Houston, San Antonio, and Austin are the #2, #3, and #4 fastest growing cities in the U.S. (Dallas: crime, how much)

[savanite]

Originally Posted by imaterry78259

San Antonio is the city to watch to many hidden advantages out slowly coming out to the business community outside of Texas. The population of the city is definitely understated, I would guess around 1.7 in CL and 2.5 overall.

I'll assume that CL is city limits.

I've delivered a very critical and skeptical argument concerning the government limits as a valid statistical measurement, but I'd like to know your take on this. How is the boundary of a municipal government significant to the business community outside of Texas?

Typically, a suburban government can provide municipal services that are often better than the central government, usually because they are collecting taxes from a more affluent population, and can negotiate better deals on property tax abatement in order to lure businesses. Also, the suburban governments have better (i.e., richer and less socially stigmatized) school districts for the business owners children. Being within the San Antonio government boundaries is a liability, not an asset to a business.

Thus, the farther the San Antonio government boundaries extend into the metro, the worse it is for metro San Antonio, at least for attracting out-of-state business.

The subject of this thread is the fast-growing appearance of certain "cities", actually municipal governments, I an challenging the premise and the legitimacy of the subject.

Just because you can mathematically create a statistic, that doesn't mean the stat has any relevance to reality. Only the metro population figures can be useful in understanding San Antonio.

[savanite]

According to the 2010 census,San Antonio government has 1,327, 407 people, and the metro has 2,194,927. Thus, the SA government contains 60.5% of the metro population.

Houston government has 2,099,451 people, and its metro has 6,086,538. 34.5% of its metro.

Dallas-Ft W has 1,939,022 (Dallas 1,197,816 + Ft Worth 741,206) in its center governments and a metro population 6,526,548 of 29.7% of the metro in the central cities.

San Antonio metro is inferior to Houston and DFW for population and economic accumulation partly because its city government is too large for its metro.

[HtownLove]

Originally Posted by savanite

The abnormal size of Houston government is the reason that the light rail there has such a limited size and got such a late start.

Another problem is that Houston people have the attention on the size of their government. Their attention should be on the size of their metro which is, very remarkably, in the top 5. Whatever Houston has, or is worth, is dependent on the population of its metropolitan area, and the economic force it generates. The Houston government adds little, if anything, to the mix. If the Houston government were 500,000 or if it were the 6 million people in the metro, nothing would change, except the quality of government.


Look at London, England. The "City of London" has a population of a few thousand people. Greater London is comprised of dozens of boroughs, actually independent governments, of a few hundred thousand each. And yet, Greater London is one of the capitals of the world.

You are making observations info facts without adding facts to the observation.

FACT- Houston COULD have started 35 years ago regardless of size.
FACT- size had nothing to do with it, politics did. Fierce political opposition and auto lobby halted progress.
FACT- despite size Houston had an extensive Rail system with routes PASSED current city limit size. The rail went as far south as Galveston.
FACT Houston's city Government is far more than you realize. Houston City Government speaks for 4.1M people not 2.1 as you imply. The metro population means little. Houston metro is the City of Houston and it does very well as a metro. As you tell it Dallas sounds like the black sheep in the metro doing more hard than good.
Fact- Houston and London as we know it (not the city of London) are about the same size, and Houston are divided into management districts, just as London is.
FACT- it is dumb to compare a 200yr old city to a 2000 year old one.
FACT- it is better to research what is behind observations instead of trying to make up explanations for these observations.

GM bought up all most all of Houston rail and pulled them up so that people would buy more cars.
Houston got funding a couple of times for rail, but politicians campaigned on the platform that they will nix the rail plans. When they won, they diverted funds to other transportation projects (roads)

Republicans like TOM Delay put Houston 25 years behind in the transportation game.

Look it up.

[savanite]

I might disagree and argue with several of your claims, htown, but I sense that you may be a bit upset. Rather than discuss anything, we should just agree to disagree.

I find it strange that anyone should be loyal to a political body such as Houston government. I can see being patriotic to one's country, but Not a municipality. To me, a municipal government is just an organization that paves the streets, runs the police and collects taxes. One is no different than another.

