what are some well-known u.s cities that have around 600 suburbs? (calculated, subdivision)
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The number of seperate suburbs isn't a good way to gauge population density. The Sydney Metro area has about 3.6 million people, good comparisons with population would be the Minneapolis, MN (3.7 mil) metro area or the Cleveland, OH metro area (3.5 mil).
First, looking at a map of Sydney, I highly doubt you all have 600 suburbs.
Second, the city with the highest suburb-to-population ratio is probably Boston. Boston's Metropolitan Area Planning Council says that Boston's immediate metro area has population of 3,066,394 and is comprised of 101 municipalities, so Boston and 100 suburbs.
This number is conservative. Considering that Boston's Combined Metropolitan Statistical Area stretches to Worcester in the west, encompasses the entire state of Rhode Island to the south, and goes to Plymouth to the east and the New Hampshire-Maine Stateline to the north, I'm sure there has got to include at least 600 municipalities.
Third, as chh is getting at, what's a suburb? Most of the suburbs surround Boston are extremely small. Where as Phoenix, which is actually pretty similar to Sydney in terms of population (4.7 vs. 4.4 million), only has a couple dozen suburbs, but those suburbs are huge (the suburb of Mesa, for instance, has over a half million people). Also, do you include exurbs and bedroom communities or not? What about farming communities that border suburbs?
The East Coast of the US is also a lot more dense the Australia. There's no easy way to say where the Philadelphia suburbs end and where the New York suburbs begin, or where Washington DC's suburbs end and where Baltimore's suburbs begin. Our census bureau uses commute patters to draw the boundaries, but there are other ways in which people determine the limits of a city's metro area.
Last edited by Dawn.Davenport; 01-04-2015 at 04:16 PM..
How suburbs are defined in Australia must differ from how they are defined in the United States.
Indeed they are. It's very nuanced, but in Australia, the entire city is often to describe the whole metropolitan area. A suburb is then a subdivision of the metropolitan area.
There is no such thing as "city proper" or "central city". Rather, in Australian terms, the Central Business District itself is a suburb of the metropolitan area it resides in. Suburbs can either be a couple of miles in area or take up half the metropolitan area, but either way, the suburb a subdivision of a set metropolitan area.
Whereas in the US, a metropolitan area is more often used for statistical purposes rather than any actual division of geography. A suburb then can mean any city that is simply within commuting distance to a larger one.
Last edited by animatedmartian; 01-05-2015 at 07:06 AM..
Indeed they are. It's very nuanced, but in Australia, the entire city is often to describe the whole metropolitan area. A suburb is then a subdivision of the metropolitan area.
There is no such thing as "city proper" or "central city". Rather, in Australian terms, the Central Business District itself is a suburb of the metropolitan area it resides in. Suburbs can either be a couple of miles in area or take up half the metropolitan area, but either way, the suburb a subdivision of a set metropolitan area.
Whereas in the US, a metropolitan area is more often used for statistical purposes rather than any actual division of geography. A suburb then can mean any city that is simply within commuting distance to a larger one.
Makes me wish things were calculated the Australian way
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