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If you read the whole thread, there has been a myriad of evidence to prove that annexations are not the reason these cities have grown. For the most part, these cities have annexed the land as it developed or even prior to its developing. Someone made a comparison of county populations, those lines don't change. The small sampling proved the sunbelt's growth. Here's some more if that wasn't enough:
So one can make the claim that annexations were the cause of some of the growth in sunbelt cities. I am sure some cities on the top ten list wouldn't be there if they didn't annex to their current size and the growth in their metro areas were counted in suburbs or unincorporated county figures. But these county lines have not changed. These kind of figures could be replicated in south and central Florida, in Charlotte, Raleiigh Durham, Nashville, Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Phoenix, and in other mountain and Pacific coast cities.... the sun belt. Show me ANY city in the rest of the country, when broken down to county units like this (that don't arbitrarily change in land mass) that has had this kind of growth in the same time period.
No one, but no one is trying to say the whole region hasn't grown massively in recent times. All that is being said is that the cities in the Sunbelt only have such high populations because they are so large in area. Some of the cities may have grown considerably in their cores, or the area which used to be their entirety, but some of them have only grown in population because of their annexations. This doesn't take away from the fact that people have been flocking to the South and West.
Houston's metro area might well be the same size if the city limits were smaller, but if those limits were the same size now as there were in 1950, the city might not scrape 1,000,000.
No one, but no one is trying to say the whole region hasn't grown massively in recent times. All that is being said is that the cities in the Sunbelt only have such high populations because they are so large in area. Some of the cities may have grown considerably in their cores, or the area which used to be their entirety, but some of them have only grown in population because of their annexations. This doesn't take away from the fact that people have been flocking to the South and West.
Houston's metro area might well be the same size if the city limits were smaller, but if those limits were the same size now as there were in 1950, the city might not scrape 1,000,000.
Atlanta is a perfect example of your point above I bolded. Its metro population is not far behind Houston's but the population of the central city has remained static since the 60s, still under half a million. Atlanta has not annexed significantly since the 50s. If the OP changed his chart to the last 50 years instead of 60, Atlanta would show only a minute change in its footprint. But the metro area is synonymous with Sunbelt boom as much as any city.
That is why looking at city population figures instead of MSA or CSA figures when making any kind of correlation of a particular city's status and stature is ridiculous. Does anyone really think that San Antonio, Jacksonville and El Paso are larger and more important than Atlanta, DC or Miami? If you hold to a city alone set of statistics, you would come to this conclusion.
No one, but no one is trying to say the whole region hasn't grown massively in recent times. All that is being said is that the cities in the Sunbelt only have such high populations because they are so large in area. Some of the cities may have grown considerably in their cores, or the area which used to be their entirety, but some of them have only grown in population because of their annexations. This doesn't take away from the fact that people have been flocking to the South and West.
Houston's metro area might well be the same size if the city limits were smaller, but if those limits were the same size now as there were in 1950, the city might not scrape 1,000,000.
Yes, we all know Houston's population size is very misleading which in turn makes it very difficult to compare it with most cities. Though from an MSA level Houston is still the 2nd largest in the South, while cities like San Antonio and Oklahoma City barely make the top 30 in the US.
Though from an MSA level Houston is still the 2nd largest in the South, while cities like San Antonio and Oklahoma City barely make the top 30 in the US.
That IS WHAT THEY ARE NOT GETTING.
Whether it is City, metro, UA, or whatever Houston is one of the largest cities in the US. Don't know why people use it as an example like it drops out of the Earth when you look at it another way.
San Antonio, OKC, Jacksonville, etc drops off heavily.
In this day and age I don't think people care too much about limits, and it would not change things at all to say Houston is the 4th largest city in the US or the 5th largest.
It does seem deceptive to say San Antonio is the 7th largest or even Phoenix being the 6th largest
It also seems odd that San Francisco is the 14th/15th largest City in the US (about the size of Columbus)
I think in the case of Denver, the fact that the city has grown 86.2% in area (including the 53 sq mi for the airport where almost no one lives), while growing 129% in population shows that not all the growth has been due to annexation.
