Friday, April 20, 2007
the two german gigants : Berlin and rhine ruhr
A few facts about the "biggest" city in Germany ,the rhine ruhr area :
the area has an population of around 12 milllion inhabitans
it goes from Wesel in the norf to bonn in the south and from Mönchengladbach in the west to Hamm in the east , some people took the area around Aachen to it !
Cities in the Rhine ruhr /Rhine ruhr north: -Essen, Duisburg , Dortmund ,Mühlheim ,Oberhausen, Gelsenkirchen , Hagen , Wuppertal Solingen , Remscheid ,Düsseldorf ,Hamm,Krefeld, Bochum ,Bottrop ,Marl, Moers ,Herne, Recklinghausen , Oeroerkenschwick,Velbert ,Iserlohn,Schwerte,Unna,Kamp-Lintfort (around 6 million inh.)
Rhine ruhr west: Mönchengladbach ,Dormagen,Viersen (around 1 milllion inh) (some count also Aachen,Stolberg and Eschweiler)
Rhine ruhr south :Cologne, Düsseldorf,Bonn,Leverkusen,Langenfeld,Hilden,Hürth, frechen,Siegburg,Troisdorf,Hennef,Lohmar,Bergisch Gladbach (around 5 Millions )
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So you can see the rhine ruhr is polycentric the biggest "city" of germany !
The second gigant city is Berlin the urban area have around 3,6 mill. the metro (or commuter) area has 4,2 million inhabitans
The urban area streches from Oranienburg in the north to Königs Wusterhausen in the south and from ;Falkenhagen to Strausberg in the east
Cities in urban area :clearly Berlin,Falkensee, Falkenhagen , Zeuthen , Wildau, Königswusterhausen , Hohen neuendorf , Bergfelde, Potsdam, Glienicke ,Rüdersdorf , Petershagen , Fredersdorf,Neuenhagen,Zepernik,Eichwalde Bernau ,Oranienburg Hennigsdorf,werder (3,6 million inhabitans)
Cities in the commuter area :Lübbben,Velten,Neuruppin, Fürstenwalde Frankfurt, Cottbus , brandenburg city, Lübbenau, Vetschau , cottbus , eberswalde , Velten
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So thats a few facts about Berlin and the rhine ruhr ; the only real "gigants in germany ! What do you think about this areas and have anyone a few other facts so pls. post here !>
the area has an population of around 12 milllion inhabitans
it goes from Wesel in the norf to bonn in the south and from Mönchengladbach in the west to Hamm in the east , some people took the area around Aachen to it !
Cities in the Rhine ruhr /Rhine ruhr north: -Essen, Duisburg , Dortmund ,Mühlheim ,Oberhausen, Gelsenkirchen , Hagen , Wuppertal Solingen , Remscheid ,Düsseldorf ,Hamm,Krefeld, Bochum ,Bottrop ,Marl, Moers ,Herne, Recklinghausen , Oeroerkenschwick,Velbert ,Iserlohn,Schwerte,Unna,Kamp-Lintfort (around 6 million inh.)
Rhine ruhr west: Mönchengladbach ,Dormagen,Viersen (around 1 milllion inh) (some count also Aachen,Stolberg and Eschweiler)
Rhine ruhr south :Cologne, Düsseldorf,Bonn,Leverkusen,Langenfeld,Hilden,Hürth, frechen,Siegburg,Troisdorf,Hennef,Lohmar,Bergisch Gladbach (around 5 Millions )
----------------
So you can see the rhine ruhr is polycentric the biggest "city" of germany !
The second gigant city is Berlin the urban area have around 3,6 mill. the metro (or commuter) area has 4,2 million inhabitans
The urban area streches from Oranienburg in the north to Königs Wusterhausen in the south and from ;Falkenhagen to Strausberg in the east
Cities in urban area :clearly Berlin,Falkensee, Falkenhagen , Zeuthen , Wildau, Königswusterhausen , Hohen neuendorf , Bergfelde, Potsdam, Glienicke ,Rüdersdorf , Petershagen , Fredersdorf,Neuenhagen,Zepernik,Eichwalde Bernau ,Oranienburg Hennigsdorf,werder (3,6 million inhabitans)
Cities in the commuter area :Lübbben,Velten,Neuruppin, Fürstenwalde Frankfurt, Cottbus , brandenburg city, Lübbenau, Vetschau , cottbus , eberswalde , Velten
---------------
So thats a few facts about Berlin and the rhine ruhr ; the only real "gigants in germany ! What do you think about this areas and have anyone a few other facts so pls. post here !>
Are the bigger/taller cities the better cities?
OK, looks like there has been never-ending discussion about "my city is bigger than that!" or "my city has more number of skyscrapers thus is better".
But really, do you folks think that cities with more population, more number of tall buildings, or bigger area are better cities?>
But really, do you folks think that cities with more population, more number of tall buildings, or bigger area are better cities?>
What's the Most Sustainable U.S. City?
http://www.sustainlane.com/article/895/
Welcome to SustainLaneÂ's 2006 US City Rankings—a nationwide study that measures the 50 largest cities in America on essential quality-of-life and economic factors that affect your personal sustainability.
Who is the City Rankings study for?
ItÂ's for everybody. No matter where you live or what you do, we think youÂ'll find something valuable in this study.
What have we learned?
WeÂ've learned that there are inspiring citizen groups, city governments, and mayors around the country promoting innovative solutions that are improving peopleÂ's lives.
Why rank cities?
Few things matter to our overall well-being as insistently as the place where we live. Whether we realize it or not, weÂ're affected daily by our cityÂ's economy, water quality, and traffic congestion. Understanding how these factors impact our lives can play a key role in our personal health, financial success, and overall happiness.
Similarly, despite the move toward globalized markets, local economies depend on local citizens. Our daily actions, such as where we shop and how we get to work, have lasting repercussions. These choices affect our citiesÂ' wealth, the air we breathe, and the quality of community we experience every day.
What makes a city sustainable?
Hallmarks of sustainable cities include a commitment to public health, an emphasis on creating a strong local economy, and citizens and city officials working together to make positive, thoughtful choices for the long-term benefit of the city and its residents.
Where did the info come from?
SustainLane talked with officials at 37 of the cities in the study and brought together more than 1,700 data points. Our goal has been to gather information—much of it paid for by our tax dollars—and make it accessible, so that youÂ'll have the information you need to make sustainable choices and get involved in making your city an even better place to live. Read our methodology to learn more.
How vital is your city?
Use SustainLaneÂ's study to find out! As cities grow, they inevitably face challenges brought about by swelling population, economic transformation, and environmental pressures. The top cities in this study have taken all these factors into consideration as theyÂ've planned for the future—and their citizens will reap the benefits.
What can you do?
By knowing where your city excels and where it could stand improvement, you get a clearer picture of your cityÂ's health—and a sense of what actions you can take to improve it.
And talk to us—tell us what weÂ've missed, what we can do better, and what you love about your city in our city forums. WeÂ're here to make it easier to live a healthy, sustainable life.>
Welcome to SustainLaneÂ's 2006 US City Rankings—a nationwide study that measures the 50 largest cities in America on essential quality-of-life and economic factors that affect your personal sustainability.
Who is the City Rankings study for?
ItÂ's for everybody. No matter where you live or what you do, we think youÂ'll find something valuable in this study.
What have we learned?
WeÂ've learned that there are inspiring citizen groups, city governments, and mayors around the country promoting innovative solutions that are improving peopleÂ's lives.
Why rank cities?
Few things matter to our overall well-being as insistently as the place where we live. Whether we realize it or not, weÂ're affected daily by our cityÂ's economy, water quality, and traffic congestion. Understanding how these factors impact our lives can play a key role in our personal health, financial success, and overall happiness.
Similarly, despite the move toward globalized markets, local economies depend on local citizens. Our daily actions, such as where we shop and how we get to work, have lasting repercussions. These choices affect our citiesÂ' wealth, the air we breathe, and the quality of community we experience every day.
What makes a city sustainable?
Hallmarks of sustainable cities include a commitment to public health, an emphasis on creating a strong local economy, and citizens and city officials working together to make positive, thoughtful choices for the long-term benefit of the city and its residents.
Where did the info come from?
SustainLane talked with officials at 37 of the cities in the study and brought together more than 1,700 data points. Our goal has been to gather information—much of it paid for by our tax dollars—and make it accessible, so that youÂ'll have the information you need to make sustainable choices and get involved in making your city an even better place to live. Read our methodology to learn more.
How vital is your city?
Use SustainLaneÂ's study to find out! As cities grow, they inevitably face challenges brought about by swelling population, economic transformation, and environmental pressures. The top cities in this study have taken all these factors into consideration as theyÂ've planned for the future—and their citizens will reap the benefits.
What can you do?
By knowing where your city excels and where it could stand improvement, you get a clearer picture of your cityÂ's health—and a sense of what actions you can take to improve it.
And talk to us—tell us what weÂ've missed, what we can do better, and what you love about your city in our city forums. WeÂ're here to make it easier to live a healthy, sustainable life.>
Is the current boom of skyscrapers coming to an end?
Am posting an article from the economist, which skyscraper enthusiasts may find interesting. Was going to post this in the professional thread but thought most of our friends here would find it enlightening. Most Interesting specially the part about the tallest skyscrapers being built at the end of a boom! My comments in red. Opinions anyone? 
http://economist.com/business/displa...ory_id=7001496
The skyscraper boom
Better than flying
Jun 1st 2006 | DUBAI, LONDON AND NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition
Despite the attack on the twin towers, plenty of skyscrapers are rising. They are taller and more daring than ever, but still mostly monuments to magnificence
Getty Images
SKYSCRAPERS are hard to build and even harder to make money from. Perhaps that is why they hold such an enduring fascination. Â"The problem of the tall office buildingÂ", wrote Louis Sullivan in 1896, Â"is one of the most stupendous, one of the most magnificent opportunities that the Lord of Nature in His beneficence has ever offered to the proud spirit of man.Â"
Sullivan, an architect, was enthusiastically observing Chicago at a time when steel-framed buildings clad in stone had reached greater heights than anything that had been built before. But he could have been talking about New York in the 1920s, Hong Kong in the 1980s, or one of the booming cities in Asia that, according to Emporis, a firm which tracks skyscrapers, now lead a boom in high-rise building undaunted by the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001. Roughly 8% of the world's stock of tall buildings is currently under construction, according to Emporis. quite amazing if accurate, an 8% rise worldwide seems a bit excessive if this statistic is accurately monitored!About 40% of the world's 200 tallest buildings have been completed since 2000.
