America's Best Small cities

[Mutiny77]

Originally Posted by creeksitter

I love Greenville but if you look closely you can see the small city bones. Notice how only two of the historic commercial buildings on Main st are more than two stories. The infill has come in beside and behind them and really bulked up downtown but the soul of a small city is still there. And that's a good thing.

Yep; it was a small mill town whose downtown, in retrospect, had the good fortune to continue to languish on through the 60's, 70's, and 80's when many buildings with pedestrian-unfriendly entrances and blank street walls were built in downtowns across America. When downtown development really began heating up in the 90's, cities began embracing better urban design and things have been looking up from there.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by urbanenthusiastfromKC

Also Lawrence, Kansas is also on my list for small cities. Also cities between 50k-100k MSA I like to call micro-cities. Anything below that population I consider a town.

1. If I'm not mistaken, the Census Bureau calls metros of that latter class "micropolitan statistical areas" (abbreviation: µSA, often not used because getting the Greek lowercase omicron is more difficult on a PC or Chromebook than on a Mac). Atchison, Kan. (Doniphan County) and Warrensburg, Mo. (Johnson County MO), both part of the Kansas City-Overland Park-Kansas City, MO-KS CSA, are two examples of µSAs near you. Lawrence (Douglas County) is not yet part of the Kansas City CSA because, as was the case for Leavenworth County in the MSA itself for many years, most of its residents work in the county at its largest employer and too few of them commute to adjacent counties in the CSA, and few workers from the CSA commute to jobs in it.

2. I'm with you on Lawrence, which also belongs to the set "cool Midwestern college towns," a collection that includes Ann Arbor, Mich.; Iowa City, Iowa; and kinda-sorta Madison, Wis., and Lincoln, Neb. ("Kinda-sorta" for those last two because they are also their respective states' capitals. They also have populations well above 100k, as does Columbia, Mo., another borderline member of the group along with Champaign-Urbana, Ill.)

3. Edited to add: Your posting handle could also describe me. Except I'm "from" Kansas City in the sense of having grown up there. I haven't lived there since 1976, but like every other KC expat I've met on the East Coast, I love the place like you wouldn't believe.

[urbanenthusiastfromKC]

2. I'm with you on Lawrence, which also belongs to the set "cool Midwestern college towns," a collection that includes Ann Arbor, Mich.; Iowa City, Iowa; and kinda-sorta Madison, Wis., and Lincoln, Neb. ("Kinda-sorta" for those last two because they are also their respective states' capitals. They also have populations well above 100k, as does Columbia, Mo., another borderline member of the group along with Champaign-Urbana, Ill.)


Yeah I would say Madison and Lincoln are really not on the same level of Lawrence, when you get to Lawrence it has the look of a small town with a city feel, for example if you walk down mass street and look to your sides there isn't going to be a single high-rise/or mini skyscraper. When you walk down state street in Madison you feel like you are in a REAL city. Not to call Lawrence fake, it's just not the same. I just really admire Lawrence and consider a very small but not micro city. Also I don't even know if I would put Lincoln on the same level as Madison. Lincoln just feels kinda dead. I would honestly compare it to Springfield IL.