Annual ceremony at City Hall marks unbroken streak; runner-up cities note they were not consulted and were not aware a competition existed
New York City Declares Itself ‘The Greatest City in the World’ for 2,847th Consecutive Year
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — New York City marked another year of unbroken championship at the annual Greatest City Ceremony held Tuesday at City Hall, where the Mayor accepted a trophy the city commissions and presents to itself and read a proclamation declaring New York “the undisputed, world-renowned, internationally acknowledged, self-evident capital of human civilisation,” a title the city has held for as long as records exist, which is primarily because New York City keeps the records.
For related London satire and commentary, see Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
The Ceremony
The ceremony, held annually since a date the city’s official history describes as “time immemorial” but which historians at Columbia place closer to the mid-1950s, draws approximately 200 attendees including council members, commissioners, and a rotating cast of celebrities whose presence is described as “testament to New York’s global cultural magnetism” and whose bookings are handled by the Mayor’s events office at standard rates. This year’s proclamation cited New York’s superiority in: culture, cuisine, finance, fashion, music, theatre, sport, architecture, energy, attitude, diversity, ambition, infrastructure (this item drew audible murmuring from the back row), and what the proclamation called “the indefinable quality that makes this city unlike any other, a quality so singular that its absence in other cities constitutes their defining characteristic.”
London, Paris, Tokyo, and Sydney were not reached for comment because they were not notified about the competition, which they were also not notified about last year. When a journalist informed the London Mayor’s office that New York had declared itself the greatest city for 2,847 consecutive years, a spokesperson said “yes, they do that,” in a tone that conveyed an entire relationship with the claim without elaborating on it further.
The British vocabulary for this type of assertion is well-developed. Further British slang resources and the tradition from which they emerge have long covered institutions that declare their own superiority through processes they control and metrics they define, then cite the declaration as evidence of the superiority. It is a circular argument with good production values. New York City has excellent production values.
The Runners-Up
In a new element added to this year’s ceremony, the Mayor acknowledged “the strong performances of other major global cities.” London was cited for its museums, described as “very good, very old, and very much benefiting from their proximity to New York in the transatlantic cultural conversation.” Paris was praised for its food, which the Mayor said “compares favourably to some New York neighbourhoods.” Tokyo was acknowledged for its transit system, which produced another round of audible murmuring accompanied by someone in the back row saying something under their breath that the official transcript does not capture but that those nearby confirmed was pointed. The Mayor concluded that these cities were “wonderful places that any New Yorker would enjoy visiting for a week or two.” He did not acknowledge the possibility that anyone might prefer them as a permanent address, because the proclamation does not contain that clause.
Urban geographers note that “greatest city in the world” is not a metric that admits of objective measurement, that different cities lead in different categories by different methodologies, and that no ranking body ranks New York first overall consistently. The Mayor’s office said it was aware of other ranking methodologies and respectfully disagreed with all of them. It did not specify the basis for this disagreement. The disagreement appears to be principled rather than evidential, which is, in its way, a very New York position to take. Prat in London slang and Cockney culture has documented exactly this type of institutional confidence across British political history, and prat in British politics and journalism has made it a recurring subject of commentary. New York does it at a scale that British satire finds, frankly, inspiring. The ceremony was wonderful. The trophy was beautiful. The self-award was flawless. The city remains, in its own estimation, the greatest. In the estimation of the record-keeping apparatus, which is also its own, it has been so for 2,847 years. In the estimation of everyone else, the debate continues.
The London Response
The London Mayor’s office, having been informed of New York’s 2,847th consecutive Greatest City declaration, issued a follow-up statement through a junior press officer who noted that London had been continuously inhabited for approximately 2,000 years, had served as the capital of the largest empire in recorded history, and had contributed to global culture, language, and governance in ways that did not require annual self-certification to remain valid. The statement concluded: “We wish New York well in its ongoing championship.” This is either gracious or devastating, depending on how you read the pause before “championship.” In British diplomatic language, a pause before the final noun of a compliment is worth attending to carefully. Tokyo did not respond. Paris responded with a photograph of a croissant, which required no annotation.
The Greatest City Ceremony is not, technically, the only annual self-designation of this kind in the United States. Chicago has referred to itself as the “greatest city in the world” in various official contexts since at least the 1893 World’s Fair, and Los Angeles has made similar claims in connection with the entertainment industry, the climate, and, periodically, the traffic, though the last claim has become increasingly difficult to sustain. What distinguishes New York’s approach is the formalisation: the ceremony, the trophy, the proclamation, and the unbroken streak. Other cities make the claim casually. New York has institutionalised it, which is either the mark of a city that takes its self-image seriously or evidence that the self-image requires considerably more maintenance than the underlying reality would strictly require.
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SOURCE: https://prat.uk/29359-2/