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Location: Watching half my country turn into Gilead
3,530 posts, read 4,171,933 times
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Honestly, the U.S. already really only has 10 major cities, if not less. The rest is just disjointed suburbia loosely associated as "cities". Just take the top 10 urban areas and there ya go. Every other "city" ceases to exist and everyone moves to the 10.
I like the Judge Dress premise to the thread, too.
Honestly, the U.S. already really only has 10 major cities, if not less. The rest is just disjointed suburbia loosely associated as "cities". Just take the top 10 urban areas and there ya go. Every other "city" ceases to exist and everyone moves to the 10.
I like the Judge Dress premise to the thread, too.
I seem to be thinking about this (still working on my list) completely differently than you (and most on here it seems). If you do your idea, the results are the following:
That's 4 in the NE, 4 SE (2 of which are in Texas), 1 Midwest (Great Lakes/Upper, 0 Great Plains/Lower), 0 Mountain West, 0 Northwest, and 1 Southwest.... I feel like the city placement for such a huge country would need to be a bit more strategic than this and would need to include more thought into national defense, resources (including food), rivers, infrastructure crossroads, ports, etc. Just picking the ten biggest UAs from our completely different system now doesn't really cut it in my opinion: like we should really have 4 cities clustered so close (Boston is getting a little farther at least) in the NE and yet only have one single city west of Dallas (and it being way down in the SE corner at that)?
Location: The Greatest city on Earth: City of Atlanta Proper
8,485 posts, read 14,987,215 times
Reputation: 7328
Quote:
Originally Posted by atadytic19
Yessir. Do You Have a problem with my fantasy list?
Well, yes. Let's start with the fact that both Savannah and Galveston are at the center of nothing. They're small coastal cities rather isolated from the nearest major city. Secondly, while both cities had promising starts they never really lived up to the hype (or had a disaster) and were soon overshadowed by newer cities (Houston and Atlanta) to their north.
So I guess you'll need to explain your thinking on this as the rest of your list contained a reasonable list of already major cities. Why do these two small cities standout?
Location: The Greatest city on Earth: City of Atlanta Proper
8,485 posts, read 14,987,215 times
Reputation: 7328
Quote:
Originally Posted by Caesarstl
I seem to be thinking about this (still working on my list) completely differently than you (and most on here it seems). If you do your idea, the results are the following:
That's 4 in the NE, 4 SE (2 of which are in Texas), 1 Midwest (Great Lakes/Upper, 0 Great Plains/Lower), 0 Mountain West, 0 Northwest, and 1 Southwest.... I feel like the city placement for such a huge country would need to be a bit more strategic than this and would need to include more thought into national defense, resources (including food), rivers, infrastructure crossroads, ports, etc. Just picking the ten biggest UAs from our completely different system now doesn't really cut it in my opinion: like we should really have 4 cities clustered so close (Boston is getting a little farther at least) in the NE and yet only have one single city west of Dallas (and it being way down in the SE corner at that)?
Well, it's already kind of that way now. 58% of the U.S. population lives East of the Mississippi. Add in Texas alone and that's another nearly 70% of the country's population. So yeah, it would make sense for a list like this to favor the East.
Remember, the Chinese mega-city works ONLY because of high speed rail. The basic underlying rule, as explained by the NYT's story is that the ends of a city can only be a one-hour commute from the city center, high speed rail lets people live up to 150 miles away and still be able to get to the center (or multiple centers ) within 60 minutes.
Since we can barely maintain the interstate highway system and there seems to be no desire for a comprehensive high-speed rail system in any metro (DC-Boston excepted), the US is unlikely to ever have a mega-city outside of the one naturally developing on the eastern seaboard.
Well, it's already kind of that way now. 58% of the U.S. population lives East of the Mississippi. Add in Texas alone and that's another nearly 70% of the country's population. So yeah, it would make sense for a list like this to favor the East.
I'm not sure you understood me though. I know how it is now, but if the US suddenly limited itself to ten cities (for this question of course) it doesn't seem like it would be a very good idea to just pretend like it's the same as now and take the top ten. Specialization of cities and the things I mentioned in my last post are going to become a lot more important. Key resources/things like ports, rivers/infrastructure crossroads, food, etc. that today are manned by cities not in the top ten as they don't necessarily need all of those people in our system today, but they do need some people and thus might warrant a place on the list instead of a bigger city.
Well, yes. Let's start with the fact that both Savannah and Galveston are at the center of nothing. They're small coastal cities rather isolated from the nearest major city. Secondly, while both cities had promising starts they never really lived up to the hype (or had a disaster) and were soon overshadowed by newer cities (Houston and Atlanta) to their north.
So I guess you'll need to explain your thinking on this as the rest of your list contained a reasonable list of already major cities. Why do these two small cities standout?
I don't have to explain anything to anyone, but I am in a good mood so I will. Besides, you clearly missed the intent of this exercise. The OP did not ask you to pick the biggest cities in the US and make them bigger. He asked if you limit the US to 10 cities, where would you locate them. With the exception of Denver, St Paul and Cincinnati, i chose coastal port cities. They need not be huge cities because that was not a requirement of the OP. The cities I chose are spaced out nicely and are heavily trade based. Cincinnati is the only one that is odd man out. That area offers many other cities that are more strategically spaced for trade, but I like it. Denver doesn't have a seaport but it is centrally located in the west. I decided to keep DC as our capital and thought that Savannah and Miami served the east coast well spatially. Galveston is centrally located on the gulf Coast and I skipped New Orleans because I didn't want two Mississippi cities. St Paul Works Because It Covers The midwest. Then I have 3 cities in the west. One way down in Hawaii, one all the way up in Alaska and then LA covers the covers the middle.
There you have it
3 west coast
3 east coast
1 gulf coast
1 for the inner west/ mountain states
2 midwest
There you have it.
the only one I would change would be Cincinnati. Based on pure logistics I could have gone with Tennessee or Indianapolis
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