Fairfax County to become a city?

[Denton56]

Originally Posted by cdmurphy

Several more items from Sunday's Post:
To Be or Not to Be Fairfax County?
Everything's Fine in Fairfax (City)
Fairfax's Idea to be a City Powerful Ammo for Road Funds

I thought the chart in the print edition was interesting, but I couldn't find it online. It basically named a comparable city for each of a list of Fairfax's characteristics (population, median income, racial/ethnic breakdown, unemployment, etc.)

Yeah, as is often the case, the chart was the best part.

[Nebat]

I don't live in Fairfax but this idea is ridiculous. It would make Fairfax the third largest city on the east coast after NYC and Philly. And it would still be a suburb of our much smaller nations Capitol. I've never liked the idea of counties becoming cities because it gives a false representation of how big the city really is. For example most people would say that Miami is the biggest city in Florida. Wrong. Jacksonville is by several hundred thousand only because it annexed the entire county of Duval even though it has a much smaller metro than Miami. That's a slightly different scenario but still similar enough in my opinion to make a point. I won't comment on how it would or would not benefit the county(city) financially since I don't know enough of how money is handled on a county-city level. But from an aesthetic point of view it just seems stupid. Like VA Beach or Chesapeake there would be no real downtown, just a bunch of satellite urban centers that used to be their own towns or cities.