Skyscrapers pose stupendous problems to designers and developers because they have two powerful forces working against them. The first is economic—exemplified by the number of big American companies that now prefer to operate from low-rise campuses built outside cities. There are of course exceptions. These tend to be large financial institutions, on which a skyscraper confers the permanence once embodied by marble halls and oak-panelled dining-rooms.
The second is physical: towers are always fighting against their own weight. As more parts of the building are devoted to holding it up, they encroach on the space for working or living in. Developers and leasing agents refer to the ratio between these two elements as a building's Â"net-to-grossÂ". In a really efficient skyscraper, nearly 70% of the building's volume is useable, with the rest taken up by lift-shafts, stairwells and pillars. In a well designed low-rise building, by contrast, more than 80% of the space can be sold or let.
These obstacles explain why, in each skyscraper boom, many more designs are proposed than built. London, for example, has five towers over 200 metres (656 feet) tall that either have planning permission or are in the planning process, by which stage they must have completed designs and a willing developer. Yet only a couple of them are likely to be built. Francis Salway, chief executive of Land Securities, a developer, predicts that Â"between one and threeÂ" will go up over the next decade. A lot has still to happen before a tower can metamorphose from a design with enthusiastic backers into a few hundred metres of vertical glass and steel.
Penthouse envy
From a developer's point of view, skyscrapers come in three varieties: speculative ventures, commissions for a company headquarters and government-sponsored exercises in gigantism. Tall buildings cost more, so all three types depend on finding someone who is prepared to pay extra to look down on the neighbours.
Of these three types, towers built speculatively are the most common. A developer finds an anchor tenant (which reduces the risk of a flop), borrows the construction costs and looks to fill the rest of the building when it is near completion. A lot of skyscrapers known by a company's name came about like this: Woolworth only ever took up two of the 57 floors of the Woolworth building in New York, for example—the rest was let out in smaller parcels. The new New York Times building, due to be completed this year, will house the newspaper of the same name, but half of its 52 storeys will be let.
These skyscrapers are the riskiest of all and need a rare combination of factors to come together if they are to make money. They include a short supply of land in a desirable location (as in Hong Kong), zoning laws that preserve this scarcity and easy access to finance. Other factors, like bedrock near the surface to drive foundations into, help to keep costs down. The areas around Wall Street and midtown Manhattan have such favourable geology, which partly explains how New York looks. But nature can be mastered: Chicago, home to the first skyscrapers, sits on mud; Dubai's giant towers are being built on sand.
Company headquarters, such as the HSBC and Citibank towers at Canary Wharf in east London, bend these rules but do not break them. Because a single company occupies them, they are less subject to changes in the rental market. Instead, they are part advertising hoarding, part management tool. And for some companies, this is worth paying extra—which removes some of the constraints that apply to speculative towers. Carol Willis, the curator of the Skyscraper Museum in New York, describes company towers as Â"the Cadillacs of skyscraper designÂ".
One company polishing the fins on its machine is Goldman Sachs, an investment bank that is not known for frittering away its shareholders' money. Goldman is building a tower in lower Manhattan, close to the controversial redevelopment of the World Trade Centre site, where the Freedom Tower and other buildings are planned. Goldman's aim is to bring together people from ten office buildings it has in New York. The bank already has a tower a short distance away in New Jersey, but gleeful Manhattan property developers say that Goldman's bankers refused to move to the cheaper office space just across the water. For a bank, then, paying a premium to be near lots of other bankers can be worthwhile.
Government-backed towers discard most of these rules. Whether built as a statement of economic intent (as in Dubai, where much of the building frenzy is financed by companies backed by the government), or as a concrete index finger held up to the outside world (the 330-metre high Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea), any city that aspires to be taken seriously wants a skyscraper or two.
Building skyscrapers for governments can lead to some odd results. In Dubai, for example, skyscrapers stand one deep on either side of the Sheikh Zayed Road in the south of the city, with desert behind them stretching away into the distance. The international skyscraper style, which involves using acres of glass, does not always make sense. It works well in the parts of north America where it first appeared, but when transported to the Gulf, the giant greenhouses require a huge amount of energy to cool them and engineers have to find ways to keep the light out. Some architects have proposed designs with concrete walls and small apertures that recall the screens in early Islamic architecture, but they have been rejected. Skyscrapers don't look like that.
Taller, lighter, stranger
The engineers who have to make the towers stand up, can build taller and stranger shapes only when technology permits. Three sorts of changes have shaped the current wave of skyscraper design: materials, lifts and computing.
New materials have the most visible effect on skyscrapers' looks. In 1922 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a German architect who later moved to America, sketched a tower with a glass skin stretched around the floors of a translucent building that appeared to have no central core. Not only would the building have fallen down, but it would have been impossible to make glass panels that were light enough or that could have been bent into the shapes that the design demanded.
Â"It has taken 80 years for glass technology to catch up with what Mies was sketching,Â" says Neven Sidor, of Grimshaw Architects. Translucent towers, which aside from looking pretty also alleviate one of the worst things about skyscrapers—the long shadows they cast on the streets below—are now proposed by architects everywhere. Thin-film technology (coating the glass in glazes that repel heat, but let in light) and self-cleaning glass are becoming standard. And glass can be formed into shapes that now make Mies's conceptual design look rather conservative, as at 30 St Mary Axe in London (better known as the Â"gherkinÂ") or the Hearst building in New York.
Other changes to materials have helped towers weigh less, which allows them to go higher. Floors and walls have become thinner, thanks to innovations like slim-line insulation made of fibreglass and aluminium foil, an idea borrowed from containers used to transport blood. This brings its own problems, though. When a floor is really large, thin ones become like trampolines and engineers have to find ways to prevent the journey to the photocopier from becoming too bouncy.
Architects are also grappling with Mies's other idea: dispensing with the central core, or breaking it up. Skyscrapers up to 200 metres tall can stand up with a central core of steel and concrete that houses a building's lifts and the plumbing for support services. Any taller and the building needs outriggers, which provide support like the flying buttresses on a gothic cathedral. This structure can apparently be extended heavenwards indefinitely. The Burj Dubai is made up of a central core with outriggers. It is determined to claim the title of tallest building in the world—so determined, in fact, that its final height is a secret and subject to elongation to keep ahead of would-be usurpers.
But some towers (architects refer to them as tubes) use a web of steel struts to transfer the building's weight down to its foundations via a few large piers. These buildings tend to be easy to spot—as with the HSBC building in Hong Kong, their architects like to flaunt their structural elements. This allows the lift shafts to be broken up or even moved to the outside of the building. The skyscrapers that result can look much lighter.
As materials have improved, it has become possible to go higher than the 509-metre Taipei 101 tower, which is currently the world's tallest building. But engineers also have to work out how to get people to the top floors.
Tall buildings have always relied on changes to lifting technology to go higher—the first hydraulic lifts around 1870 made it possible to go higher than the steam-powered lifts they replaced. Now, however, the constraints come less from the ability of a lift to travel half a kilometre vertically than from how long people must wait in the lobby for a lift to take them to the 50th floor. That makes it necessary to find ways to speed up their journeys around the building.
Most tall towers now have at least two banks of lifts: one for the lower floors and one for the upper ones. In the tallest towers in Asia (home to eight of the world's ten highest giants) this still means waiting too long. So engineers run two or more lifts in each lift shaft, and build Â"sky lobbiesÂ" where passengers cross between lifts if they want to go the whole way down or up.
These arrangements, whereby cappuccino-carrying office workers or hotel porters are directed to a particular lift according to where they want to go, are collectively known as Â"hall callÂ". KONE, a Finnish lift company, is working on a lift system that sends text messages to people's mobile phones as they enter a building, informing them to take lift five, say, if they want to go to their desk or lift seven if they want the café on the 60th floor.
Contemplating buildings this complicated has been possible in recent years only because computers have became powerful enough to build three-dimensional models that developers, architects, structural engineers, mechanical engineers and builders can all work on. Before such computer systems arrived, design changes had to be made on several sets of drawings, which increased the chances of mistakes. Strange shapes constructed at lower levels were possible before computers sped up. But ambitious forms like the new 230-metre China Central Television building in Beijing (which looks a little like a bent croquet hoop) needed computer processors to design.
Computers have made other things possible, too. Engineers can use them to test how a building might stand up to a fire or an aeroplane crash. When the main tower at Canary Wharf was proposed in the 1980s, according to Peter Bressington of Arup, an engineering firm that is a prolific builder of skyscrapers, nobody was able to predict accurately how long it would take to evacuate if a fire broke out. Now Arup can run a simulation in which a fire starts on the 35th floor, one lift is out of action and a few thousand people have to get out, and see how long it takes.
As well as allowing skyscrapers to go taller, these changes have made them more efficient machines for living or working in and brought their running costs down. Since the construction of the Commerzbank building in Frankfurt (which is reckoned to be the first green tower) in 1997, architects and some planning authorities have pushed environmental designs. In New York, for example, planners now insist that developers build skyscrapers that conform to tough standards set by the Green Building Council. Boosters argue that green designs improve the productivity of their inhabitants. Workers with access to natural light and fresh air that has not circulated endlessly through a building's air-conditioning system seem to get ill less often and avoid symptoms of Â"sick-building syndromeÂ" associated with the sealed towers built in the 1970s, when energy costs were high.
