Which cities feel bigger/smaller than they really are? (metropolitan, Boston, moving)

[KodeBlue]

Is there cities that feel bigger than they are one minute, and smaller than they are the next or vice versa?

[DinsdalePirahna]

Pittsburgh
On the other hand LA feels smaller than it actually is

[jeffredo]

Des Moines always felt bigger than a little city of 200,000 people. Guess its that fairly big skyline it has thanks to all the insurance companies there.

Fresno feels like one horse town, never mind there are 500,000 in the city and 1,000,000 in the metro area. The downtown in pathetic and the city is very spread out and suburban.

[Min-Chi-Cbus]

Originally Posted by AGuyFromCleveland18

I think Akron, Ohio feels bigger than it is. Minneapolis-St. Paul feels smaller than it is in some ways, because it's not that dense and it has houses near the downtown area. Toronto is the same way for me.

Cleveland has houses near downtown too, but I think Cleveland feels LARGER than it is, because you can tell the city was originally built to be major.

[tablemtn]

Honolulu feels larger and more expansive than most American metro areas of 900,000 or so, due to the tourist trade and all the services that go along with it.

There are a certainly a lot of areas that feel smaller than their CSA numbers indicate.

Table of United States primary census statistical areas

One of the CSAs that stands out to me is the "Little Rock-North Little Rock-Pine Bluff" CSA at over 860,000 people. Little Rock certainly does not feel that large. And Pine Bluff is not contiguous with Little Rock in any real sense that you can see or feel on the ground.

[Trimac20]

Yes, I'm more basing it on the size of the CBD/metro population ratio. I think older cities, or cities which grew up earlier (I think Raleigh is an example of a technically old city which is on the whole relatively young but I can't be sure) tend to feel big for their size, especially if they've experienced decline like Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Akron, Rochester.

Some of the metro areas barely seem like cities, like the Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Hampton Roads or Greater Tampa area.

[AmberAzeneth]

At the time when I was in the U.S.N., 1992-1995, it felt to me like the Hampton Roads/Tidewater area of Virginia was smaller than it actually was. I still remember driving down Lynnhaven Parkway in Virginia Beach thinking that it reminded me of suburban Houston.

[2Easy]

In the US maybe San Francisco. It seems like big city if you're visiting briefly, but I imagine that it must feel smaller the longer you stay. Internationally it has to be Paris for me. It's even smaller than SF with three times the population. It feels like a huge city until you realize how close all of the metro stops are and that you're really not going as far as you might think.\

For feels smaller maybe LA. Not that it doesn't feel large if you have to drive from one end to the other, but you never really feel like you're in the second most populous city in the country and by a good bit.

[Omahahonors]

I have a hard time reading Omaha's downtown. It seems substantial, especially with all the mid-rise buildings. Sometimes I feel that it is bigger than it should be and other times I see room for growth..

Des Moines cluster of big buildings is very impressive.

[Blackbeauty212]

Pittsburgh city proper is 312k population with an infrastructure for a 600 - 700k popultion in its 55 sq mile border...Pittsburgh's ubranized area consist of just over a million in population. the Pittsburgh Metro area (7 counties) is 2.5 million.