Gazetteer of World Cities: Beijing, Los Angeles, São Paulo and more

Although notoriously at odds with respect to opinionating about most any issue pertaining to assessment of the relative worthiness of one entity versus another that loosely occupies a similar overarching category, in general human beings are uniformly quite complimentary with respect to appreciating the positive features of the planet's pristine state as ventured by the premier explorers to truly wild terrain modified only by the burrowing of irreproachable groundhogs, construction of astonishingly proportioned supersurface hillocks by the underground world's most renowned, admirably social denizens of miniature stature, felling of surprisingly substantial wooded plants by the temperate realm's most industrious, universally beloved flat-tailed, buck-toothed rodent for the purposes of fashioning imposing riverine dwellings, and other activities typically deemed only moderately impactful on the environment, always entailing influences received as though an integral, welcome component of the host ecosystem. Yet the farther away the discussion is taken from the savage bush, untended hinterlands, impenetrable jungles, and barren desert, beyond the conscientiously safeguarded backwoods, steepest frigid mountains, and deliciously secluded frontier domains into realms affected by the irrepressible forward (or backward) march of civilization through the generations, the more likely the conversation may take a turn towards more lively, perhaps at times even rather passionate or heated commentary regarding the relative merits of a particular sphere historically welcoming to human habitation, invariably to the detriment of its longterm existential survival, down to the granular level such as in the case of insisting the qualities of one neighborhood as undeniably more superior to those of its rivals, such that any work purporting a balanced presentation as a "gazetteer of world cities" must endeavor to step away from personal observations if intent on steering clear of alienation of various demographic groups, instead offering something of value to a broad spectrum of readers, many of whom will have their own ingrained, emotionally charged perspective on populated settlements covered based on direct experience or secondhand exposure, personal biases, ethnic, religious and political affiliations, family history, generational trauma, and countless other consequential factors. One small caveat lector must be broached to preempt legitimate critiques over unorthodox romanization of geographic locales, landmarks and other engineered spaces in an attempt to retreat from the historical practice of identifying places using nomenclature at times quite awkwardly transliterated from native rendering, a tendency towards presumptuous accommodation to the linguistic comfort zone of an almighty imperialist force thereby providing for widespread reference to the capital of Germany's largest state as Munich compared to its vernacular address of München, with the author's departure from standard anglicization ventured in part out of a desire to highlight the legacy of concessions made by countries where English may be spoken as a second language by a grand proportion of the base population mostly to promote global commerce and international tourism without signaling consent to the negation or subordination of indigenous traditions, in the process hopefully avoiding an unnecessary triggering of lionhearted patriots habitually incensed by perceived affronts to their affiliate's autonomy, perhaps taken to viewing any deviation from artful Arabic script even in the context of a foreign publication as though tantamount to celebration of medieval era reconquista crusades undertaken in response to aggressive onslaught of Muslim caliphates previously consumed by expansionist campaigns since sixth-century rise of Islam's central prophetic figure.