Bellevue a suburb of Seattle or Sister City (Like DFW/Minn-St.Paul)? (Renton: home, neighborhood)

[RJ8089]

Bellevue has the 2nd largest downtown in the State. Fact. It also has more Fortune 500 companies than Vancouver, Spokane, Tacoma. Bellevue is in a different category by itself.

[citydave]

I just refer to Bellevue as the Eastside of Seattle (when outsiders ask me where I live). It's always going to be connected to Seattle. Even though it municipally stands on its own, it'll never completely be out of Seattle's shadow. Seattle and Bellevue are just too physically close to each other. Tacoma, being further away from Seattle, can consider itself more as a separate city in my opinion.

[MPLS_TC]

Originally Posted by RJ8089

Has Bellevue reached the point where it is no longer in Seattle's shadow of being called a suburb? The Seattle area is often referred to Seattle-Tacoma...should it be Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue or even Seattle-Bellevue? Just driving downtown Bellevue is starting to feel like a downtown Denver or something. It's starting to have the huge feel. Bellevue's population is catching up to Tacoma's!

Bellevue's downtown is not on par with Denver's. That's just ridiculous to suggest.

[MPLS_TC]

Originally Posted by Momofmad

Hard for me to say because I just moved here from Dallas. The Bellevue skyline is almost as big as the one in Dallas! We live in Bellevue & nothing here has the feeling of the cookie cutter suburban sprawl outside of Dallas.

I don't think you have seen Dallas's downtown.

[seattlenextyear]

Originally Posted by RJ8089

If the city manages Bellevue properly and continues to allow the more dense urbanization of it's downtown (more skyscrapers & taller skyscrapers), Bellevue has the potential in several decades to match Seattle's population.

Bellevue's one goal should be: To be better and larger than Seattle. Plain and simple.

Wait, why does it have to be a competition?

[MPLS_TC]

Originally Posted by RJ8089

If the city manages Bellevue properly and continues to allow the more dense urbanization of it's downtown (more skyscrapers & taller skyscrapers), Bellevue has the potential in several decades to match Seattle's population.

Bellevue's one goal should be: To be better and larger than Seattle. Plain and simple.

Bellevue having 630,000 people would give it a density of 20,000 people per square mile, making it the second most densely populated city in the United States behing New York City.

[Seacove]

Maybe it's because I knew Bellevue as a much smaller city (town really), but I don't see Bellevue ever being as big as Seattle. And based on it's footprint and location, I wouldn't want it to be. Better to have the growth stretched out all along the 405 corridor in a well planned way so we don't compromise the beauty of the area.

[Gentoo]

Originally Posted by Xanathos

Bellevue is it's own city right now - it falls into the "sister city" category of Minneapolis-St. Paul or San Francisco-Oakland or Dallas-Fort Worth - just in reverse. By that I mean in all of those cities, the wealth and power structure is consolidated in the primary city and the sister city is kind of the red-headed stepchild. In this instance, it's concentrated over in Bellevue.

Tacoma should, IMO be taken completely out of the metropolitan area statistic and put to stand on its own, given how far away it is.

Nah, Tacoma belongs in the Seattle metro. San Jose is farther from San Francisco but still part of the overall metro.

I agree with the comparison between SF and Oakland. Oakland does have it's share of corporations; Dryer's, Clorox, Kaiser etc. Beyond that, I agree with that Bellevue really is it's own city, sharing the metro with Seattle.

[Gentoo]

Originally Posted by Xanathos

OK, so tell me what suburbs there are to St. Paul or Oakland that couldn't be analogously applied in terms of scope to Bellevue? There's a frigging LAKE separating Seattle and Bellevue - I would imagine if you inquired as to local East side residents, they would likely claim that they are more a suburb of Bellevue (in Newcastle, Kirkland, Redmond, Issaquah, etc.) than they are a suburb of Seattle.

That's a very good comparison and good post. As far as the Oakland reference goes, this is a little tricky in it's own right. Oakland and Berkeley are really the twin cities in their own mini metro. With them would go, Albany, Emeryville, Piedmont and Alameda and maybe San Leandro but that could go with Hayward. I agree that those eastern suburbs seem to go with Bellevue more in much the same way now days.

[Gentoo]

On the West Coast people are just more likely to want to make everything a separate metro, when Bellevue wouldn't qualify for this, nor would Tacoma. The reality, they're all considered the same market. Someone who lives in Tacoma is a Seahawks and Mariners fan. I doubt Tacoma or Bellevue would ever qualify to get their own sports franchises.

Anyway I've found West Coast cities to be more inconsistent in these matters anyway. I think it's because too much of the populaition out West are concentrated in a handful of cities. So it seems to me people just do there own thing.

There's a reason for this. Unlike most other parts of the country, west coast metros have geographic limitations due to large bodies of water but more importantly, the presence of steep hills and mountains. This creates naturally occurring boundaries and those places across a large body of water (SF Bay or Lake WA) develop rather separately by necessity.

Now the Bay Area is a little weird in this regard. But at least people in the Bay acknowledge that the Bay Area is all one consolidated area. They have individual cities, but people do collectively call it "The Bay".

Yes but the Bay Area also has a reputation for being "balkanized" as people call it. The Seattle area does not have this.