But, like any world city, it teems with influences that have nothing uniquely to do with the native character.
Johnson is determined to promote London as the world city of sport and build on the momentum of hosting the 2012 Olympics.
If anyone doubted that London was now a world city, rather than just the capital of the UK, the figures say different.
London has fewer skyscrapers than many other capitals and the argument hinges on whether this lack compromises its status as a world city.
The Mahindra Group's Mahindra World City is an integrated township near Chennai in southern India developed in partnership with the state government of Tamil Nadu.
As prime minister from 1959 to 1990, he led its rise from a poor, small, corrupt port to a first-world city-state in just one generation.
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The road to the town's rubbish dump runs out of the city beside a railway line, before veering uphill, past shacks reminiscent of the shanty towns of a Third World city.
Obviously, Chicago residents who had difficulties getting home or getting to work or what have you -- that's what can I tell you, that's part of the price of being a world city.
London the only major capital city in the world without city Government.
The World Wide City is also a World Wide Commons.
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You know that Waterloo is a suburb of Toronto, the largest Canadian city and world class major city.
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And unlike any other city in the world, Masdar City will have no carbon footprint.
That is the kind of resource allocation that wins in the new world of city-level growth.
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Think of the Net as a World Wide City, and you can see why it has scaled so well.
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Whether it turns Bilbao into a world art city and an art-tourism magnet, as the Basque government hopes, is a good question.
There will be a range of powers to help make London a world class city, including new powers to tackle road congestion and improve public transport.
"What we have is a world class oil field sitting below a world class city, " said John Martini, manager of governmental affairs for Plains Exploration and Production Co.
But councillors in Bath fear the water courses which supply the springs in the World Heritage city could be contaminated by the process, or that water could change direction through new fractures in the rock.
The museum was due to open in 2014 but was postponed after the city failed to become Unesco World Book Capital City.
Norwich is only the 6th city in the world to become a City of Literature, and the first in England, making the city part of an elite international network.
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I, Donald John Trump, born and raised right here, in America, in the greatest city in the world, New York City, am running for the Republican nomination for President of the United States of America.
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Rahm, his team, Chicagoans proved that this world-class city knows how to put on a world-class event.
Visit any burgeoning city in the developing world from Shanghai to Mexico City and the same reality emerges: as cities get larger, they spread out, as people begin to aspire, as best they can, for the quality of life that most North Americans and Europeans already take for granted.
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Around the world, the city is developing a violent reputation, rather like New York's in the 1980s.
"Boston is the vibrant, welcoming and world-class city it is today because of Tom Menino, " Mr Obama said.
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As a result, new businesses have emerged in the recent years, further establishing New Orleans as a world-class city.
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Roman Catholicism, he said, needed to shift its focus outward, to the world beyond Vatican City walls, to the outside.
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