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I've always found the boom of the southwest interesting especially since, and no offense to the southwest, i've visited and found it lovely, I've never had a desire to live there.
I've always found the boom of the southwest interesting especially since, and no offense to the southwest, i've visited and found it lovely, I've never had a desire to live there.
Same here. That's one thing that contributes to my surprise of Phoenix's high-standing in that while it's now our nation's fifth largest city, it seems odd because to me Phoenix is almost like the "Anti-City" in terms of it's planning, look and feel. The same holds true for a lot of the large suburban boomtowns of the Southwest, places like Mesa, Aurora, Plano, Henderson, etc. There's just so few cultural and visual similarities between them and some of our nation's older "traditional" cities with the dense neighborhoods, impressive skylines, and vast history to them, places like St. Louis and Pittsburgh that are now not even amongst the nation's 50 largest cities.
Other surprises: Austin having topped the 700,000 mark, and Las Vegas' growth while still phenomenal, appears to be slowing, at least in the city proper, although it still has doubled in size in only 15 years.
These "city" statistics can be a little misleading since they don't speak to the larger metropolitan area. For instance, the No. 8 city San Diego (which is very big geographically speaking) has a population of 1.25 million, but the larger metropolitan area (San Diego county) has under three million. In comparison, Atlanta and Washington DC both have populations in the 500,000 range (which might not even put them in the Top 25), but both have total metro area populations in excess of five or six million. And anyone who has ever been to SD and Atlanta and/or DC would tell you that Atlanta and/or DC are much larger, more congested urban centers than SD. San Diego is the "bigger" city due to the much larger square mileage, but it definitely feels like a smaller and less populous town.
I agree with goozer. Things aren't always as they appear.
Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Chicago, Philly, Detroit, Baltimore, Boston, Kansas City, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Indianapolis, etc., etc., aren't sprawling - have had no land growth - 0% in the past 15 years or longer.
Several of the up and coming cities like Raleigh have had a square mile increase over 30% in recent years and Las Vegas from 1990 - 2000 grew 39% in size.
Philly has been 135 sq.mi. for decades while Phoenix is 420 sq.mi. and growing.
Major cities lose people to their suburbs. If you match metro areas to metro areas you'll see Pittsburgh, for instance, around the 20th largest pop. in the country.
I'm not sure if that's true about Indianapolis. And while Pittsburgh hasn't done any annexing for years, that still doesn't mean the population isn't dropping. The population there is also dropping in the metro area, which is not the case for many of the rest of the cities mentioned.
I agree with goozer. Things aren't always as they appear.
Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Chicago, Philly, Detroit, Baltimore, Boston, Kansas City, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Indianapolis, etc., etc., aren't sprawling - have had no land growth - 0% in the past 15 years or longer.
Several of the up and coming cities like Raleigh have had a square mile increase over 30% in recent years and Las Vegas from 1990 - 2000 grew 39% in size.
Philly has been 135 sq.mi. for decades while Phoenix is 420 sq.mi. and growing.
Major cities lose people to their suburbs. If you match metro areas to metro areas you'll see Pittsburgh, for instance, around the 20th largest pop. in the country.
Kansas City, MO is now growing again because they continue to annex land north of the city which is known as the "northland." The city is extremely spread out and covers over 300 square miles. Their are many downtown redevelopments going on there now, but their continues to be a huge sprawl problem with population gains continuing in areas that are 1 hour removed from the city.
Kansas city is 300 square miles? I guess I didn't realize how sprawling a lot of cities are. Hell, Chicago is only 234 square miles (and some of that is water) and new york only 468 square miles, and almost 1/3 of that is water. I looked up Phoenix out of curiosity, and apparently they are at 515 sq miles.
That's what hit me as well. For years, Miami has stayed around the 360-380,000 range. All of a sudden, the city now has over 400k. Very interesting.
And Hialeah is a suburb! Why did they lose pop?
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