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Several major cities of the world (Los Angles, San Francisco, New York, Beijing, and London) I have lived in for extended period of time (months) and visited large number of times (five or more) during my adult life are listed above. Here are my personal opinion/impression of them.

Los Angles:

          This is a city of automobiles. You need one to go anywhere and do anything. It is the movie capital of the world, and where the first post WWII think tank, RAND Corporation, is located. Many of the landmark papers in optimization, game theory, and operations research as well as legendary names such as Bellman, Shapley, Isaacs, are associated with RAND. I spent two summers working there and my thinking benefited greatly with the association. Industry-wise, the names of Ramo and Woolridge, Aerospace Corporation are well known for the explosive growth of control and guidance in the 1960s. I did much consulting work with the Aerospace Corporation during that time and learned a lot.

SanFrancisco:

          The so-called Bay Area with SF as the center also includes Berkeley where the major U. of California is located as well as the entire Silicon Valley with well know cities such as PaloAlto and Cupertino where giant corporations such as Apple and Hewitt-Packard and Stanford University (Harvard of the West) are based. I spend two sabbaticals at Berkeley and have many colleagues/friends at Stanford.  Together with Boston, I consider the Bay area as home and the best place to live in the US.

New York City:

          With proximity to Boston, this is often the city where we go to see Broadway shows, absorb the latest trends on everything, eat the best Chinese foods on the East Coast, visit with relatives and friends who reside in the greater metropolitan areas, and attend the national reunion of my fraternity http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-343425.html .

Beijing:

          Always the first city I land in China on my frequent returns ; location of the second university job I have (with Tsinghua since 2001); grown to know well, and seen firsthand the miraculous economic transformation of China since 1979.

London:

          Starting in  1969 I spent two long stays in and numerous visits to this city over a period of almost half a century which I consider to be the most cosmopolitan city of the world. To paraphrase Churchill – New York and London are two cities separated by a common language. You feel totally at home in London while outside of the US and China.

          My wife and I have fond memories about all the cities mentioned here.