Building green is more expensive. But developers can demand a premium—partly because of the value to companies of being seen to be green and partly because such buildings use at least 35% less energy. The new Bank of America tower in New York is an example. According to its developers, the building will act as a giant air filter, sucking in dirty air from the city, cleaning it up and eventually sending it out cleaner. It will also have a heat-exchange system whereby heat produced by sunshine, people, computers and lights will be used to make ice, which in turn will be used to cool the offices the following day. Â"The pitchÂ", says one Manhattan-based developer, Â"is higher productivity, lower energy costs, nicer places to work.Â"
Yet all this innovation has not altered the biggest obstacle to towers built speculatively: the vagaries of the property cycle. Developers make money through good timing, releasing office space on to the market when it is picking up and prices are rising. But because skyscrapers take much longer to go from a design to occupancy, it is hard to get the timing right.
The first big attempt to study historical patterns in commercial property markets was made by two economists in the 1930s. Homer Hoyt and Roy Wenzlick looked at the market for office space in Chicago and found that big profits made by developers early in each cycle encouraged further building. This led to oversupply in the market and falling rents.
Monoliths and markets
Skyscrapers have an unfortunate habit of being finished just as the market starts to drop.Are our days as skyscraper enthusiasts numbered ? At least for a certain period of time! The Chrysler building was being completed when the tumble of Wall Street became the crash of 1929; the Empire State in the nadir of the Depression (in 1934, a quarter was vacant, hence its nickname: the Empty State building). Work by Jason Barr of Rutgers University suggests that over the 20th century the tallest skyscrapers in New York have been completed at around the time when America's economy was about to turn downwards (see chart).
It is hard to know if this will hold true for the Asian cities that are now leading the way in skyscraper enthusiasm, since strong demand in the office market has not been around for long enough. Yet the timing of the 452-metre Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur, which were completed a year after the East Asian financial crisis began in 1997, suggests it might.
It seems to apply to some other cities, as the history of skyscrapers in London shows. London's office market headed down in 1974, 1982, 1990 and 2002. The two most recent tumbles were marked by the completion of well-known skyscrapers: the main Canary Wharf tower in 1991 and 30 St Mary Axe in 2003. Skyscrapers in London take between five and ten years to go from idea to income, and each cycle lasts for some ten years. This makes it Â"virtually impossible to get the timing right on tall buildings,Â" according to Peter Damesick of CB Richard Ellis, a property agent.
Perhaps it is this defiance of gravity and the market that makes skyscrapers so alluring and explains why people continue to want to build them. Publicity for the Empire State Building claimed the feeling of looking out from its viewing gallery was better than air travel. Nobody explained that the platform was there only because the space could not be soldso funny, in the age of spin, shows you nothing has really changed
.>
http://economist.com/business/displa...ory_id=7001496
The skyscraper boom
Better than flying
Jun 1st 2006 | DUBAI, LONDON AND NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition
Despite the attack on the twin towers, plenty of skyscrapers are rising. They are taller and more daring than ever, but still mostly monuments to magnificence
Getty Images
SKYSCRAPERS are hard to build and even harder to make money from. Perhaps that is why they hold such an enduring fascination. Â"The problem of the tall office buildingÂ", wrote Louis Sullivan in 1896, Â"is one of the most stupendous, one of the most magnificent opportunities that the Lord of Nature in His beneficence has ever offered to the proud spirit of man.Â"
Sullivan, an architect, was enthusiastically observing Chicago at a time when steel-framed buildings clad in stone had reached greater heights than anything that had been built before. But he could have been talking about New York in the 1920s, Hong Kong in the 1980s, or one of the booming cities in Asia that, according to Emporis, a firm which tracks skyscrapers, now lead a boom in high-rise building undaunted by the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001. Roughly 8% of the world's stock of tall buildings is currently under construction, according to Emporis. quite amazing if accurate, an 8% rise worldwide seems a bit excessive if this statistic is accurately monitored!About 40% of the world's 200 tallest buildings have been completed since 2000.
Skyscrapers pose stupendous problems to designers and developers because they have two powerful forces working against them. The first is economic—exemplified by the number of big American companies that now prefer to operate from low-rise campuses built outside cities. There are of course exceptions. These tend to be large financial institutions, on which a skyscraper confers the permanence once embodied by marble halls and oak-panelled dining-rooms.
The second is physical: towers are always fighting against their own weight. As more parts of the building are devoted to holding it up, they encroach on the space for working or living in. Developers and leasing agents refer to the ratio between these two elements as a building's Â"net-to-grossÂ". In a really efficient skyscraper, nearly 70% of the building's volume is useable, with the rest taken up by lift-shafts, stairwells and pillars. In a well designed low-rise building, by contrast, more than 80% of the space can be sold or let.
These obstacles explain why, in each skyscraper boom, many more designs are proposed than built. London, for example, has five towers over 200 metres (656 feet) tall that either have planning permission or are in the planning process, by which stage they must have completed designs and a willing developer. Yet only a couple of them are likely to be built. Francis Salway, chief executive of Land Securities, a developer, predicts that Â"between one and threeÂ" will go up over the next decade. A lot has still to happen before a tower can metamorphose from a design with enthusiastic backers into a few hundred metres of vertical glass and steel.
Penthouse envy
From a developer's point of view, skyscrapers come in three varieties: speculative ventures, commissions for a company headquarters and government-sponsored exercises in gigantism. Tall buildings cost more, so all three types depend on finding someone who is prepared to pay extra to look down on the neighbours.
Of these three types, towers built speculatively are the most common. A developer finds an anchor tenant (which reduces the risk of a flop), borrows the construction costs and looks to fill the rest of the building when it is near completion. A lot of skyscrapers known by a company's name came about like this: Woolworth only ever took up two of the 57 floors of the Woolworth building in New York, for example—the rest was let out in smaller parcels. The new New York Times building, due to be completed this year, will house the newspaper of the same name, but half of its 52 storeys will be let.
These skyscrapers are the riskiest of all and need a rare combination of factors to come together if they are to make money. They include a short supply of land in a desirable location (as in Hong Kong), zoning laws that preserve this scarcity and easy access to finance. Other factors, like bedrock near the surface to drive foundations into, help to keep costs down. The areas around Wall Street and midtown Manhattan have such favourable geology, which partly explains how New York looks. But nature can be mastered: Chicago, home to the first skyscrapers, sits on mud; Dubai's giant towers are being built on sand.
Company headquarters, such as the HSBC and Citibank towers at Canary Wharf in east London, bend these rules but do not break them. Because a single company occupies them, they are less subject to changes in the rental market. Instead, they are part advertising hoarding, part management tool. And for some companies, this is worth paying extra—which removes some of the constraints that apply to speculative towers. Carol Willis, the curator of the Skyscraper Museum in New York, describes company towers as Â"the Cadillacs of skyscraper designÂ".
One company polishing the fins on its machine is Goldman Sachs, an investment bank that is not known for frittering away its shareholders' money. Goldman is building a tower in lower Manhattan, close to the controversial redevelopment of the World Trade Centre site, where the Freedom Tower and other buildings are planned. Goldman's aim is to bring together people from ten office buildings it has in New York. The bank already has a tower a short distance away in New Jersey, but gleeful Manhattan property developers say that Goldman's bankers refused to move to the cheaper office space just across the water. For a bank, then, paying a premium to be near lots of other bankers can be worthwhile.
Government-backed towers discard most of these rules. Whether built as a statement of economic intent (as in Dubai, where much of the building frenzy is financed by companies backed by the government), or as a concrete index finger held up to the outside world (the 330-metre high Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea), any city that aspires to be taken seriously wants a skyscraper or two.
Building skyscrapers for governments can lead to some odd results. In Dubai, for example, skyscrapers stand one deep on either side of the Sheikh Zayed Road in the south of the city, with desert behind them stretching away into the distance. The international skyscraper style, which involves using acres of glass, does not always make sense. It works well in the parts of north America where it first appeared, but when transported to the Gulf, the giant greenhouses require a huge amount of energy to cool them and engineers have to find ways to keep the light out. Some architects have proposed designs with concrete walls and small apertures that recall the screens in early Islamic architecture, but they have been rejected. Skyscrapers don't look like that.
Taller, lighter, stranger
The engineers who have to make the towers stand up, can build taller and stranger shapes only when technology permits. Three sorts of changes have shaped the current wave of skyscraper design: materials, lifts and computing.
New materials have the most visible effect on skyscrapers' looks. In 1922 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a German architect who later moved to America, sketched a tower with a glass skin stretched around the floors of a translucent building that appeared to have no central core. Not only would the building have fallen down, but it would have been impossible to make glass panels that were light enough or that could have been bent into the shapes that the design demanded.
Â"It has taken 80 years for glass technology to catch up with what Mies was sketching,Â" says Neven Sidor, of Grimshaw Architects. Translucent towers, which aside from looking pretty also alleviate one of the worst things about skyscrapers—the long shadows they cast on the streets below—are now proposed by architects everywhere. Thin-film technology (coating the glass in glazes that repel heat, but let in light) and self-cleaning glass are becoming standard. And glass can be formed into shapes that now make Mies's conceptual design look rather conservative, as at 30 St Mary Axe in London (better known as the Â"gherkinÂ") or the Hearst building in New York.
Other changes to materials have helped towers weigh less, which allows them to go higher. Floors and walls have become thinner, thanks to innovations like slim-line insulation made of fibreglass and aluminium foil, an idea borrowed from containers used to transport blood. This brings its own problems, though. When a floor is really large, thin ones become like trampolines and engineers have to find ways to prevent the journey to the photocopier from becoming too bouncy.
Architects are also grappling with Mies's other idea: dispensing with the central core, or breaking it up. Skyscrapers up to 200 metres tall can stand up with a central core of steel and concrete that houses a building's lifts and the plumbing for support services. Any taller and the building needs outriggers, which provide support like the flying buttresses on a gothic cathedral. This structure can apparently be extended heavenwards indefinitely. The Burj Dubai is made up of a central core with outriggers. It is determined to claim the title of tallest building in the world—so determined, in fact, that its final height is a secret and subject to elongation to keep ahead of would-be usurpers.
But some towers (architects refer to them as tubes) use a web of steel struts to transfer the building's weight down to its foundations via a few large piers. These buildings tend to be easy to spot—as with the HSBC building in Hong Kong, their architects like to flaunt their structural elements. This allows the lift shafts to be broken up or even moved to the outside of the building. The skyscrapers that result can look much lighter.
