New York City

The day after he avoided the Chinese government’s lockdown in Wuhan, Hubei province, Scott Liu was already planning how he could support his hometown’s fight against the coronavirus from abroad. Lucky enough to have boarded the last direct flight from Wuhan to New York on January 22 – just before travel bans were imposed to stop the spread of the virus that causes Covid-19 – Liu settled back into his home in Queens, New York, and began a 14-day period of self-quarantine. In solitude, while reports of thousands of coronavirus cases began to overtake the news cycle, he started organizing the overseas Wuhan-born community to donate to the city of 11 million people, the epicenter of the Covid-19

By ranking fourth in the world, the megacity of Shenzhen was the highest-ranking Chinese metropolis in a new study that ranked how important a city is to the global economy.  China generally performed well in the rankings, but the list was dominated by the US.  New York City topped the chart for the third consecutive year. London took the second spot, followed by Singapore and Shenzhen. San Jose, California took fifth and Tokyo was sixth.  The report, which was produced by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the United Nations Human Settlements Program, measured a city’s economic influence based on its “connectivity.” Connectivity was defined by both “hard” and “soft” networks.  The