In fact, using some ballpark math, if Denver grew almost 100% since 1950, and is now 150 sq. mi (approx), 53 of which is uninhabited airport, that means the inhabited portion grew from about 75 sq. mi to 100 sq. mi, actually a growth of 33% of land area.
Wake County, NC (Raleigh): 136,450 (1950), 900,993 (2010), 929,780 (2011 est.) Mecklenburg County, NC (Charlotte): 197,052 (1950), 919,628 (2010), 944,373 (2011 est.)
Double-digit growth % in both counties for every decade since 1900. In that time, Mecklenburg County actually lost a small amount of land area. Wake is slightly below 900 sq miles; Mecklenburg is between 500 and 600 square miles, so Meck has higher population density - 1,650/sq mi, with higher numbers for Charlotte, and those numbers have been steadily increasing as well. Charlotte will be out of land to annex within about a decade or so.
Nobody's saying that the Northeast didn't do this as well just earlier. The point is that there's been lots of growth in Southern and Western cities in the last 50 years and that annexation is played just as big a part in that as migration, if not bigger.
Annexation played a bigger role in the growth of the cities in the south and west than migration? That is not true. I assure you there were not 1.8 million people anywhere near Austin or all the counties around Austin combined in 1950 to account for the current population today through annexation. Someone suggested looking at counties since those lines haven't chaged one bit. Travis Co (which Austin is in) has grown from in 1950 @ 160,000 to over a million people today. The county size hasn't changed at all. So how do you account for that change when the size hasn't changed and your annexation suggestion is taken off the table?
Quote:
Originally Posted by waronxmas
The maps were all to the same scale. I believe I already stated that.
While you did already state that, you were wrong. They are not the same scale.
Just because the scale says 10, if you increase the image size to over twice as large as the rest of the pictures they are not still the same size. I can take a screen shot of Dallas with the scale set to 10 miles, then shrink the image to an 1x1 inch picture, and take a screen shot of Chicago and blow up the image to the size of a football field. That wouldn't mean since both originals was set to 10 miles for scale it is still the same or that they are accurate comparisons images.
Look at these two pictures you took. One is of Phoenix and one is of San Antonio. Phoenix is 50 sq miles larger (over 10%) than San Antonio. Does Phoenix look significantly larger (or even close to as large) as San Antonio in your pictures? Wonder why? Look at the differences in the scales you used in the bottom left of the picture. Your post and the images you provided are highly misleading. Hopefully it was unintentional, but it was non-the-less and would be nice if you could put the images back in their original sizes and replace your current highly misleading images with an edit of images that are to scale.
Location: The Greatest city on Earth: City of Atlanta Proper
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BevoLJ
Hopefully it was unintentional, but it was non-the-less and would be nice if you could put the images back in their original sizes and replace your current highly misleading images with an edit of images that are to scale.
What is it about people having difficulty with READING on C-D??? Check the previous posts. Google did this, not me. All I did was type a series of cities into Google Maps, screenshot, crop. There is no conspiracy here. Those cities with the bigger images are that way because they are big.
What is it about people having difficulty with READING on C-D??? Check the previous posts. Google did this, not me. All I did was type a series of cities into Google Maps, screenshot, crop. There is no conspiracy here. Those cities with the bigger images are that way because they are big.
I don't think there is a conspiracy either but when applying logical sense to the conversation, it is clearly evident that some of the images are not scaled properly. Going by the maps it looks like San Antonio has twice the land mass of Phoenix and it also looks like Philly's city limits are almost a big as Dallas. The problem isn't so much Google but more of you making mistakes in properly scaling the maps. An important thing to know when comparing maps is that you have to pay close attention to detail because if you don't the careless mistakes will show up when the product is finished.
Last edited by gwillyfromphilly; 07-19-2012 at 09:59 PM..
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