In Are cities the new countries?, Finlo Rohrer notes that large cities — like Shanghai, Mexico City, Tokyo, New York, and London — share more in common with one another than with their home nations:
[London Mayor Ken Livingstone] joked: “Having been to Singapore and seen how successful it was I think anything short of a fully independent city state is a lost opportunity, with its own foreign and defence policies thrown in.”
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“It will cost £2 billion to fix the Tube and £1.5bn to benefit from the effects of the 2012 Olympics, yet [Londoners] subsidise the rest of the UK to the tune of £20 billion a year.”