Tiers for China - What about America

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Tom Limongello tossed a thoughtful Twitter query at Kaiser Kuo a few minutes ago - what would we consider a fourth-tier city in the US. 

I've spent the last few minutes staring at a list of the US Metropolitan Statistical Areas, and thinking about differences between China and the US (the things that make a first tier city different from a fourth tier city in the US are far more subtle than those differences in China), I look at the list and roughly figure the following:

• First Tier - Top 25 cities 
• Second Tier - 26-50
• Third Tier - 51-100
• Fourth Tier - 100-150
• Fifth Tier - 150-380
• Sixth Tier - 380 and below

Take a look at the list. My breaks are partly arbitrary, but you can see real differences - objective and subjective - between those tiers.

Thoughts?

Comments

[Dan Harris]

Interesting.

One of the things that has always struck me about China is that, just like the US (and as opposed to, let's say, Korea, Japan, or England) there is not just ONE city where nearly everyone who is anyone lives and where nearly everything happens.

Here's how I would do it (somewhat randomly):

First Tier -- Top 3
Second Tier -- 4-54
Third Tier -- 54-154
Fourth, Fifth and Sixth to follow.

I did this not so much based on population, but on influence. Cities like Anchorage, Las Vegas, and Indianapolis are centers of their regions and I accounted for that.

I suspect that as a kid (just like me) you spent far too many hours studying the statistics on the back of baseball cards. Am I right?