Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I was reading the thread about dead downtowns in the U.S. vs European/Asian/Latin American cities, where even much smaller cities in other countries have much more vibrancy in their respective cities compared to much larger cities out here. So I would like to get people's perspective of which cities feel the biggest in order of 1-10, it doesn't necessarily have to center around downtown, it could be the whole experience such as airports, waterfronts, pedestrian activity, public transportation, freeways, congestion, density, adjacent cities, etc. When taken everything in to account what's your top 10?
To me for the US on city feel, from the urban perspective
1 NYC
2. Chicago
3. Philly
4. Boston/SF
6. LA (personally I find LA the hardest to quantify on this metric as sometimes it feels larger and other times more spread out, I have trouble classifying LA in many ways because of this and it could likely become #2 at some point or at least #3 but have difficulties with LA as it seems a chameleon of sorts)
7. DC
then to me it gets tougher (For example in some ways Seattle and baltimore feel larger than DFW/Houston/ATL and in other ways not)
On Metro size:
1. NYC
2. LA
3. Chicago
4. These all roughly feel like the next tier (Atlanta, Bay, Boston, DC, DFW, Houston, Miami, Philly)
Last edited by kidphilly; 08-22-2011 at 01:58 PM..
Reason: Edit: Forgot DC on the metro list
To me for the US on city feel, from the urban perspective
1 NYC
2. Chicago
3. Philly
4. Boston/SF
6. LA (personally I find LA the hardest to quantify on this metric as sometimes it feels larger and other times more spread out, I have trouble classifying LA in many ways because of this and it could likely become #2 at some point or at least #3 but have difficulties with LA as it seems a chameleon of sorts)
7. DC
then to me it gets tougher (For example in some ways Seattle and baltimore feel larger than DFW/Houston/ATL and in other ways not)
On Metro size:
1. NYC
2. LA
3. Chicago
4. These all roughly feel like the next tier (Atlanta, Bay, Boston, DFW, Houston, Miami, Philly)
Yea I like how you broke it down from city and metro, the way I did my list I combined both aspects to come up with a list, if strictly on downtown feel cities like Pittsburgh, Bmore, Cincy would be in my top 10
NYC
SF
LA <-- LA has multiple "downtowns," worthy of note...
Chicago
Boston
Those are the only ones I've spent enough time in to quantify accurately. I've spent time in Philly, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, and DC but not necessarily enough to position them accurately versus one another. At least, not without incurring anyone's wrath...
1. NYC
2. Chicago
3. Philadelphia
4. Boston
5. San Francisco
Many of the southern and west coast cities are so spaced out that it is hard to really hard to get a sense of how crowded they really are. for metro areas i would put LA at number 3 and bump philly and boston down one.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