Perhaps some men are willing to die for their country... But not die for the City of Houston.

The difference between Houston and, say, Katy? I can't think of anything more meaningless.

My real interest is in clarifying spoken terminology. Since many of us think in terms of words, we should use the clearest vocabulary we can, in order to think as powerfully and as accurately as we can. And the clearest, most unambiguous word that describes Houston is to refer to it as a government, not a city. Greater Houston metro is a city, as is Greater London.

The way that most people define a "city" is as something that is surrounded by the countryside, agricultural land.

Indeed, the reason that the Feds invented the Metro designation is to be able to scientifically study Houston as it really is, a metro of 6 millions. They completely ignore municipal governments in their economic analyses.

[imaterry78259]

You have to factor in the farthest the city is out west the less dense it is and have far more room to grow. San Antonio is goin to be a powerhouse.

[imaterry78259]

Originally Posted by imaterry78259

You have to factor in the farthest the city is out west the less dense it is and have far more room to grow. San Antonio is goin to be a powerhouse.

Tyler, and El Paso are other cities to watch.

[savanite]

San Antonio may like to describe itself as the 7th largest "city" in the United States.

But when it turns out that they are actually only the 24th largest metro, and they're using a deceptive definition of the word "city", their credibility gets pretty shattered.

[savanite]

Originally Posted by imaterry78259

You have to factor in the farthest the city is out west the less dense it is and have far more room to grow. San Antonio is goin to be a powerhouse.

No, it doesn't matter whether new suburban growth is inside or outside the city limits. In fact, businesses seeking to expand want to avoid paying city taxes.

Either that, or they expand into a suburban municipality that is more willing to cut a deal on property taxes.

In my case, I live in housing outside of an incorporated municipality, and my taxes are lower.

Investment decisions are based on the size of a metro area, as a source of possible future customers.

[kenshi]

Originally Posted by savanite

My real interest is in clarifying spoken terminology. Since many of us think in terms of words, we should use the clearest vocabulary we can, in order to think as powerfully and as accurately as we can. And the clearest, most unambiguous word that describes Houston is to refer to it as a government, not a city. Greater Houston metro is a city, as is Greater London.

The way that most people define a "city" is as something that is surrounded by the countryside, agricultural land.

Your posts are annoying to read because they're full of nonsense. If you want to say that metropolitan areas are more crucial than cities, then say it. Making up definitions for the words isn't helping your case.

I live in the city of Dallas, zip code 75220. People who live in Richardson, Carrollton, Plano, or whatever other suburb do not live in the city of Dallas. There is no sudden discernible difference as soon as you drive from one city to another, and there isn't supposed to be. A city is a political entity just like a state. If it wasn't for the signage, you wouldn't know when you crossed the border into Oklahoma or Louisiana. (Well you might if you cross a river to get there, but there's no remarkable difference on either side of the river.)

While I'm part of the city of Dallas, I can assure you I'm not part of the government. The guys who pick up my trash on Fridays are part of the government. The people who send me a bill for my water and process my payment are part of the government. I'm just a resident who get served (and sometimes screwed) by the government. I'm guessing the government has a few thousand people if that.

Now as for a city (and therefore its government) being large, that offers advantages and disadvantages. There may be more bureaucracy, but there are more resources to work with as well. If South Dallas was its own municipality or even multiple municipalities, there's no way they'd be able to afford train lines but luckily they have the folks up north to help foot the bill and the area as a whole is improved. But I would agree it's good to have a good number of suburbs as well and not be a city surrounded mostly by desolation.

[kenshi]

Regarding if Dallas expanded its borders to be the same area as Houston, most of Dallas' suburbs to the north have about the same or significantly higher population densities than the city of Dallas as a whole. As someone said earlier, South Dallas isn't dense at all and drags the density of the city as a whole down. If you were to expand the boundaries roughly equally in all directions, I doubt it would lower the population density as much as you'd think and if you expand them mostly north into the dense parts of the metro, it could actually go up. Dallas also has the largest urban forest in the country which is a very significant portion of its area so if you subtracted that from the area, it would give you a more accurate representation of the inhabited parts of the city. Unfortunately numbers on the actual size of it vary so that's hard to do.