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I really think all of these cities are gonna grow eventually. Lots of investment going on in the Ohio cities and Pittsburgh. Detroit can only go up. Not too familiar with the Lou so I can't comment a whole lot on that city. But given the fact that it's still in the cheapest part of the country in terms of rent/housing, I'd imagine that's only gonna make more people want to live there. It offers the bigger city amenities most people look for nowadays I'd image.
Columbus is far larger, as a city, than Pitt. But I do agree.
Only in the same sense that Jacksonville is far larger than Atlanta. It doesn't matter what the city limits population is, except for government functions. Its just arbitrary based on cities annexing large portions of suburbs.
Columbus is far larger, as a city, than Pitt. But I do agree.
Yet Pittsburgh has the amenities of a far larger city than Columbus
I don't agree (ever) that city pop is a good comparison metric. Especially when one city has to use 4 times the amount of land to be "far larger" and is still the smaller market.
Yet Pittsburgh has the amenities of a far larger city than Columbus
I don't agree (ever) that city pop is a good comparison metric. Especially when one city has to use 4 times the amount of land to be "far larger" and is still the smaller market.
But it does matter when it comes to tax revenue and maintaining vital city services. If a city can't provide this for their in-city residents, they can't expect the suburbs, county, or State to come in to assist.
I agree, I like MSA and CSA populations as an overall barometer, but the city must do well to atleast maintain a basic resident service.
Yet Pittsburgh has the amenities of a far larger city than Columbus
I don't agree (ever) that city pop is a good comparison metric. Especially when one city has to use 4 times the amount of land to be "far larger" and is still the smaller market.
Columbus touting it's population does not help its cause to be taken seriously. It only draws more attention and scrutiny to the things it lacks. CC: Austin, San Jose, Jacksonville.
But it does matter when it comes to tax revenue and maintaining vital city services. If a city can't provide this for their in-city residents, they can't expect the suburbs, county, or State to come in to assist.
I agree, I like MSA and CSA populations as an overall barometer, but the city must do well to atleast maintain a basic resident service.
Well of course. I'm not sure anyone would expect the suburbs to bail those cities out. They were the very parasites sucking away the revenue needed to maintain those services in the first place. Although we are past the era where those suburbs can wall off and function independently of the core cities. If you don't have an attractive core city, you don't have an attractive region. Metro governments need to turn those tides together in this age. If Detroit, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland ect. were not landlocked, and able to annex their fleeing tax bases back, (See: Indy, Kansas City, Columbus, or just about any Sunbelt or Western city) we likely wouldn't have threads like this one at all.
I respectfully still don't agree that the quality of city services, or compounding or declining tax revenue, has any bearing on using city pop as a comparison metric. An outsider that stands in downtown Columbus, and then goes and stands downtown Pittsburgh is going to know without a doubt which city is bigger. (Hint: It won't be Columbus).
Well of course. I'm not sure anyone would expect the suburbs to bail those cities out. They were the very parasites sucking away the revenue needed to maintain those services in the first place. Although we are past the era where those suburbs can wall off and function independently of the core cities. If you don't have an attractive core city, you don't have an attractive region. Metro governments need to turn those tides together in this age. If Detroit, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland ect. were not landlocked, and able to annex their fleeing tax bases back, (See: Indy, Kansas City, Columbus, or just about any Sunbelt or Western city) we likely wouldn't have threads like this one at all.
I respectfully still don't agree that the quality of city services, or compounding or declining tax revenue, has any bearing on using city pop as a comparison metric. An outsider that stands in downtown Columbus, and then goes and stands downtown Pittsburgh is going to know without a doubt which city is bigger. (Hint: It won't be Columbus).
or we can even take that to the extreme: is there anything about San Francisco and Boston that doesn't scream "BIG CITY"? These two are the best examples of where tight boundaries created a small in-city population within the large metro areas that are the Bay Area and metro Boston.
Compare San Francisco or Boston, neither of which will ever see a million people, to cities well over a million people....like Houston and Phoenix, two of America's largest cities. If San Francisco and Boston are on the extreme of smallest city-to-suburban area ratio, then Houston is very much on the other end, the city having gobbled up much of the surrounding regions. So, what feels more "BIG CITY"....San Francisco and Boston or Houston and Phoenix? Rhetorical question obviously.
The main differences in crossing city limits from city to suburb is...they get their water from different sources or their street signs may be in a different color. Cities are man created, man defined areas. Metro areas are organic: they form a unit by the way they function. And there is a damned good chance we will reach a point this very century where virtually all metro areas will consolidate into one....the very concept of Indianapolis, Columbus, and Miami Dade. It is a practical solution that may be impossible to resist.
Of course, if you want to play the population game, you can. Take my town of Chicago. We've got Houston on our tail, trying to knock us down from 3rd to 4th place and, of course, we rue the failure of the SFV and the harbor from seceding from the basin of LA that would have been the only thing left of the City of the Angels. If the measures had passed, Chicago would have regained its true "Second City" status (although that term was never really attached to population, but the second city that replaced the first after the fire). Then again, Chicago was partly responsible for the creation of Greater New York in 1898 as the city at that time was basically Manhattan island (and a slice of the Bronx), a restricted area of limited population. Chicago was the fastest growing city the world had ever seen in the 1800s and its population threatened to pass New York's....and, Voila!, the NY legislature created the 5 boroughs of Greater New York, and its status of largest city in the land was forever cemented. How about Washington? If the federal government hadn't ceded the west side of the Potomac back to Virginia, Washington today would be a city well over a million (and the land it thought it would never need for its federal government would, if have kept, put the Pentagon and the CIA he's, among others, solidly within Washington city limits.)
Let's go back to San Francisco: here is a city that is the fourth largest in its state and remarkably second in its own Bay Area (where San Jose is the only city with more than a million people). And yet San Francisco remains "The City" and SF gives nary a thought about where it ranks in population. Chicago is like that too. Chicago mentality knows it is a great city and doesn't need comparisons to prove it. It is what it is.
But it does matter when it comes to tax revenue and maintaining vital city services. If a city can't provide this for their in-city residents, they can't expect the suburbs, county, or State to come in to assist.
I agree, I like MSA and CSA populations as an overall barometer, but the city must do well to atleast maintain a basic resident service.
But its still all on a per-capita basis. so if a city expands to annex suburbs, they are getting more tax revenue yes, but they are also having to provide more services, over a wider geographical area, to more people in return. There's no free lunch to simply consolidating more and more. All cities have various drawbacks in infrastructure and services, for lots of various reasons. There is some efficiency gained by consolidating a number of smaller bureaucracies such as police, ambulance, fire etc. but there are also some logistical problems added too.
There are also problems where cities annexing many suburban area do become, in effect, a large suburb more than a city. So their population will essentially tend to support things that are more suburban, rather than urban.
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