For Americans
If you could bring someone who had never been to America to one U.S. city, which one would it be?
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okay, what about SLC?
I hear that’s nice
ANYWAY...
i guess i could rep my local flavor and say Miami, with palm trees, Latin-Caribbean stylings, and lots of catering to tourists and resorts
or i could say New York City, which is quintessentially "[U.S.] American" as a center of commerce, a melting pot of hundreds of cultures, and one of the largest cities in the world
as a practical problem with tourism, actually, there's often not that much to see in terms of destinations in a city, aside from some major landmarks (e.g. Times Square, Statue of Liberty, Chinatown, Gateway Arch, Walk of Fame, Faneuil Hall, Citgo Sign, Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, etc.), and often it's not really like there's much to do other than to take pictures and spend money on local food and random souvenirs, with some exceptions (e.g. listening to a concert in Carnegie Hall or seeing a musical on Broadway or watching a ball game live at Fenway Park, being part of the Mardi Gras festivities in New Orleans)
probably a key difference is that you really have to take the time to stroll around (ON FOOT, NOT IN A CAR) and take in the sights and sounds and tastes and even smells of a place. this takes time. you can't really do this easily if all you're doing is following an itinerary of hitting landmarks just to check things off a bucket list or something. and you can't do this either if all you do is drive around, maybe park your car and throw a few quarters into a parking meter, then come back in an hour and drive away.
now, on the other hand, if you want to see economic forces at play with regards to urban and suburban development, then enjoy any of the following:
* an older city with some small-town trappings, somewhat close to a major city but not part of it, with some of its own history but gradually becoming a suburb of that major city (sometimes called a "bedroom community", especially if people who live there tend to work elsewhere). an example is South Windsor, Connecticut. another example may be Manassas, Virginia.
* massive amounts of suburban sprawl, with relatively dense population. examples here include Pembroke Pines, Florida; and Fairfax, Virginia.
* the decline of U.S. manufacturing industries, possibly with some replacement with service, tech, and information-based industries. I haven't really lived in the midwest myself, but from what I've heard, examples here include Detroit and Pittsburgh, which you people have mentioned already.
* places known specifically for being tourist destinations, which we U.S. Americans ourselves flock to (even if maybe not me specifically). these include Los Angeles, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Miami, Florida.
* newer, fast-growing cities. examples here include major cities in the west, such as Salt Lake City, Utah; (from my understanding) Logan, Utah; Denver, Colorado; and Boise, Idaho.
Ironically, New York City is rather unusual in regards to development patterns: it's got an extremely large dense urban core compared to other U.S. cities, because it largely developed long before automobiles were invented, and then maintained its core's commercial importance even despite the desire to sprawl (partly due to very important infrastructure such as the New York Stock Exchange being located on islands and peninsulas which restrict sprawling), and now it's one of the few places in the U.S. where residents regularly go around without using cars. like, not just "have a car but don't use it much", but "don't even bother getting a car, even if I'm filthy rich, because i can walk or take public transit everywhere i need to go".
fwiw, even in NYC, it's just Manhattan and the Bronx that are super-dense like this and really "look like a city". If you go to places like Queens you'll notice it feeling more like just a really dense suburb, or maybe a lot of what would pass for downtown in small towns. basically, you've got dense buildings, but few of them are particularly high, and most of them are just a few stories at most, maybe even just one or two. shopping centers in the Flushing neighborhood are like this -- multi-story parking garage, next to a shopping center that more resembles a three-story mall. compare Manhattan where you have residential buildings of 5, 10, 20, 30 stories stacked on top of a continuous chain of shops on the first floor. Brooklyn is similar, I think. go further out to places like Old Howard Beach and Hamilton Beach and you even get single-family homes! (though, horribly expensive ones, even despite their age.) go outside the city proper, and you get just regular dense suburbs such as Valley Stream. Staten Island, which IS part of the city, is also houses like this, from what I understand (though I haven't been there myself).
Edit: I guess it doesn't matter what order those are done in