How can two cities from two different sides of the ocean be so alike in so many ways? Vadimus Post’s Denis Campbell looks at this psychological “Tale of Two Cities.”

Both cities have business and political leaders with high ego strength and feelings of local self-inflation and importance bordering on, well, arrogance. This is rather remarkable considering both are small communities that sit relatively close to their nation’s real international centre of economic and political power. The need to be taken seriously and… independent creates an isolated (us vs. them) superiority bubble that shows up in unique and similar ways. It also does not help that Baltimore sits above the Civil War’s Mason-Dixon line with Washington below and Wales was basically invaded and taken over centuries ago by the English.

Over the coming weeks, this series will hold the two cities up to the mirror mostly because the writer has lived for a long time in suburbs of each of them and finds it a bit too strange that the psyche of two culturally different cities can be so fragile yet alike in so many ways.

Cardiff is the national capital of Wales for a “country” of 4 million people. I put country in brackets because there is such enmity that if you ask a Welshman for whom he roots the answer never varies, “Wales and whomever England is currently playing.” There is a native Celtic language spoken by about ½ of its residents and by law appears on all street directional signs, that is desperately devoid of vowels. It sits 132 miles (not far enough for most) from London, the political and financial capital of the United Kingdom (and, some would argue, the EU).

Baltimore is the largest (non-capital) city in the US state of Maryland. It sits 38 miles from the national capitol of the USA, Washington, DC. It too has a language of its own and only folks from “Ballmer” know what it means, “hon.” Those 38 miles have been known to take almost as long to traverse during rush hour as the drive down the M4 to London.

Cardiff’s nearby environs include The Glamorgan Heritage Coast’s limestone and granite cliffs (above which, in a village of 38 people called Monknash, this publication heralds). There are also the hills of the Brecon Beacon, scores of medieval castle ruins (including Ogmore Castle where England’s King Arthur is said to have perished) and is the 2nd ancestral home of the royal and ancient game of golf. While the Scots invented it, the Welsh perfected it and the Ryder Cup in 2010 will be contested in the hills of Newport at Celtic Manor Resort.

Baltimore is home to soft shell crabs and Maryland crab cakes, bass fishing along the Chesapeake Bay, and in an hour’s time one can be to the Maryland Shore near Annapolis (home to the US Naval Academy) and the beaches of Salisbury and other point along the shore. Wales gives the world ‘bangers and mash’.

Situated between Baltimore and Washington is Columbia, MD a planned community experiment in social engineering by James Rouse. His Rouse Company built Columbia as a series of interlocking neighbourhoods complete with cluster mailboxes to encourage social interaction. Rouse also developed many of the festival marketplaces that dot major US cities including Boston’s Quincy Market, New York’s South Street Seaport and Baltimore’s Harbor Place and The Gallery. More about the Rouse Empire will follow in a later episode.

Both cities have a long fascination with sport and at times their smaller market teams have dominated over major ones through grit, determination, heart and a rabid fan base.

The recent 6 Nations European rugby championship saw tiny Wales defeat all comers including England, France, Italy, Scotland and Ireland and was staged in the monolithic and often mostly empty Millennium Stadium, a cavernous 72,000 seat stadium that sells out a dozen or so rugby clashes each year and hosts large concerts such as The Police, Neil Diamond (who will only use half of it), U2 and others. It did host the world’s largest crowd for a heavyweight fight last year.

It is the most dominant item on the skyline and the city of Cardiff is literally split into two parts, downtown, where the stadium and shopping complexes sit and Cardiff Bay, where a festival marketplace sits next to the equally large and underutilised Millennium Centre for arts and the Senned, the massive new Welsh Assembly Government building. (Baltimore City Hall for many years was the largest Baroque revival style domed city hall in the US.)

Baltimore has its share of mostly empty sports cathedrals at Camden Yards the former railway depot where not one but two stadiums sit empty most of the time. The 48,876 seat Oriole Park at Camden Yards is home 81-days of the year to the long-suffering but sometimes champion Baltimore Orioles baseball team nicknamed the O’s. They are such a big deal that when the US National anthem reaches the crescendo line, “Oh, say does that Star Spangled Banner, ever yet wave,” the entire crowd screams at their loudest the word Oh!

Right next door the American football 71,800 seat M&T stadium is the home of the Baltimore Ravens for 10-12 games each year. This city used to be the home of the now Indianapolis Colts who left in the middle of the night. Most fans refuse to even discuss this defection or their late owner Robert Irsay, the mere mention of his name, 11-years after his death, evokes a stream of bile, invective and blue language.

Just as the Welsh own the sport of rugby as a birthright, Baltimoreans own baseball and when the Washington DC Nationals team came to town from Montreal, the largest opposition was from Baltimore fans who had gotten used to politicians and business leaders driving up the BW parkway to catch a game.

Both cities have tiny regional “International” airports that started in different places and under different names. Friendship International Airport became Baltimore Washington International (BWI) in an effort to lure passengers from National Airport and Dulles to the south and across the corridor between the two cities. Cardiff suffers a bit more from geographical proximity to RAF airbase St. Athans and is just plain difficult to reach via narrow and congested roadways. Cardiff will never be able to fully expand unless access to/from a major motorway can be achieved in less than 20-minutes. Both BWI and CWL have undergone major expansions and suffer from believing in their own press, thinking they are bigger and more relevant than they actually are when major low-cost and anchor airline tenants have mostly bypassed them for other, more accessible airports. Indeed were KLM to pull out, that would be a deathknell for the local airport as already a large number of South Wales travellers use Bristol Airport across the bridge in England. BWI has a similar tenuous situation and the possible merger of their two prime major carriers US Airways and United will hurt as would a slowing in the schedule of discount airline Southwest.

As we will come to see though, puffing oneself up in much bigger terms than one really is, is a normal Welsh/Ballmer trait.

Coming next week: The business and political climates.