Atlanta the 6th Largest Metro? Has ATL already surpass DC and Philly ? (cost, bigger)
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Yeah, it almost certainly has or will. Although in practice DC and Philly bleed into other large MSAs, so they will continue to feel like larger regions for a good deal longer.
DC and Philly aren't Minneapolis or Buffalo, but IMO, Atlanta does have a better climate than DC in that the winters are milder (+10 degrees in Jan) while the summers aren't really than much worse. The high is 89 in both cities, although Atlantas mucky season goes on a bit longer. It's similar with Philly, although the summers are slightly more pleasant, winters slightly worse than DC.
Yeah, it almost certainly has or will. Although in practice DC and Philly bleed into other large MSAs, so they will continue to feel like larger regions for a good deal longer.
It's just that the average person could care less about these kinds of statistics. And they're next to meaningless when they're based on historically flawed estimates and just a measure of weakly-linked suburban sprawl.
Core urban areas tend to be the most accurate measure of observable size in real life.
This subforum doesn't attract "the average person" by and large though; it attracts urban nerds who have an affinity for these sorts of statistics. I mean posters regularly create threads in advance of official Census statistics releases around here.
That said, in practically every poll on this subforum with a range of responses as options, there are always the outliers who select the more "extreme" responses...most likely just for @#&%* and giggles. It's par for the course around here. For this poll in particular, the folks who chose the "it'll never happen" option (or whatever it's labeled as) are likely just as or more motivated by homerism than anything.
I think government reports should switch to using UAs.
The top 25 UA's are almost perfect imo.
Only slight issues, such as SF being a lil low, and Riverside being a conundrum of a statistical area.
As far as Philly, DC, and Atlanta (throw in Miami if you would like) are all too close to call in terms of size.
Seeing as though a (*the*?) primary purpose of MSAs/CSAs are for the distribution of federal funds to local governments, using county-based MSAs/CSAs (and NECTAs in New England) makes the most sense.
And UAs are hardly perfect but that horse has been beat to death repeatedly.
Federal analyses and funding programs try to use the most objective, unchanging definitions possible. This is apparently much easier with MSAs with their county-in-or-out system, no matter how blunt the instrument may be. (My metro might be 2/3 completely-uninhabited wilderness, but so be it.)
That makes MSAs less accurate in defining cities, even if that's where the data is.
Atlanta will clearly be #6 in MSA population. The debate would be over the relevance of MSAs to how big cities are functionally, aesthetically, etc. There are countless ways to define the size of a city. I might suggest a UA-like system but with a higher bar like 2,000/sm. Atlanta's MSA has large areas of exurbs below that level, though the NE cities do too.
I’ve never been colder in my life than in Philadelphia on January 23, 2005.
“game-time temperature was 17 degrees, with a wind chill of minus 5, and winds of 26 miles an hour that gusted to 35 m.p.h.”
I guess that was pre-climate change.
I remember January days in Kansas City when the forecast high was in the single digits. Granted, those were the 1960s and 1970s, but I have yet to experience a single-digit high in Philadelphia.
And I was living here in 2005. You probably missed the 33-inch blizzard we had in March 1993. Late winter tends to be snowier here than early winter, but there have been a few recent years where nary a snowflake, or only a trace, fell all winter. Instead, the temperature heads into the 50s and we get rain.
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