City Population Rank If All The Same Size (best, largest, compare)
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There's like 9000 threads on the population of one city vs. another, but it's difficult to compare them exactly because city boundaries are much different. So what if every city was the same size? The average area size of the top 100 largest cities is a bit over 200 square miles. The US Census takes population counts at concentric circles from a city's center in mile increments. From there, it's simple math.
8 miles from the center is about 201 square miles, and since that's closest to the average city boundary size, that's what I used for the ranking. Here are the top 50 largest cities by population in 2010 at that size, along with the actual ranking.
Black= No Ranking Change, Blue= Improved Ranking, Red= Fallen Ranking
Rank Change, Best to Worst
Hartford, CT: +167
Providence, RI: +99
Salt Lake City, UT: +74
Rochester, NY: +64
Orlando, FL: +52
Richmond, VA: +50
Pittsburgh, PA: +38
Riverside, CA: +36
Cincinnati, OH: +34
Minneapolis, MN: +33
Buffalo, NY: +32
Miami, FL: +27
St. Louis, MO: +25
Las Vegas, NV: +22
Cleveland, OH: +20
New Orleans, LA: +19
Boston, MA: +18
Washington, DC: +18
Baltimore, MD: +17
Portland, OR: +14
Atlanta, GA: +13
Denver, CO: +12
Milwaukee, WI: +10
Tampa, FL: +10
Sacramento, CA: +9
Bakersfield, CA: +6
San Jose, CA: +3
San Francisco, CA: +2
Philadelphia, PA: +1
Seattle, WA: +1
Chicago, IL: 0
Los Angeles, CA: 0
New York, NY: 0
Fresno, CA: -2
Albuquerque, NM: -5
Tucson, AZ: -5
Omaha, NE: -6
San Diego, CA: -6
Columbus, OH: -7
Houston, TX: -7
Kansas City, MO: -7
Dallas, TX: -9
Phoenix, AX: -10
Detroit, MI: -12
San Antonio, TX: -12
Louisville, KY: -14
Indianapolis, IN: -17
Oklahoma City, OK: -20
Austin, TX: -23
Charlotte, NC: -24
So it seems that those cities with either large boundaries and/or low population density dropped in the rankings, while those with small borders and/or high density went up, which is pretty much what you would expect to happen if city size was standardized. It's not a perfect way to measure the size of city populations, but it's a lot more fair than what currently exists.
Also notice that, out of the top 25 largest current cities, 5 of them are missing from the ranking altogether. With the exception of Ft. Worth, which overlaps Dallas, the other 4 (Jacksonville, FL, Memphis, Nashville and El Paso, TX) wouldn't even crack the top 50 using this ranking.
This is a great list. The cities that come out on top are consistently ranked as "best of" in multiple categories and the pretenders (looking at you ouston with an H) are relegated to where they belong.
Interesting, but I imagine the concentric circles can be a bit disingenuous for cities with large natural boundaries such as oceans, Great lakes, mountains (e.g. LA, Chicago, Miami, Seattle, Milwaukee, Boston etc.) whereas many of the cities there isn't much of a natural boundary problem (e.g. Houston, Dallas, Minneapolis, Indianapolis etc.). So there is still some difficulty in the comparisons.
Interesting, but I imagine the concentric circles can be a bit disingenuous for cities with large natural boundaries such as oceans, Great lakes, mountains (e.g. LA, Chicago, Miami, Seattle, Milwaukee, Boston etc.) whereas many of the cities there isn't much of a natural boundary problem (e.g. Houston, Dallas, Minneapolis, Indianapolis etc.). So there is still some difficulty in the comparisons.
Of course, there's always going to be something. However, geographic limitations don't seem to affect the rankings all that much. Coastal cities are all ranked highly, and indeed almost all of them moved upwards in the ranking. This may be because cities with major geographic limitations end up having higher densities that compensate for that. This at least tries to balance things out and doesn't just rely on the arbitrary existing boundaries.
City limits populations are worthless anyway. The real measure should be Urban Area or Metro Area (though I can see a case for San Francisco and San Jose to be together and DC and Baltimore too).
D.C. is the fifth largest city in the country eh? I can live.with this.
DC will most likely be #4 or very close to that spot in the nation after the 2020 census if this is using 2010 census data. Does anybody know what it's using? The 200 mile inner core of the DC metro has seen unprecedented new construction since 2010 increasing capacity by a significant margin. We still have a housing shortage, but it has helped a lot.
I'm surprised San Jose would still be higher than San Francisco.
Last edited by gwillyfromphilly; 03-08-2015 at 09:56 AM..
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