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 noticed that back as early as '83. This is an on growing problem. However, as I have mentioned in other threads, St. Louis has some beautiful areas, like the park belt that reaches east. But, in the end, the metro saves the city here, no doubt. Too bad about Lambert losing hub status.
Yes, just take a google earth view of inner city Detroit. It is very ugly when you consider most of the green areas near the inner city are old neighnorhoods that simply don't exist, due to fires and teardowns. It is terribly depressing for this former great city. (I have posted this in other threads, but I think it is is an important look at what some US cities have become)
Yes, just take a google earth view of inner city Detroit. It is very ugly when you consider most of the green areas near the inner city are old neighnorhoods that simply don't exist, due to fires and teardowns. It is terribly depressing for this former great city. (I have posted this in other threads, but I think it is is an important look at what some US cities have become)
St. Louis looks largely the same. The neighborhoods north of downtown have a TON of open space where houses used to be.
Interesting post... made me join the site :-)
A couple observations,
Boston is one of the "small cities" with a much larger MSA (city is about 600k but MSA is 4.7m) - along with San Fran, Seattle and others already mentioned.
The MSA I live in right now - Greenville/Spartanburg/Anderson SC - Greenville is hugely reliant upon the MSA as by itself, it's a small city in a much larger metro area (61K city vs 820K MSA)
And a kind of opposite situation - Jacksonville, FL - the city is so large land-wise, that the city pretty much *is* the entire MSA, with very little exception. That is why Jacksonville's city population (840K) is a such a high percentage of its MSA population (1.4m). Once you leave downtown - while still in the city limits - it becomes rural extremely fast. The city of Jacksonville land-wise is equivalent to the entire San Francisco MSA, just to give an example.
St. Louis looks largely the same. The neighborhoods north of downtown have a TON of open space where houses used to be.
The majority of St. Louis is filled with intact and interesting neighborhoods, the decay is not nearly to the extent of Detroit despite all of the urban prairies NW of downtown. The city also has a balanced budget with a strong bond rating, so I'd def. consider them pretty different. That being said, due to its independent city status resulting in a tiny amount of land/population relative to its metro size it def. fits the premise of this thread in a lot of ways.
The majority of St. Louis is filled with intact and interesting neighborhoods, the decay is not nearly to the extent of Detroit despite all of the urban prairies NW of downtown. The city also has a balanced budget with a strong bond rating, so I'd def. consider them pretty different. That being said, due to its independent city status resulting in a tiny amount of land/population relative to its metro size it def. fits the premise of this thread in a lot of ways.
St. Louis had a population of 850,000 people in 1950 and now it has a measly, pathetic population of 315,000. Don't kid yourself, St. Louis is right up there with Detroit as a poster child for urban decay and a representation of what happens when you run out of other peoples money.
St. Louis had a population of 850,000 people in 1950 and now it has a measly, pathetic population of 315,000. Don't kid yourself, St. Louis is right up there with Detroit as a poster child for urban decay and a representation of what happens when you run out of other peoples money.
Don't kid yourself if you haven't spent time in both, the blight is way more widespread in Detroit. Does this mean STL isn't a poster child of urban decay and lost a ton of its urban population? No, it doesn't, but like I said the majority of the city is filled with active neighborhoods and the city has a balanced budget with a strong bond rating; QED, not the same. Btw, your simplicity in "describing" what happened with Detroit and St. Louis is beyond ridiculous.
Interesting post... made me join the site :-)
A couple observations,
Boston is one of the "small cities" with a much larger MSA (city is about 600k but MSA is 4.7m) - along with San Fran, Seattle and others already mentioned.
The MSA I live in right now - Greenville/Spartanburg/Anderson SC - Greenville is hugely reliant upon the MSA as by itself, it's a small city in a much larger metro area (61K city vs 820K MSA)
And a kind of opposite situation - Jacksonville, FL - the city is so large land-wise, that the city pretty much *is* the entire MSA, with very little exception. That is why Jacksonville's city population (840K) is a such a high percentage of its MSA population (1.4m). Once you leave downtown - while still in the city limits - it becomes rural extremely fast. The city of Jacksonville land-wise is equivalent to the entire San Francisco MSA, just to give an example.
I love random info!
This is another reason why I don't like using population within the city limits to be the measure of how large a city truly is. The city proper of Jacksonville is ridiculously huge (885 square miles) while on the other hand Atlanta only covers an area of around 182 square miles. So it only makes sense that Jacksonville has a false population that is twice the size of Atlanta, just because its geographical land area is humongous. The numbers will list Jacksonville as the largest city in the southeastern United States but its actual urban area is comparable in size to cities like New Orleans, Louisville, and Richmond. The population of Charlotte is double the size of Atlanta in this case as well. But the reason why the population of Atlanta is so much smaller is because the city proper isn't nearly as large as Jacksonville or Charlotte.
As a Virginian, I often cringe when someone says "Well, Richmond ONLY has a population of around 218k" and don't know the reasoning behind these statistics-- cities in Virginia operate differently than cities in other states. Cities and counties are independent entities, meaning cities remain separate from their surrounding counties. The ONLY reason why the two largest traditional cities in VA (Richmond and Norfolk) have moderated populations are because they're landlocked, they're stuck and can't annex for their benefits. These are not small places at all.. if Richmond could annex some of its largest suburbs alone in western Henrico County its population would already be nearly half a million out of an MSA population of 1.3 million. If Norfolk (pop. 246k) could annex the surrounding suburbs like Portsmouth and northern Chesapeake like Virginia Beach did to Princess Anne, its population would be over half a million as well. Since when is Richmond around the same size as Boise, Idaho? In what world does Jacksonville rank above Atlanta? How is Cincinnati (pop. 297k) smaller than Anchorage, AK? And Wichita larger than St. Louis? These are all a handful of situations where city only population cannot be considered meaningful indicators of size, urbanity, etc.
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.
