that the suburbs of the DFW Metroplex. Chicago is colder still, what’s the line, that a bunch of New Yorkers said ‘Gee, I’m enjoying the poverty and crime, but it just isn’t cold enough. Let’s go west?” Meanwhile Boston has all of the downsides of New York and Chicago, but without good food.

On the subject of overrated, I didn’t like ‘Major Western European Capitals’ although that’s probably not true of London which has become underrated while Paris and Rome are overrated and Berlin, which was underrated 20 years ago, is now probably properly rated.

Austin is where is dream of living… which is why I live here. I moved from DC after 18 years, having ‘done my time.’ We chose Austin became we like it. It was ‘too popular’ a decade ago when we made that decision, and has become more popular since. Things have changed somewhat, with New Yorkers and Californians bringing a reservations culture to restaurants (you no longer just walk into all the top places). Outside of barbecue none of the food is world class – but it’s the world’s best barbecue, and everything else is above average. While we have good North Asian food we’re lacking in Southeast Asian.

There are of course many cities in the middle! I am torn over what I think of Bangkok, I love much of it but it’s not among my top. I enjoy my time in the Mideast but the cities aren’t my absolute favorites in the world (Doha is worth about 48 hours in my view, go see the Museum of Islamic Art). There’s nowhere I fall in love with in Africa, but also nowhere I’ve spent enough time in for me to actually say I hate. Maybe I ‘hate’ Mumbai, for its slums, nowhere was I sadder or angrier than the time I spent there – angry at the policies that keep people in poverty.

One question I left off is where I feel ‘most at home’ and that one was tough for me, I’ve never quite felt like I fit in anywhere. I was torn between Northern Virginia (where I lived longest), Austin (where I’ve chosen to live now), and Sydney (where I’ve probably visited most, for family). Anywhere I go though I always feel a little bit like an outsider. I keep leaving to go other places!

Sydney

How would you answer these memes yourself, and which takes of mine do you think are most right or wrong?