Cities that could have been contenders

Could Galena, Illinois win out over Chicago?

I doubt it. Chicago grew so much because it could connect the Great Lakes to the rail network and to the Mississippi via the Illinois and Michigan Canal. Galena is near the Mississippi but nowhere near the Great Lakes.
 
San Francisco is famous, but not especially big anymore. Maybe have Daly City annex much of Northern San Bruno County, and then be annexed by San Francisco, effectively doubling, perhaps almost tripling, the City By The Bay's land area. From there it would be relatively easy to develop with an early enough PoD, either keep the Port of San Francisco more important (Port of Oakland suffers a catastrophe or Transcontinental Railroad delayed by a long while) or just rely on the fact that San Francisco is a pretty famous city and people want to go live there.

Could conceivably have three million people in modern SF without too much higher population density. Although if the traffic is bad today... jesus I don't even want to think about that.

I pray that that timeline also has a much larger emphasis on public transportation.
 
Many cities in the Balkans could be much more relevant and bigger, perhaps simultaneously with the right circumstances

Belgrade - excellent position, but was a border town for much of history, so it was perpetually destroyed
Smederevo - pretty much same as above
Novo Brdo - Was a gargantuan mining town in the middle ages
Skadar - was a pretty important city and center of trade
Kotor - good, secure location, center of trade, but suffers from lack of available space, if it was bigger it would be very stretched
Trnovo - ancient Bulgarian capital
Drač/Durres - major port city, like all balkan cities declined when the ottomans invaded
Dubrovnik - was a minor trading nation, but could have been more relevant

Could Niš be a candidate?
 
Top