Seattle is just about to pass Boston (how much, living)

[Gentoo]

...if it hasn't already as of 2011. Boston is 626,000+ and Seattle 620,000+. Those numbers I got from wikipedia.

How much bigger can the city get? What will stop it if anything? As a place I'm considering living one day, I don't want to end up in another overcrowded nightmare.

[Woof]

Both cities are overcrowded, that's why they're so ridiculously expensive to get housing in.

[Ira500]

Seattle is just about to pass Boston

Let's just hope it uses it's turn signal.

[BIMBAM]

Originally Posted by Gentoo

...if it hasn't already as of 2011. Boston is 626,000+ and Seattle 620,000+. Those numbers I got from wikipedia.

How much bigger can the city get? What will stop it if anything? As a place I'm considering living one day, I don't want to end up in another overcrowded nightmare.

Yeah, but city limits are honestly pretty arbitrary, I mean by that logic you could say that Calgary is bigger than either of them because its population is over a million. At the end of the day, metropolitan population gives a better idea of relative size of the urban area, and Boston's is still considerably more populous than Seattle's is.

[Gentoo]

Originally Posted by Ira500

Seattle is just about to pass Boston

Let's just hope it uses it's turn signal.

Seattle has a reputation for being more polite so I'm sure it will

[Gentoo]

Yeah, but city limits are honestly pretty arbitrary

Then why do they exist? Why have different police, fire and city governments?

At the end of the day, metropolitan population gives a better idea of relative size of the urban area

Trouble is, I wasn't talking about the urban area. The reason I wasn't is because that's much more ambiguous and arbirtrary than a defined city limit. Are you talking just the urban area or Metropolitan Statistical area? Also, these change over time and are dependent more on commuting patterns. The Bay Area is an urban area that actually contains three urban areas in one.

[la_fuerza]

Gentoo, I lived in the Bay Area for many years and the growth rate in out of the way places like Brentwood and Dublin is scary. So much open space disappeared in such a short time.

I actually like seeing high-density growth in Seattle proper because that means less urban sprawl in the suburbs. The new developments are mostly built green and energy efficient too, and the people who move to Seattle proper are generally willing to live that lifestyle. Nowhere else in the country have I seen people willing to make such personal sacrifices to minimize their carbon footprint. The guy riding his bike to work or sitting next to you on the bus might make $100,000 a year!

[metoque]

Originally Posted by Gentoo

What will stop it if anything? As a place I'm considering living one day, I don't want to end up in another overcrowded nightmare.

The weather...the weather will keep it from getting too big.

[Bill Loney]

Originally Posted by Ira500

Seattle is just about to pass Boston

Let's just hope it uses it's turn signal.

Hopefully it continues to turn left.

[Gentoo]

Originally Posted by la_fuerza

Gentoo, I lived in the Bay Area for many years and the growth rate in out of the way places like Brentwood and Dublin is scary. So much open space disappeared in such a short time.

I actually like seeing high-density growth in Seattle proper because that means less urban sprawl in the suburbs. The new developments are mostly built green and energy efficient too, and the people who move to Seattle proper are generally willing to live that lifestyle. Nowhere else in the country have I seen people willing to make such personal sacrifices to minimize their carbon footprint. The guy riding his bike to work or sitting next to you on the bus might make $100,000 a year!

Oh yeah how right you are. The Bay Area is becoming more like Socal every day in that regard and it just doesn't have the same appeal to me it once did. I also noticed what you are talking about in Seattle. It tends to attract a lot of like minded people and I am one of them.