What cities are downtown, neighborhood, suburban and exurban cities? (houses, neighborhoods)
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Denver: Denver has a massive downtown for it's population but is certainly not a neighborhood city as it's mainly quiet single-family homes except for those directly adjacent to it's huge, extremely active downtown.
Salt Lake City: two massive malls, huge libraries and museums and very busy and bustling.
Minneapolis and Des Moines: Both have huge active downtowns but not particularly active neighborhoods
Kansas City: huge downtown for it's size with with a large skyline and
Neighborhood Cities:
Salt Lake City: 9th and 9th, 15th and 15th, Avenues, Sugarhouse.
Omaha: lots of active and appealing old streetcar style areas without the streetcar of course. Midtown rivals Downtown and many areas are with-in walking distance to an active area (Aksarban, UNO, Midtown Crossing, Regency)
Albuquerque, Pittsburgh, St.Paul, Lincoln and Colorado Springs.
Los Angeles and San Diego: Hundreds of unique neighborhoods but neither city has that great of a downtown.
Suburban Cities:
Phoenix: I have an extremely low opinion of the city itself, but it does have lots of fantastic suburbs with excellent amenities.
Tucson: Same as Phoenix, the city itself is extremely poor and poverty-ridden but it has some extremely active and appealing suburbs with excellent weather that is cooler than the city itself plus nice landscape.
Indianapolis is a hybrid downtown/suburban city. It's downtown punches well above its weight class, and many of its suburbs are pristine, with Carmel being one of the more exceptional suburbs in the Midwest. But with only a handful of exceptions, neighborhood's are not its strong suit. That's improving, but it's got a LONG way to go.
I'd say Birmingham is a hybrid Neighborhood/Suburban city; downtown is nice and improving, but most of the newer development and hype are all centered around those several distinct neighborhoods. The suburb areas all have their own thing going on, especially when it comes to amenities (Hoover, Homewood, Mountain Brook, etc.)
By CSAs
1. New York- Downtown/Neighborhood City, with all the fantastic neighborhoods NYC has, Lower Manhattan and Midtown Manhattan dominate people's view of the city completely.
2. Los Angeles- Suburban/Exurban (Although LA is known for its Neighborhoods), it's suburbs really dominate the sphere, Malibu, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Orange County, Inland Empire, Long Beach, Inglewood, Compton, San Gabriel Valley, Culver City.
3. Chicago- Downtown/Neighborhood, This is the most obvious Downtown one on the list IMO.
4. Washington-Baltimore- Suburban- NOVA, Montgomery County, Prince Goerge's County, Baltimore County, Howard County, Anne Arundel County.
5. San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland- Suburban/Exurban Most obvious suburban one. In a few years it might be actually be Exurban depending on if people priced out end up moving to Stockton and the core of San Francisco starts to slow. Currently only 54% live in the core MSA. Also a huge portion of Silicon Valley as well as Napa Valley and San Jose itself are in different MSA's, making it more "exurban" IMO.
6. Boston- Suburban/Neighborhood, currently 58% of people live in Boston MSA, and Boston doesn't even cover a tenth of it's CSA population which includes other large cities. Providence, Worcester, Nashua, Manchester, Lowell, Cambridge and many other inner suburbs, while Boston definitely seems like a neighborhood city, it's CSA is just too much to overlook when judging the city.
7. Dallas- Suburban/ Neighborhood- Irving, Plano, Arlington, Garland the list goes on, this metro fights with it's suburbs for amenities because their so big.
8. Philadelphia- Downtown/Suburban Another tight one but even with the addition of Atlantic City, much of South Jersey, Camden, Wilmington and Reading almost every secondary city is struggling and Center City seems to be buzzing.
9. Houston- Neighborhoods/Downtown , first neighborhood because much of the city limits is huge and much of the focus in Houston is on the Western Half of The Inner Loop, West Along I-Ten and even the poor SW with it's weird mix of almost every ethnic groups shopping area and high density.
10. Miami-Fort Lauderdale- Suburban/Exurban, could be exurban if Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach continue to grow as well as areas to the north.
11. Atlanta- Neighborhood/Suburban- Isn't even a tenth of the metro and IMO is on the edge of changing from a neighborhood to a suburban area due to rapid growth in places like Gwinnett County.
12. Detroit- Suburban/Downtown- Downtown Detroit is apparently making a comeback but for now it seems the suburbs dominate the city.
13. Phoenix- Suburban- I think Phoenix has been pushed into a situation were it Suburbs are starting to overshadow it but not for the same reasons as Detroit so their is nowhere to comeback from. I don't know if Phoenix suburbs are just densifying or new ones are being created, I don't think Phoenix is getting true exurbs either.
14. Seattle- Downtown/Neighborhood- I don't see it's suburbs as that powerful at all and I've heard talk of Seattle being the fastest U.S city to "urbanize" and if the city keeps gaining residents and the suburbs don't takeoff it should eventually transition from a Downtown Seattle focused city to a neighborhood focused city.
Boston proper is a neighborhood city. Each neighborhood has a 'Main Street Business Corridor' locals usually operate na just a few very small neighborhoods and rarely go downtown. Downtown is way on the north side of the city so its not something you have to go through or around. Each neighborhood is EXTREMELY DIFFERENT
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