As materials have improved, it has become possible to go higher than the 509-metre Taipei 101 tower, which is currently the world's tallest building. But engineers also have to work out how to get people to the top floors.
Tall buildings have always relied on changes to lifting technology to go higher—the first hydraulic lifts around 1870 made it possible to go higher than the steam-powered lifts they replaced. Now, however, the constraints come less from the ability of a lift to travel half a kilometre vertically than from how long people must wait in the lobby for a lift to take them to the 50th floor. That makes it necessary to find ways to speed up their journeys around the building.
Most tall towers now have at least two banks of lifts: one for the lower floors and one for the upper ones. In the tallest towers in Asia (home to eight of the world's ten highest giants) this still means waiting too long. So engineers run two or more lifts in each lift shaft, and build Â"sky lobbiesÂ" where passengers cross between lifts if they want to go the whole way down or up.
These arrangements, whereby cappuccino-carrying office workers or hotel porters are directed to a particular lift according to where they want to go, are collectively known as Â"hall callÂ". KONE, a Finnish lift company, is working on a lift system that sends text messages to people's mobile phones as they enter a building, informing them to take lift five, say, if they want to go to their desk or lift seven if they want the café on the 60th floor.
Contemplating buildings this complicated has been possible in recent years only because computers have became powerful enough to build three-dimensional models that developers, architects, structural engineers, mechanical engineers and builders can all work on. Before such computer systems arrived, design changes had to be made on several sets of drawings, which increased the chances of mistakes. Strange shapes constructed at lower levels were possible before computers sped up. But ambitious forms like the new 230-metre China Central Television building in Beijing (which looks a little like a bent croquet hoop) needed computer processors to design.
Computers have made other things possible, too. Engineers can use them to test how a building might stand up to a fire or an aeroplane crash. When the main tower at Canary Wharf was proposed in the 1980s, according to Peter Bressington of Arup, an engineering firm that is a prolific builder of skyscrapers, nobody was able to predict accurately how long it would take to evacuate if a fire broke out. Now Arup can run a simulation in which a fire starts on the 35th floor, one lift is out of action and a few thousand people have to get out, and see how long it takes.
As well as allowing skyscrapers to go taller, these changes have made them more efficient machines for living or working in and brought their running costs down. Since the construction of the Commerzbank building in Frankfurt (which is reckoned to be the first green tower) in 1997, architects and some planning authorities have pushed environmental designs. In New York, for example, planners now insist that developers build skyscrapers that conform to tough standards set by the Green Building Council. Boosters argue that green designs improve the productivity of their inhabitants. Workers with access to natural light and fresh air that has not circulated endlessly through a building's air-conditioning system seem to get ill less often and avoid symptoms of Â"sick-building syndromeÂ" associated with the sealed towers built in the 1970s, when energy costs were high.
Building green is more expensive. But developers can demand a premium—partly because of the value to companies of being seen to be green and partly because such buildings use at least 35% less energy. The new Bank of America tower in New York is an example. According to its developers, the building will act as a giant air filter, sucking in dirty air from the city, cleaning it up and eventually sending it out cleaner. It will also have a heat-exchange system whereby heat produced by sunshine, people, computers and lights will be used to make ice, which in turn will be used to cool the offices the following day. Â"The pitchÂ", says one Manhattan-based developer, Â"is higher productivity, lower energy costs, nicer places to work.Â"
Yet all this innovation has not altered the biggest obstacle to towers built speculatively: the vagaries of the property cycle. Developers make money through good timing, releasing office space on to the market when it is picking up and prices are rising. But because skyscrapers take much longer to go from a design to occupancy, it is hard to get the timing right.
The first big attempt to study historical patterns in commercial property markets was made by two economists in the 1930s. Homer Hoyt and Roy Wenzlick looked at the market for office space in Chicago and found that big profits made by developers early in each cycle encouraged further building. This led to oversupply in the market and falling rents.
Monoliths and markets
Skyscrapers have an unfortunate habit of being finished just as the market starts to drop.Are our days as skyscraper enthusiasts numbered ? At least for a certain period of time! The Chrysler building was being completed when the tumble of Wall Street became the crash of 1929; the Empire State in the nadir of the Depression (in 1934, a quarter was vacant, hence its nickname: the Empty State building). Work by Jason Barr of Rutgers University suggests that over the 20th century the tallest skyscrapers in New York have been completed at around the time when America's economy was about to turn downwards (see chart).
It is hard to know if this will hold true for the Asian cities that are now leading the way in skyscraper enthusiasm, since strong demand in the office market has not been around for long enough. Yet the timing of the 452-metre Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur, which were completed a year after the East Asian financial crisis began in 1997, suggests it might.
It seems to apply to some other cities, as the history of skyscrapers in London shows. London's office market headed down in 1974, 1982, 1990 and 2002. The two most recent tumbles were marked by the completion of well-known skyscrapers: the main Canary Wharf tower in 1991 and 30 St Mary Axe in 2003. Skyscrapers in London take between five and ten years to go from idea to income, and each cycle lasts for some ten years. This makes it Â"virtually impossible to get the timing right on tall buildings,Â" according to Peter Damesick of CB Richard Ellis, a property agent.
Perhaps it is this defiance of gravity and the market that makes skyscrapers so alluring and explains why people continue to want to build them. Publicity for the Empire State Building claimed the feeling of looking out from its viewing gallery was better than air travel. Nobody explained that the platform was there only because the space could not be soldso funny, in the age of spin, shows you nothing has really changed
.>
World's Corporate Capitals-Here's the US'
According to the 2006 Fortune 500 and 1000
Here are the US Metros with the highest concentration of the nation's largest corporations.
Fortune 500 Companies by Metro, 20+
1 New York.............83
2 San Francisco.......29
3 Chicago...............27
4 Dallas..................22
4 Houston...............22
6 Los Angeles..........20
Fortune 1000 Companies by Metro, 40+
1 New York...........139
2 San Francisco......62
3 Chicago..............57
4 Dallas.................43
5 Los Angeles.........42
6 Houston..............41
New York Metro
