OTL Cities which could have been great?

[GauchoBadger]

What about african cities?
Ceuta, if it was controlled by Morocco?
Dakar is already a good port of some notice, but i feel like it had more potential.
Sokoto and Kano could become significant regional centers if the Sokoto Caliphate had somehow retained its independence.
Great Zimbabwe, centered around its famed medieval fort?
A more successful Kilwa Sultanate?
Berenice?

 

[GauchoBadger]

Ürümqi, the regional capital Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China it is the pivotal city of China's new silk road linking China to Central Asia and Europe. Devised as a method to circumvent American & Indian naval interference the city is a miracle built on subways and massive aqueduct projects.

Except that Ürumqi, as a major hub, is not the only one in the region. There's also Kashgar, Turfan, Yarkand, Khotan, among others.

 

[Nephi]

Corinth Mississippi and I think without the civil war it would have.

 

[Βοανηργές]

Stettin (Szczecin), had Prussia remained a part of Germany.
Lisboa/Madrid in an Iberian union.
Singapore, had it remained a part of Malaysia or became the capital of a united ASEAN.
Antioch (?)
Bogota, had Gran Colombia remained united.
Calais, English staple port
Isfahan, alt-capital for Iran
Benin without the British sacking in 1897.
Massawa, with Eritrea remaining in Ethopian federation.
Larger Canberra/Sydney with admission of NZ or creation of a larger Polynesian/Australasian federation.
Larger New Delhi with preservation of Indian unity.
Khambat if silting of bay had been prevented
Goa (if it could retain it's autonomy in a state similar to HK?)
St. Petersburg (continued to be capital of Russian entities)
Riga (in a baltic federation)

 

[Anaxagoras]

Dayton, Ohio, because. . . why not?

 

[Sevarics]

Samarkand?

 

[Deleted member 6086]

Nanjing would be huge had the ROC won the Civil War.

 

[Dementor]

Sofia, Bulgaria.

I think it's already a pretty great city. How exactly do you see it becoming greater than the third biggest city in the Balkans and a country capital?

 

[Julius Vogel]

Nelson might have ended up capital of NZ. The coast is a bit narrow but it does spread out quickly towards Tasman so would have had some growth potential. Then of course Motueka

 

[Gwenc'hlan]

Rouen could have been bigger in a more northern oriented France. It was the biggest city of the richest province of France and a great port but the demographic weight of Paris and quite a few fires and epidemics kept it down.
Lyons also strikes me as a massive missed opportunity. It is positioned on the greatest artery between north and south France (the Rhone) near the passes to Italy and the coal fields of st Etienne. When you think about it it could have been a center of arpitan culture and easily be twice or three time the size it has today (seriously the second biggest French city has the same size as Turin the fourth of Italy)
There is also Arles, whose role of center of southern Gaul passed to Marseilles and Toulouse but I don't know enough about it to say why it declined.

 

[Geordie]

How about Winchester remaining as the capital of England? I don't know much about medieval history. But could it have grown into a giant metropolis over the centuries, while London remained a backwater?

While interesting, this is not particularly likely.

London has the advantages of the big navigable river, proximity to markets in the Low Countries, the early road networks being centred on it, and dozens of others. Winchester, while a lovely city, cannot compete with these advantages. Flowing through Winchester, the Itchen is, to put it bluntly, not a big river (see below). Before medieval times, I also understand that the area was rather boggy, with the Itchen displaying a tendency to change courses through the valley.

A better bet might be to go down river to the mouth. If economic power in England is concentrated towards trade with Normandy, rather than Flanders, then Southampton could be just the ticket. If this alternative capital did grow to London proportions, it'd end up swallowing poor Winchester wholesale.

 

[GauchoBadger]

If i'm not mistaken, Granada was actually one of Europe's largest cities during the Nasrid period, despite the contemporaneously low tide of muslim rule in Iberia.

 

[catalfalque]

Samarkand?

It's importance was as a place between places, so caravanserai were huge, outside of the city itself.

 

[catalfalque]

Arles if things had gone its way

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, seems to have all of nature's advantages, and be ideally positioned, but not politically important enough

 

[ArchimedesCircle]

Actually, I'm not so sure about that; after all, Pyongyang's status as a capital allows it to receive migrants from other parts of North Korea (well, presumably those whom the government approves of, that is).

Maybe if Korea had been unified from the start due to a different Asian theater in WWII, preferably under OTL South Korea or at least someone less crazy than the Kim dynasty, Pyongyang would have become the number two city of Korea. Or go back to the 7th century and have Goguryeo unite the peninsula from its capital in Pyongyang.

 

[Incasaurus]

You could see a more important Grimsby in a timeline where the centre of culture and governance on the lower part of the larger British island ends up in the Danelaw. Eventually trade will move downriver from Gainsborough to somewhere a bit closer to the sea, which suggests the Humber-mouth.

As someone who has (genuinely and unfortunately) lived in both Grimsby and Gainsborough I find this very amusing. Sweyn Forkbeard did make Gainsborough his capital mind you and married a local girl.

Both towns are now somewhat more famous for very different reasons. There was a reason why Sascha Baron Cohen made a film called Grimsby.

 

[IFwanderer]

As I said during the last incarnation of this thread, there's Paraná in Argentina, because during the Argentine civil war it became capital after Buenos Aires seceded from the Argentine Confederation. I'd also add the cities of Rosario, Santa Fe, Córdoba (all three are pretty big, but tiny compared to Buenos Aires), Bahía Blanca (it's got a better port than Buenos Aires, so if it had been settled earlier it could've been a bigger city) and possibly Usuhaia in a "no Panama Canal" timeline.

 

[finnz]

Tangier in Morocco if WWII was avoided somehow.
If the Nicaragua Canal was built as competition or an alternative to the Panama Canal, perhaps a major city would form around one of the entrances to the canal.

A couple of long shots here:
Maybe if Aragon formed Spain, Valencia or Barcelona would be the first city in the country rather than Madrid.
Similarly, if Scotland somehow led England during their union, maybe Edinburgh would have a more prominent position in the country (likely not surpassing London, but definitely more noticeable than OTL).

 

[Fehérvári]

Had Austria-Hungary remain intact, the cities of Vienna, Budapest and Prague would have become twice or even thrice as big and today, they would be the unquestionable centers of East Central Europe.

 

[Canadian Dragon]

I've read somewhere that Boston could've gotten much bigger if it hadn't been for the system of canals in Upstate New York.

Halifax could have gone on to become a larger city than it is now, if Canada hadn't concentrated so much of its economic and political power in the Toronto-Montreal corridor and/or if Maine and other states of New England somehow became a part of Canada early on. Like, maybe if the British manged to get their hands on this part of the US during the War of 1812. But just as well, suppose if the Americans managed to get their hands on Nova Scotia after the War of 1812...