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Seven million people in Austin would be a nightmare, unless it was evenly distributed with San Antonio. I agree, Austin will probably end up around 3+ million when it begins to cool down.
Austin should though, for how fast it's growing and it's size. It doesn't look or feel as large as it is to me, except the skyline. It doesn't help that it's hardly urban outside of downtown.
Also agree. As much as I love Austin and like seeing it grow, there needs to be more interest points for the city. Austin recently just opened up the first inland surf park, and that's really cool that you can go surfing without the ocean, but it doesn't attract that many people when you visit a city. There has been for atleast 10 years in the making for Austin to build a large Planetarium Museum, I have yet to here any more info about it.
Out of the cities on this list, I voted for Denver, for several reasons:
- It has a large international hub airport befitting of a major city.
- It doesn't have any competition for hundreds of miles.
- It has a fairly nice downtown for an American city (especially with a pedestrian street like in Europe)
- It is in an interesting location with relatively nice weather compared to some of the other cities on the list. Meaning, it is distinct and easy to recognize, which is important to be considered a major "name brand" city internationally. Furthermore, the relatively nice weather means people will be fine moving there.
- It has the potential to be a major international tourist destination due to the Rockies.
I think Seattle will become America's next "big city" (if it hasn't already) before Denver, but I think Denver has a better chance than the other poll options, including Phoenix.
The inherent problem with this type of question resides in the lack of defined terminology. What exactly constitutes a “big” city or a “major” city? Unless one sets forth a definable set of criteria, it is impossible to make an objective assessment of the question.
This means that everyone who answers will be depending exclusively upon their own subjective definition of the term--in this case, “big”. When that happens, the tendency is to fall back onto very simplistic answers which rely far more upon pop-culture profiles and personal taste than they do upon any kind of statistically-defined data.
Things such as population, density, GMP, number of major league sports teams, number of corporations with revenues over a certain amount, number of airport passengers, number of arts organizations that exceed specific budget levels or attendance levels, number of buildings over a certain height, number of major research universities, etc. are all among the objective criteria with which one can compare cities in regards to their "bigness".
Based purely upon my subjective opinion; Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Denver are already “big” cities by any conceivable definition of the term. The other three cities, although not on the same level, also contain significant evidence of meeting the definition of “big”. Short of working with objective data, this question becomes little more than “Which of these cities do you prefer?”
The inherent problem with this type of question resides in the lack of defined terminology. What exactly constitutes a “big” city or a “major” city? Unless one sets forth a definable set of criteria, it is impossible to make an objective assessment of the question.
This means that everyone who answers will be depending exclusively upon their own subjective definition of the term--in this case, “big”. When that happens, the tendency is to fall back onto very simplistic answers which rely far more upon pop-culture profiles and personal taste than they do upon any kind of statistically-defined data.
Things such as population, density, GMP, number of major league sports teams, number of corporations with revenues over a certain amount, number of airport passengers, number of arts organizations that exceed specific budget levels or attendance levels, number of buildings over a certain height, number of major research universities, etc. are all among the objective criteria with which one can compare cities in regards to their "bigness".
Based purely upon my subjective opinion; Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Denver are already “big” cities by any conceivable definition of the term. The other three cities, although not on the same level, also contain significant evidence of meeting the definition of “big”. Short of working with objective data, this question becomes little more than “Which of these cities do you prefer?”
"*denver has a really good shot at it because it's not located near any other hub in the country really. It already has pro spots and many other big city amenities. It's not on a crazy growth spree like austins been on for what seems like ever but it has a good chance."
Dude! Your posts are always so odd! And Denver has been a top 10 fastest growing city for longer than Austin!
That post is so innaccurate. Austin has never not had double digit growth where Denver has lost population in the 80s and 90s.. and not only that but Austin has a couple hundred thousand people more in city limits and even more then that in its metro.
That post is so innaccurate. Austin has never not had double digit growth where Denver has lost population in the 80s and 90s.. and not only that but Austin has a couple hundred thousand people more in city limits and even more then that in its metro.
The inherent problem with this type of question resides in the lack of defined terminology. What exactly constitutes a “big” city or a “major” city? Unless one sets forth a definable set of criteria, it is impossible to make an objective assessment of the question.
This means that everyone who answers will be depending exclusively upon their own subjective definition of the term--in this case, “big”. When that happens, the tendency is to fall back onto very simplistic answers which rely far more upon pop-culture profiles and personal taste than they do upon any kind of statistically-defined data.
Things such as population, density, GMP, number of major league sports teams, number of corporations with revenues over a certain amount, number of airport passengers, number of arts organizations that exceed specific budget levels or attendance levels, number of buildings over a certain height, number of major research universities, etc. are all among the objective criteria with which one can compare cities in regards to their "bigness".
Based purely upon my subjective opinion; Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Denver are already “big” cities by any conceivable definition of the term. The other three cities, although not on the same level, also contain significant evidence of meeting the definition of “big”. Short of working with objective data, this question becomes little more than “Which of these cities do you prefer?”
Depends where you draw the line. If the line is Boston and higher, then no. If it's Phoenix, Minneapolis, Denver, and higher, then sure.
I'd argue that "feels big" is important too. It's just just stats. And it's certainly not just one set of stats.
For example one list might note number of universities over a certain enrollment, or over a certain number of graduate degrees, or above a certain volume of research funding. Other lists might do gradients for size in any of those categories. Another list might consider the whole category less important or more important. Or maybe it'll focus on how many papers are published, or how many patents grads have, or how many Nobel prize winners there are. Or maybe it's impossible to define, if "importance" is more about stuff people don't and can't count, like the importance of those innovations or graduates to the world (past, current, and future worlds).
Some more good stuff talking about Americas next metropolis
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