Fortune 500 Cos. 83
Fortune 1000 Cos. 139
1 General Electric 7 157,153.0 Fairfield
1 Citigroup 8 131,045.0 New York
2 American Intl. Group 9 108,905.0 New York
3 Intl. Business Machines 10 91,134.0 Armonk
4 J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. 17 79,902.0 New York
5 Verizon Communications 18 75,111.9 New York
6 Altria Group 20 69,148.0 New York
7 Morgan Stanley 30 52,498.0 New York
8 Pfizer 31 51,353.0 New York
1 Johnson & Johnson 32 50,514.0 New Brunswick
9 Merrill Lynch 34 47,783.0 New York
10 MetLife 35 46,983.0 New York
11 Time Warner 40 43,652.0 New York
12 Goldman Sachs Group 41 43,391.0 New York
2 Medco Health Solutions 51 37,870.9 Franklin Lakes
13 PepsiCo 61 32,562.0 Purchase
14 Lehman Brothers 62 32,420.0 New York
3 Prudential Financial 64 31,708.0 Newark
15 American Express 69 30,080.0 New York
4 Honeywell Intl. 71 28,862.0 Morristown
16 New York Life Insurance 74 28,051.0 New York
17 Alcoa 79 26,601.0 New York
18 TIAA-CREF 81 25,916.8 New York
4 International Paper 82 25,797.0 Stamford
19 News Corp. 86 23,859.0 New York
20 Amerada Hess 88 23,255.0 New York
5 Aetna 91 22,885.0 Hartford
21 Bristol-Myers Squibb 110 20,222.0 New York
5 Merck 95 22,011.9 Whitehouse Station
22 Cendant 114 19,471.0 New York
6 Wyeth 119 18,755.8 Madison
6 Xerox 142 15,701.0 Stamford
23 Loews 145 15,363.3 New York
24 CBS 149 14,536.4 New York
7 Chubb 156 14,082.3 Warren
8 Public Service Enterprise Group 178 12,661.0 Newark
26 Marsh & McLennan 186 12,109.0 New York
27 Pepsi Bottling 192 11,885.0 Somers
28 Consolidated Edison 199 11,732.0 New York
29 Bear Stearns 202 11,552.4 New York
30 Colgate-Palmolive 204 11,396.9 New York
9 Toys "R" Us 208 11,194.0 Wayne
31 Arrow Electronics 209 11,164.2 Melville
32 Omnicom Group 225 10,481.1 New York
10 American Standard 230 10,264.4 Piscataway
33 Viacom 241 9,817.6 New York
11 Schering-Plough 250 9,508.0 Kenilworth
34 L-3 Communications 253 9,444.7 New York
12 Lucent Technologies 255 9,441.0 Murray Hill
35 Guardian Life of America 256 9,377.4 New York
13 Automatic Data Proc. 271 8,499.1 Roseland
36 Bank of New York Co. 278 8,312.0 New York
37 Avon Products 281 8,149.6 New York
38 ITT Industries 291 7,844.7 White Plains
39 KeySpan 295 7,695.8 Brooklyn
7 Praxair 297 7,656.0 Danbury
40 Assurant 306 7,497.7 New York
41 IAC/InterActiveCorp 313 7,118.8 New York
9 MeadWestvaco 322 6,882.0 Stamford
42 Estee Lauder 340 6,336.3 New York
43 Dover 342 6,307.0 New York
44 Interpublic Group 348 6,274.3 New York
10 Terex 355 6,117.0 Westport
45 McGraw-Hill 359 6,003.6 New York
46 Starwood Hotels & Rsrts. 360 5,977.0 White Plains
47 Asbury Automotive Group 364 5,874.2 New York
48 Foot Locker 383 5,653.0 New York
49 CIT Group 384 5,652.6 New York
15 Quest Diagnostics 392 5,503.7 Lyndhurst
11 Pitney Bowes 394 5,492.2 Stamford
16 Becton Dickinson 397 5,464.4 Franklin Lakes
50 Cablevision Systems 414 5,224.7 Bethpage
18 Bed Bath & Beyond 419 5,147.7 Union
51 Barnes & Noble 422 5,103.0 New York
12 W.R. Berkley 428 4,996.8 Greenwich
19 Avaya 434 4,902.0 Basking Ridge
52 Liz Claiborne 440 4,847.8 New York
53 Henry Schein 445 4,788.7 Melville
13 Emcor Group 448 4,730.7 Norwalk
20 Engelhard 454 4,618.1 Iselin
54 Corning 456 4,579.0 Corning
21 Sealed Air 489 4,085.1 Saddle Brook
22 Pathmark Stores 497 3,980.5 Carteret
57 NTL 526 3,628.4 New York
58 CA 539 3,530.0 Islandia
59 Warner Music Group 542 3,502.0 New York
60 North Fork Bancorp. 543 3,484.0 Melville
61 New York Times 557 3,372.8 New York
62 Polo Ralph Lauren 567 3,305.4 New York
63 Jarden 585 3,189.1 Rye
64 Forest Laboratories 588 3,159.6 New York
24 New Jersey Resources 592 3,148.3 Wall
26 Cytec Industries 617 2,999.7 West Paterson
65 MasterCard 627 2,937.6 Purchase
66 Leucadia National 631 2,903.5 New York
29 Linens 'n Things 656 2,649.3 Clifton
67 ETrade Financial 679 2,550.7 New York
68 Vornado Realty Trust 681 2,550.1 New York
17 Silgan Holdings 694 2,495.6 Stamford
30 IDT 698 2,468.5 Newark
69 Reader's Digest Assn. 711 2,389.7 Pleasantville
70 Tiffany 727 2,346.8 New York
71 MBIA 742 2,284.9 Armonk
72 Volt Info. Sciences 766 2,177.6 New York
18 Citizens Communications 768 2,167.1 Stamford
73 Scholastic 782 2,079.9 New York
74 Systemax 784 2,077.5 Port Washington
75 AnnTaylor Stores 786 2,073.1 New York
20 Crane 790 2,061.2 Stamford
77 Sequa 808 1,997.6 New York
78 Intl. Flavors & Frag. 812 1,993.4 New York
79 Phillips-Van Heusen 832 1,908.8 New York
80 Pall 835 1,902.3 East Hills
22 Applera 852 1,845.1 Norwalk
25 UST 859 1,801.4 Greenwich
32 C.R. Bard 866 1,771.3 Murray Hill
81 Dow Jones 867 1,769.7 New York
82 Symbol Technologies 868 1,765.6 Holtsville
26 IMS Health 872 1,754.8 Fairfield
27 Cenveo 874 1,749.4 Stamford
83 NBTY 880 1,737.2 Bohemia
84 Moody's 885 1,731.6 New York
85 Mutual of America Life 892 1,713.0 New York
86 Coach 893 1,710.4 New York
87 Jetblue Airways 896 1,701.3 Forest Hills
34 Selective Insurance Group 898 1,696.8 Branchville
35 Children's Place 908 1,668.7 Secaucus
88 Ambac Financial Group 911 1,661.7 New York
36 Suburban Propane Partners 924 1,620.2 Whippany
28 Blyth 934 1,591.3 Greenwich
89 Duane Reade 935 1,589.5 New York
90 Warnaco Group 968 1,504.6 New York
91 Jefferies Group 971 1,497.9 New York
37 Dun & Bradstreet 993 1,443.6 Short Hills
San Francisco Bay Area
Fortune 500 Cos. 29
Fortune 1000 Cos. 62
1 Chevron 4 189,481.0 San Ramon
2 Hewlett-Packard 11 86,696.0 Palo Alto
3 McKesson 16 80,514.6 San Francisco
4 Wells Fargo 46 40,407.0 San Francisco
5 Intel 49 38,826.0 Santa Clara
6 Safeway 50 38,416.0 Pleasanton
10 Cisco Systems 83 24,801.0 San Jose
13 Gap 139 16,023.0 San Francisco
15 Apple Computer 159 13,931.0 Cupertino
20 Oracle 196 11,799.0 Redwood City
22 Sanmina-SCI 198 11,734.7 San Jose
23 PG&E Corp. 200 11,703.0 San Francisco
24 Sun Microsystems 211 11,070.0 Santa Clara
25 Solectron 227 10,456.3 Milpitas
27 Calpine 275 8,384.7 San Jose
30 Applied Materials 317 6,991.8 Santa Clara
31 Agilent Technologies 319 6,935.0 Palo Alto
32 Golden West Financial 326 6,662.0 Oakland
33 Google 353 6,138.6 Mountain View
35 Advanced Micro Devices 367 5,847.6 Sunnyvale
39 Yahoo 412 5,257.7 Sunnyvale
41 Charles Schwab 418 5,151.0 San Francisco
42 Ross Stores 431 4,944.2 Pleasanton
45 Longs Drug Stores 450 4,670.3 Walnut Creek
46 eBay 458 4,552.4 San Jose
47 Clorox 460 4,475.0 Oakland
49 Franklin Resources 474 4,310.1 San Mateo
50 CNF 481 4,169.6 San Mateo
51 Levi Strauss 484 4,125.2 San Francisco
53 URS 503 3,917.6 San Francisco
54 Maxtor 507 3,890.2 Milpitas
57 Williams-Sonoma 537 3,538.9 San Francisco
60 Robert Half Intl. 562 3,338.4 Menlo Park
61 Del Monte Foods 581 3,209.0 San Francisco
62 Bell Microproducts 584 3,193.8 San Jose
63 Electronic Arts 594 3,129.0 Redwood City
65 UTStarcom 613 3,006.7 Alameda
66 Knight-Ridder 614 3,004.0 San Jose
68 Building Materials Holding 629 2,912.2 San Francisco
72 Granite Construction 657 2,641.4 Watsonville
74 ABM Industries 664 2,612.5 San Francisco
75 Symantec 672 2,582.8 Cupertino
79 Nvidia 718 2,375.7 Santa Clara
81 SanDisk 737 2,306.1 Sunnyvale
82 Intuit 779 2,098.5 Mountain View
83 KLA-Tencor 780 2,085.2 San Jose
84 Juniper Networks 789 2,064.0 Sunnyvale
85 Gilead Sciences 801 2,028.4 Foster City
86 Spansion 806 2,002.8 Sunnyvale
88 Adobe Systems 817 1,966.3 San Jose
90 Chiron 828 1,919.7 Emeryville
91 LSI Logic 829 1,919.3 Milpitas
92 National Semiconductor 830 1,913.1 Santa Clara
93 Pacer International 848 1,860.1 Concord
98 Atmel 905 1,675.7 San Jose
99 Maxim Integrated Products 907 1,671.7 Sunnyvale
100 VeriSign 912 1,661.2 Mountain View
104 Network Appliance 929 1,598.1 Sunnyvale
105 Xilinx 938 1,573.2 San Jose
107 Autodesk 960 1,523.2 San Rafael
108 Lam Research 969 1,502.5 Fremont
110 Siebel Systems 999 1,429.1 San Mateo
Chicago Metro
Fortune 500 Cos. 27
Fortune 1000 Cos. 57
2 Boeing 26 54,848.0 Chicago
3 Sears Holdings 33 49,124.0 Hoffman Estates
4 Walgreen 45 42,201.6 Deerfield
5 Motorola 54 36,843.0 Schaumburg
8 Allstate 58 35,383.0 Northbrook
9 Abbott Laboratories 93 22,337.8 Abbott Park
11 McDonald's 109 20,460.2 Oak Brook
12 Sara Lee 111 19,727.0 Chicago
13 UAL 124 17,379.0 Elk Grove Township
14 Exelon 144 15,405.0 Chicago
15 Illinois Tool Works 173 12,921.8 Glenview
16 Navistar International 201 11,696.0 Warrenville
17 Aon 237 10,030.0 Chicago
18 Baxter International 240 9,849.0 Deerfield
19 OfficeMax 258 9,157.7 Itasca
20 R.R. Donnelley & Sons 265 8,651.4 Chicago
21 Smurfit-Stone Container 274 8,396.0 Chicago
22 Fortune Brands 305 7,498.5 Deerfield
23 CDW 343 6,291.8 Vernon Hills
24 Brunswick 363 5,923.8 Lake Forest
25 Ryerson 371 5,782.0 Chicago
26 Tribune 388 5,595.6 Chicago
27 W.W. Grainger 391 5,526.6 Lake Forest
28 USG 420 5,139.0 Chicago
29 Tenneco 463 4,441.0 Lake Forest
30 United Stationers 468 4,408.5 Des Plaines
31 Wm. Wrigley Jr. 482 4,159.3 Chicago
32 ServiceMaster 494 4,004.4 Downers Grove
33 Anixter International 509 3,847.4 Glenview
34 Old Republic Intl. 514 3,805.9 Chicago
35 Laidlaw International 523 3,672.7 Naperville
36 Northern Trust Corp. 533 3,554.4 Chicago
37 Alberto-Culver 538 3,531.2 Melrose Park
38 Pactiv 548 3,450.5 Lake Forest
39 Nicor 561 3,357.8 Naperville
40 Nalco Holding 566 3,312.4 Naperville
41 Equity Office Properties 587 3,162.6 Chicago
42 General Growth Properties 604 3,073.4 Chicago
44 Unitrin 608 3,048.1 Chicago
45 Hewitt Associates 633 2,898.5 Lincolnshire
46 Hospira 660 2,626.7 Lake Forest
47 Peoples Energy 669 2,599.6 Chicago
48 Molex 682 2,548.7 Lisle
49 Solo Cup 702 2,437.7 Highland Park
50 Corn Products Intl. 721 2,360.4 Westchester
51 Equity Residential 793 2,049.1 Chicago
52 True Value 798 2,043.0 Chicago
53 Career Education 800 2,034.6 Hoffman Estates
54 Packaging Corp. of America 811 1,993.7 Lake Forest
55 Andrew 819 1,961.2 Orland Park
56 CF Industries 833 1,908.4 Long Grove
57 Tellabs 838 1,883.4 Naperville
58 Metal Management 895 1,702.0 Chicago
59 Dade Behring Holdings 915 1,658.1 Deerfield
60 Sauer-Danfoss 947 1,547.8 Lincolnshire
61 Hub Group 954 1,531.5 Downers Grove
62 Arthur J. Gallagher 973 1,494.9 Itasca
Dallas Metro Area
Fortune 500 Cos. 22
Fortune 1000 Cos. 43
1. Exxon Mobil 1 339,938.0 Irving
2. AMR 105 20,712.0 Fort Worth
3. Electronic Data Systems 108 20,537.0 Plano
4. J.C. Penney 118 18,781.0 Plano
5. Kimberly-Clark 140 15,902.6 Irving
6. D.R. Horton 162 13,863.7 Fort Worth
7. Texas Instruments 167 13,392.0 Dallas
8. Fluor 169 13,161.1 Irving
9. Burlington No. Santa Fe 171 12,987.0 Fort Worth
10. Centex 175 12,859.7 Dallas
11. Dean Foods 216 10,900.3 Dallas
12. TXU 228 10,449.0 Dallas
13. Tenet Healthcare 236 10,052.0 Dallas
14. Southwest Airlines 300 7,584.0 Dallas
15. Commercial Metals 329 6,592.7 Irving
16. Energy Transfer Partners 347 6,274.3 Dallas
17. Celanese 356 6,070.0 Dallas
18. Blockbuster 366 5,864.4 Dallas
19. RadioShack 423 5,081.7 Fort Worth
20. Atmos Energy 430 4,973.3 Dallas
21. Triad Hospitals 432 4,916.6 Plano
22. Affiliated Computer Svcs. 471 4,351.2 Dallas
23. Brinker International 504 3,912.9 Dallas
24. Neiman Marcus 512 3,821.9 Dallas
25. Michaels Stores 522 3,676.4 Irving
26. XTO Energy 541 3,519.0 Fort Worth
27. Lennox International 560 3,366.4 Richardson
28. Holly 578 3,212.7 Dallas
29. GameStop 601 3,091.8 Grapevine
30. Crosstex Energy 610 3,033.0 Dallas
31. Trinity Industries 632 2,902.0 Dallas
32. Sabre Holdings 683 2,521.3 Southlake
33. Pioneer Natural Resources 708 2,417.1 Irving
34. Zale 715 2,383.1 Irving
35. Rent A Center 729 2,339.1 Plano
36. Builders FirstSource 730 2,337.8 Dallas
37. UICI 773 2,123.2 N. Richland Hills
38. Perot Systems 807 1,998.3 Plano
39. Texas Industries 822 1,951.2 Dallas
40. Pier 1 Imports 836 1,897.9 Fort Worth
41. Alliance Data Systems 946 1,552.4 Dallas
42. Belo 962 1,521.2 Dallas
43. AmeriCredit 988 1,450.8 Fort Worth
Los Angeles Metro Area
Fortune 500 Cos. 20
Fortune 1000 Cos. 42
7 Walt Disney 63 31,944.0 Burbank
8 Northrop Grumman 67 30,721.0 Los Angeles
9 Ingram Micro 72 28,808.3 Santa Ana
11 Countrywide Financial 122 18,536.9 Calabasas
12 Occidental Petroleum 133 16,286.0 Los Angeles
14 Computer Sciences 141 15,849.1 El Segundo
16 DIRECTV Group 168 13,164.5 El Segundo
17 Amgen 181 12,430.0 Thousand Oaks
18 Health Net 191 11,940.5 Woodland Hills
19 Edison International 194 11,852.0 Rosemead
26 KB Home 254 9,441.7 Los Angeles
28 First American Corp. 284 8,061.8 Santa Ana
34 Dole Food 365 5,870.6 Westlake Village
37 Jacobs Engineering Grp. 386 5,635.0 Pasadena
38 Avery Dennison 393 5,496.3 Pasadena
40 Mattel 416 5,179.0 El Segundo
43 Pacific Life 441 4,840.4 Newport Beach
44 Ryland Group 444 4,817.6 Calabasas
48 Hilton Hotels 464 4,437.0 Beverly Hills
52 Standard Pacific 493 4,011.4 Irvine
55 Gateway 508 3,854.1 Irvine
56 Western Digital 525 3,638.8 Lake Forest
58 Stater Bros. Holdings 558 3,372.2 Colton
59 Reliance Steel & Alum. 559 3,370.7 Los Angeles
64 DaVita 605 3,072.4 El Segundo
67 Mercury General 618 2,991.9 Los Angeles
69 CB Richard Ellis Group 630 2,910.6 El Segundo
70 Unified Western Grocers 634 2,866.9 Commerce
71 Broadcom 653 2,670.8 Irvine
73 Fleetwood Enterprises 662 2,623.5 Riverside
77 Beckman Coulter 700 2,443.8 Fullerton
78 New Century Financial 701 2,443.1 Irvine
80 Allergan 734 2,319.2 Irvine
89 Univision Communications 821 1,952.5 Los Angeles
94 William Lyon Homes 850 1,856.4 Newport Beach
95 Guitar Center 862 1,782.5 Westlake Village
96 Quiksilver 863 1,780.9 Huntington Beach
97 Indymac Bancorp 869 1,765.3 Pasadena
101 Molina Healthcare 916 1,650.1 Long Beach
102 Watson Pharmaceuticals 917 1,646.2 Corona
103 Earle M. Jorgensen 927 1,608.9 Lynwood
109 Apria Healthcare Group 979 1,474.1 Lake Forest
Houston Metro Area
Fortune 500 Cos. 22
Fortune 1000 Cos. 41
2 ConocoPhillips 6 166,683.0 Houston
4 Marathon Oil 23 58,958.0 Houston
7 Plains All Amer. Pipeline 65 31,177.3 Houston
8 Sysco 68 30,281.9 Houston
9 Halliburton 103 20,994.0 Houston
13 Lyondell Chemical 121 18,606.0 Houston
19 Waste Management 170 13,074.0 Houston
22 Enterprise Products 183 12,257.0 Houston
24 Continental Airlines 207 11,208.0 Houston
26 Reliant Energy 220 10,708.0 Houston
29 Kinder Morgan Energy 243 9,787.1 Houston
30 CenterPoint Energy 244 9,784.0 Houston
32 TEPPCO Partners 267 8,618.5 Houston
33 Burlington Resources 298 7,587.0 Houston
34 Apache 299 7,584.2 Houston
36 Baker Hughes 310 7,218.0 Houston
37 Anadarko Petroleum 314 7,100.0 The Woodlands
43 Group 1 Automotive 361 5,969.6 Houston
47 Smith International 390 5,579.0 Houston
53 National Oilwell Varco 452 4,644.5 Houston
54 El Paso 455 4,596.0 Houston
56 Frontier Oil 496 4,001.2 Houston
60 EOG Resources 528 3,620.2 Houston
63 BJ Services 573 3,243.2 Houston
64 FMC Technologies 576 3,226.7 Houston
72 US Oncology 684 2,518.6 Houston
73 Cooper Cameron 685 2,517.8 Houston
74 Stewart Information Services 703 2,430.6 Houston
79 Adams Resources & Engy. 746 2,269.7 Houston
81 Noble Energy 761 2,186.7 Houston 83 Pride International 799 2,034.6 Houston
84 Southern Union 803 2,019.4 Houston
86 Quanex 809 1,996.9 Houston
90 Quanta Services 849 1,858.6 Houston
91 Newfield Exploration 870 1,762.0 Houston
92 Service Corp. Intl. 879 1,738.5 Houston
93 Men's Wearhouse 887 1,724.9 Houston
94 HCC Insurance Holdings 918 1,644.3 Houston
95 Kinder Morgan 932 1,594.5 Houston
96 ExpressJet Holdings 942 1,562.8 Houston
100 Pogo Producing 978 1,478.5 Houston
101 BMC Software 984 1,463.0 Houston>
Here are the US Metros with the highest concentration of the nation's largest corporations.
Fortune 500 Companies by Metro, 20+
1 New York.............83
2 San Francisco.......29
3 Chicago...............27
4 Dallas..................22
4 Houston...............22
6 Los Angeles..........20
Fortune 1000 Companies by Metro, 40+
1 New York...........139
2 San Francisco......62
3 Chicago..............57
4 Dallas.................43
5 Los Angeles.........42
6 Houston..............41
New York Metro
Fortune 500 Cos. 83
Fortune 1000 Cos. 139
1 General Electric 7 157,153.0 Fairfield
1 Citigroup 8 131,045.0 New York
2 American Intl. Group 9 108,905.0 New York
3 Intl. Business Machines 10 91,134.0 Armonk
4 J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. 17 79,902.0 New York
5 Verizon Communications 18 75,111.9 New York
6 Altria Group 20 69,148.0 New York
7 Morgan Stanley 30 52,498.0 New York
8 Pfizer 31 51,353.0 New York
1 Johnson & Johnson 32 50,514.0 New Brunswick
9 Merrill Lynch 34 47,783.0 New York
10 MetLife 35 46,983.0 New York
11 Time Warner 40 43,652.0 New York
12 Goldman Sachs Group 41 43,391.0 New York
2 Medco Health Solutions 51 37,870.9 Franklin Lakes
13 PepsiCo 61 32,562.0 Purchase
14 Lehman Brothers 62 32,420.0 New York
3 Prudential Financial 64 31,708.0 Newark
15 American Express 69 30,080.0 New York
4 Honeywell Intl. 71 28,862.0 Morristown
16 New York Life Insurance 74 28,051.0 New York
17 Alcoa 79 26,601.0 New York
18 TIAA-CREF 81 25,916.8 New York
4 International Paper 82 25,797.0 Stamford
19 News Corp. 86 23,859.0 New York
20 Amerada Hess 88 23,255.0 New York
5 Aetna 91 22,885.0 Hartford
21 Bristol-Myers Squibb 110 20,222.0 New York
5 Merck 95 22,011.9 Whitehouse Station
22 Cendant 114 19,471.0 New York
6 Wyeth 119 18,755.8 Madison
6 Xerox 142 15,701.0 Stamford
23 Loews 145 15,363.3 New York
24 CBS 149 14,536.4 New York
7 Chubb 156 14,082.3 Warren
8 Public Service Enterprise Group 178 12,661.0 Newark
26 Marsh & McLennan 186 12,109.0 New York
27 Pepsi Bottling 192 11,885.0 Somers
28 Consolidated Edison 199 11,732.0 New York
29 Bear Stearns 202 11,552.4 New York
30 Colgate-Palmolive 204 11,396.9 New York
9 Toys "R" Us 208 11,194.0 Wayne
31 Arrow Electronics 209 11,164.2 Melville
32 Omnicom Group 225 10,481.1 New York
10 American Standard 230 10,264.4 Piscataway
33 Viacom 241 9,817.6 New York
11 Schering-Plough 250 9,508.0 Kenilworth
34 L-3 Communications 253 9,444.7 New York
12 Lucent Technologies 255 9,441.0 Murray Hill
35 Guardian Life of America 256 9,377.4 New York
13 Automatic Data Proc. 271 8,499.1 Roseland
36 Bank of New York Co. 278 8,312.0 New York
37 Avon Products 281 8,149.6 New York
38 ITT Industries 291 7,844.7 White Plains
39 KeySpan 295 7,695.8 Brooklyn
7 Praxair 297 7,656.0 Danbury
40 Assurant 306 7,497.7 New York
41 IAC/InterActiveCorp 313 7,118.8 New York
9 MeadWestvaco 322 6,882.0 Stamford
42 Estee Lauder 340 6,336.3 New York
43 Dover 342 6,307.0 New York
44 Interpublic Group 348 6,274.3 New York
10 Terex 355 6,117.0 Westport
45 McGraw-Hill 359 6,003.6 New York
46 Starwood Hotels & Rsrts. 360 5,977.0 White Plains
47 Asbury Automotive Group 364 5,874.2 New York
48 Foot Locker 383 5,653.0 New York
49 CIT Group 384 5,652.6 New York
15 Quest Diagnostics 392 5,503.7 Lyndhurst
11 Pitney Bowes 394 5,492.2 Stamford
16 Becton Dickinson 397 5,464.4 Franklin Lakes
50 Cablevision Systems 414 5,224.7 Bethpage
18 Bed Bath & Beyond 419 5,147.7 Union
51 Barnes & Noble 422 5,103.0 New York
12 W.R. Berkley 428 4,996.8 Greenwich
19 Avaya 434 4,902.0 Basking Ridge
52 Liz Claiborne 440 4,847.8 New York
53 Henry Schein 445 4,788.7 Melville
13 Emcor Group 448 4,730.7 Norwalk
20 Engelhard 454 4,618.1 Iselin
54 Corning 456 4,579.0 Corning
21 Sealed Air 489 4,085.1 Saddle Brook
22 Pathmark Stores 497 3,980.5 Carteret
57 NTL 526 3,628.4 New York
58 CA 539 3,530.0 Islandia
59 Warner Music Group 542 3,502.0 New York
60 North Fork Bancorp. 543 3,484.0 Melville
61 New York Times 557 3,372.8 New York
62 Polo Ralph Lauren 567 3,305.4 New York
63 Jarden 585 3,189.1 Rye
64 Forest Laboratories 588 3,159.6 New York
24 New Jersey Resources 592 3,148.3 Wall
26 Cytec Industries 617 2,999.7 West Paterson
65 MasterCard 627 2,937.6 Purchase
66 Leucadia National 631 2,903.5 New York
29 Linens 'n Things 656 2,649.3 Clifton
67 ETrade Financial 679 2,550.7 New York
68 Vornado Realty Trust 681 2,550.1 New York
17 Silgan Holdings 694 2,495.6 Stamford
30 IDT 698 2,468.5 Newark
69 Reader's Digest Assn. 711 2,389.7 Pleasantville
70 Tiffany 727 2,346.8 New York
71 MBIA 742 2,284.9 Armonk
72 Volt Info. Sciences 766 2,177.6 New York
18 Citizens Communications 768 2,167.1 Stamford
73 Scholastic 782 2,079.9 New York
74 Systemax 784 2,077.5 Port Washington
75 AnnTaylor Stores 786 2,073.1 New York
20 Crane 790 2,061.2 Stamford
77 Sequa 808 1,997.6 New York
78 Intl. Flavors & Frag. 812 1,993.4 New York
79 Phillips-Van Heusen 832 1,908.8 New York
80 Pall 835 1,902.3 East Hills
22 Applera 852 1,845.1 Norwalk
25 UST 859 1,801.4 Greenwich
32 C.R. Bard 866 1,771.3 Murray Hill
81 Dow Jones 867 1,769.7 New York
82 Symbol Technologies 868 1,765.6 Holtsville
26 IMS Health 872 1,754.8 Fairfield
27 Cenveo 874 1,749.4 Stamford
83 NBTY 880 1,737.2 Bohemia
84 Moody's 885 1,731.6 New York
85 Mutual of America Life 892 1,713.0 New York
86 Coach 893 1,710.4 New York
87 Jetblue Airways 896 1,701.3 Forest Hills
34 Selective Insurance Group 898 1,696.8 Branchville
35 Children's Place 908 1,668.7 Secaucus
88 Ambac Financial Group 911 1,661.7 New York
36 Suburban Propane Partners 924 1,620.2 Whippany
28 Blyth 934 1,591.3 Greenwich
89 Duane Reade 935 1,589.5 New York
90 Warnaco Group 968 1,504.6 New York
91 Jefferies Group 971 1,497.9 New York
37 Dun & Bradstreet 993 1,443.6 Short Hills
San Francisco Bay Area
Fortune 500 Cos. 29
Fortune 1000 Cos. 62
1 Chevron 4 189,481.0 San Ramon
2 Hewlett-Packard 11 86,696.0 Palo Alto
3 McKesson 16 80,514.6 San Francisco
4 Wells Fargo 46 40,407.0 San Francisco
5 Intel 49 38,826.0 Santa Clara
6 Safeway 50 38,416.0 Pleasanton
10 Cisco Systems 83 24,801.0 San Jose
13 Gap 139 16,023.0 San Francisco
15 Apple Computer 159 13,931.0 Cupertino
20 Oracle 196 11,799.0 Redwood City
22 Sanmina-SCI 198 11,734.7 San Jose
23 PG&E Corp. 200 11,703.0 San Francisco
24 Sun Microsystems 211 11,070.0 Santa Clara
25 Solectron 227 10,456.3 Milpitas
27 Calpine 275 8,384.7 San Jose
30 Applied Materials 317 6,991.8 Santa Clara
31 Agilent Technologies 319 6,935.0 Palo Alto
32 Golden West Financial 326 6,662.0 Oakland
33 Google 353 6,138.6 Mountain View
35 Advanced Micro Devices 367 5,847.6 Sunnyvale
39 Yahoo 412 5,257.7 Sunnyvale
41 Charles Schwab 418 5,151.0 San Francisco
42 Ross Stores 431 4,944.2 Pleasanton
45 Longs Drug Stores 450 4,670.3 Walnut Creek
46 eBay 458 4,552.4 San Jose
47 Clorox 460 4,475.0 Oakland
49 Franklin Resources 474 4,310.1 San Mateo
50 CNF 481 4,169.6 San Mateo
51 Levi Strauss 484 4,125.2 San Francisco
53 URS 503 3,917.6 San Francisco
54 Maxtor 507 3,890.2 Milpitas
57 Williams-Sonoma 537 3,538.9 San Francisco
60 Robert Half Intl. 562 3,338.4 Menlo Park
61 Del Monte Foods 581 3,209.0 San Francisco
62 Bell Microproducts 584 3,193.8 San Jose
63 Electronic Arts 594 3,129.0 Redwood City
65 UTStarcom 613 3,006.7 Alameda
66 Knight-Ridder 614 3,004.0 San Jose
68 Building Materials Holding 629 2,912.2 San Francisco
72 Granite Construction 657 2,641.4 Watsonville
74 ABM Industries 664 2,612.5 San Francisco
75 Symantec 672 2,582.8 Cupertino
79 Nvidia 718 2,375.7 Santa Clara
81 SanDisk 737 2,306.1 Sunnyvale
82 Intuit 779 2,098.5 Mountain View
83 KLA-Tencor 780 2,085.2 San Jose
84 Juniper Networks 789 2,064.0 Sunnyvale
85 Gilead Sciences 801 2,028.4 Foster City
86 Spansion 806 2,002.8 Sunnyvale
88 Adobe Systems 817 1,966.3 San Jose
90 Chiron 828 1,919.7 Emeryville
91 LSI Logic 829 1,919.3 Milpitas
92 National Semiconductor 830 1,913.1 Santa Clara
93 Pacer International 848 1,860.1 Concord
98 Atmel 905 1,675.7 San Jose
99 Maxim Integrated Products 907 1,671.7 Sunnyvale
100 VeriSign 912 1,661.2 Mountain View
104 Network Appliance 929 1,598.1 Sunnyvale
105 Xilinx 938 1,573.2 San Jose
107 Autodesk 960 1,523.2 San Rafael
108 Lam Research 969 1,502.5 Fremont
110 Siebel Systems 999 1,429.1 San Mateo
Chicago Metro
Fortune 500 Cos. 27
Fortune 1000 Cos. 57
2 Boeing 26 54,848.0 Chicago
3 Sears Holdings 33 49,124.0 Hoffman Estates
4 Walgreen 45 42,201.6 Deerfield
5 Motorola 54 36,843.0 Schaumburg
8 Allstate 58 35,383.0 Northbrook
9 Abbott Laboratories 93 22,337.8 Abbott Park
11 McDonald's 109 20,460.2 Oak Brook
12 Sara Lee 111 19,727.0 Chicago
13 UAL 124 17,379.0 Elk Grove Township
14 Exelon 144 15,405.0 Chicago
15 Illinois Tool Works 173 12,921.8 Glenview
16 Navistar International 201 11,696.0 Warrenville
17 Aon 237 10,030.0 Chicago
18 Baxter International 240 9,849.0 Deerfield
19 OfficeMax 258 9,157.7 Itasca
20 R.R. Donnelley & Sons 265 8,651.4 Chicago
21 Smurfit-Stone Container 274 8,396.0 Chicago
22 Fortune Brands 305 7,498.5 Deerfield
23 CDW 343 6,291.8 Vernon Hills
24 Brunswick 363 5,923.8 Lake Forest
25 Ryerson 371 5,782.0 Chicago
26 Tribune 388 5,595.6 Chicago
27 W.W. Grainger 391 5,526.6 Lake Forest
28 USG 420 5,139.0 Chicago
29 Tenneco 463 4,441.0 Lake Forest
30 United Stationers 468 4,408.5 Des Plaines
31 Wm. Wrigley Jr. 482 4,159.3 Chicago
32 ServiceMaster 494 4,004.4 Downers Grove
33 Anixter International 509 3,847.4 Glenview
34 Old Republic Intl. 514 3,805.9 Chicago
35 Laidlaw International 523 3,672.7 Naperville
36 Northern Trust Corp. 533 3,554.4 Chicago
37 Alberto-Culver 538 3,531.2 Melrose Park
38 Pactiv 548 3,450.5 Lake Forest
39 Nicor 561 3,357.8 Naperville
40 Nalco Holding 566 3,312.4 Naperville
41 Equity Office Properties 587 3,162.6 Chicago
42 General Growth Properties 604 3,073.4 Chicago
44 Unitrin 608 3,048.1 Chicago
45 Hewitt Associates 633 2,898.5 Lincolnshire
46 Hospira 660 2,626.7 Lake Forest
47 Peoples Energy 669 2,599.6 Chicago
48 Molex 682 2,548.7 Lisle
49 Solo Cup 702 2,437.7 Highland Park
50 Corn Products Intl. 721 2,360.4 Westchester
51 Equity Residential 793 2,049.1 Chicago
52 True Value 798 2,043.0 Chicago
53 Career Education 800 2,034.6 Hoffman Estates
54 Packaging Corp. of America 811 1,993.7 Lake Forest
55 Andrew 819 1,961.2 Orland Park
56 CF Industries 833 1,908.4 Long Grove
57 Tellabs 838 1,883.4 Naperville
58 Metal Management 895 1,702.0 Chicago
59 Dade Behring Holdings 915 1,658.1 Deerfield
60 Sauer-Danfoss 947 1,547.8 Lincolnshire
61 Hub Group 954 1,531.5 Downers Grove
62 Arthur J. Gallagher 973 1,494.9 Itasca
Dallas Metro Area
Fortune 500 Cos. 22
Fortune 1000 Cos. 43
1. Exxon Mobil 1 339,938.0 Irving
2. AMR 105 20,712.0 Fort Worth
3. Electronic Data Systems 108 20,537.0 Plano
4. J.C. Penney 118 18,781.0 Plano
5. Kimberly-Clark 140 15,902.6 Irving
6. D.R. Horton 162 13,863.7 Fort Worth
7. Texas Instruments 167 13,392.0 Dallas
8. Fluor 169 13,161.1 Irving
9. Burlington No. Santa Fe 171 12,987.0 Fort Worth
10. Centex 175 12,859.7 Dallas
11. Dean Foods 216 10,900.3 Dallas
12. TXU 228 10,449.0 Dallas
13. Tenet Healthcare 236 10,052.0 Dallas
14. Southwest Airlines 300 7,584.0 Dallas
15. Commercial Metals 329 6,592.7 Irving
16. Energy Transfer Partners 347 6,274.3 Dallas
17. Celanese 356 6,070.0 Dallas
18. Blockbuster 366 5,864.4 Dallas
19. RadioShack 423 5,081.7 Fort Worth
20. Atmos Energy 430 4,973.3 Dallas
21. Triad Hospitals 432 4,916.6 Plano
22. Affiliated Computer Svcs. 471 4,351.2 Dallas
23. Brinker International 504 3,912.9 Dallas
24. Neiman Marcus 512 3,821.9 Dallas
25. Michaels Stores 522 3,676.4 Irving
26. XTO Energy 541 3,519.0 Fort Worth
27. Lennox International 560 3,366.4 Richardson
28. Holly 578 3,212.7 Dallas
29. GameStop 601 3,091.8 Grapevine
30. Crosstex Energy 610 3,033.0 Dallas
31. Trinity Industries 632 2,902.0 Dallas
32. Sabre Holdings 683 2,521.3 Southlake
33. Pioneer Natural Resources 708 2,417.1 Irving
34. Zale 715 2,383.1 Irving
35. Rent A Center 729 2,339.1 Plano
36. Builders FirstSource 730 2,337.8 Dallas
37. UICI 773 2,123.2 N. Richland Hills
38. Perot Systems 807 1,998.3 Plano
39. Texas Industries 822 1,951.2 Dallas
40. Pier 1 Imports 836 1,897.9 Fort Worth
41. Alliance Data Systems 946 1,552.4 Dallas
42. Belo 962 1,521.2 Dallas
43. AmeriCredit 988 1,450.8 Fort Worth
Los Angeles Metro Area
Fortune 500 Cos. 20
Fortune 1000 Cos. 42
7 Walt Disney 63 31,944.0 Burbank
8 Northrop Grumman 67 30,721.0 Los Angeles
9 Ingram Micro 72 28,808.3 Santa Ana
11 Countrywide Financial 122 18,536.9 Calabasas
12 Occidental Petroleum 133 16,286.0 Los Angeles
14 Computer Sciences 141 15,849.1 El Segundo
16 DIRECTV Group 168 13,164.5 El Segundo
17 Amgen 181 12,430.0 Thousand Oaks
18 Health Net 191 11,940.5 Woodland Hills
19 Edison International 194 11,852.0 Rosemead
26 KB Home 254 9,441.7 Los Angeles
28 First American Corp. 284 8,061.8 Santa Ana
34 Dole Food 365 5,870.6 Westlake Village
37 Jacobs Engineering Grp. 386 5,635.0 Pasadena
38 Avery Dennison 393 5,496.3 Pasadena
40 Mattel 416 5,179.0 El Segundo
43 Pacific Life 441 4,840.4 Newport Beach
44 Ryland Group 444 4,817.6 Calabasas
48 Hilton Hotels 464 4,437.0 Beverly Hills
52 Standard Pacific 493 4,011.4 Irvine
55 Gateway 508 3,854.1 Irvine
56 Western Digital 525 3,638.8 Lake Forest
58 Stater Bros. Holdings 558 3,372.2 Colton
59 Reliance Steel & Alum. 559 3,370.7 Los Angeles
64 DaVita 605 3,072.4 El Segundo
67 Mercury General 618 2,991.9 Los Angeles
69 CB Richard Ellis Group 630 2,910.6 El Segundo
70 Unified Western Grocers 634 2,866.9 Commerce
71 Broadcom 653 2,670.8 Irvine
73 Fleetwood Enterprises 662 2,623.5 Riverside
77 Beckman Coulter 700 2,443.8 Fullerton
78 New Century Financial 701 2,443.1 Irvine
80 Allergan 734 2,319.2 Irvine
89 Univision Communications 821 1,952.5 Los Angeles
94 William Lyon Homes 850 1,856.4 Newport Beach
95 Guitar Center 862 1,782.5 Westlake Village
96 Quiksilver 863 1,780.9 Huntington Beach
97 Indymac Bancorp 869 1,765.3 Pasadena
101 Molina Healthcare 916 1,650.1 Long Beach
102 Watson Pharmaceuticals 917 1,646.2 Corona
103 Earle M. Jorgensen 927 1,608.9 Lynwood
109 Apria Healthcare Group 979 1,474.1 Lake Forest
Houston Metro Area
Fortune 500 Cos. 22
Fortune 1000 Cos. 41
2 ConocoPhillips 6 166,683.0 Houston
4 Marathon Oil 23 58,958.0 Houston
7 Plains All Amer. Pipeline 65 31,177.3 Houston
8 Sysco 68 30,281.9 Houston
9 Halliburton 103 20,994.0 Houston
13 Lyondell Chemical 121 18,606.0 Houston
19 Waste Management 170 13,074.0 Houston
22 Enterprise Products 183 12,257.0 Houston
24 Continental Airlines 207 11,208.0 Houston
26 Reliant Energy 220 10,708.0 Houston
29 Kinder Morgan Energy 243 9,787.1 Houston
30 CenterPoint Energy 244 9,784.0 Houston
32 TEPPCO Partners 267 8,618.5 Houston
33 Burlington Resources 298 7,587.0 Houston
34 Apache 299 7,584.2 Houston
36 Baker Hughes 310 7,218.0 Houston
37 Anadarko Petroleum 314 7,100.0 The Woodlands
43 Group 1 Automotive 361 5,969.6 Houston
47 Smith International 390 5,579.0 Houston
53 National Oilwell Varco 452 4,644.5 Houston
54 El Paso 455 4,596.0 Houston
56 Frontier Oil 496 4,001.2 Houston
60 EOG Resources 528 3,620.2 Houston
63 BJ Services 573 3,243.2 Houston
64 FMC Technologies 576 3,226.7 Houston
72 US Oncology 684 2,518.6 Houston
73 Cooper Cameron 685 2,517.8 Houston
74 Stewart Information Services 703 2,430.6 Houston
79 Adams Resources & Engy. 746 2,269.7 Houston
81 Noble Energy 761 2,186.7 Houston 83 Pride International 799 2,034.6 Houston
84 Southern Union 803 2,019.4 Houston
86 Quanex 809 1,996.9 Houston
90 Quanta Services 849 1,858.6 Houston
91 Newfield Exploration 870 1,762.0 Houston
92 Service Corp. Intl. 879 1,738.5 Houston
93 Men's Wearhouse 887 1,724.9 Houston
94 HCC Insurance Holdings 918 1,644.3 Houston
95 Kinder Morgan 932 1,594.5 Houston
96 ExpressJet Holdings 942 1,562.8 Houston
100 Pogo Producing 978 1,478.5 Houston
101 BMC Software 984 1,463.0 Houston>
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