More International and Cosmopolitan: Texas, Florida, or Northern California (comparison, highest, airport)

[ATUMRE75]

Originally Posted by kidphilly

Mapping America ? Census Bureau 2005-9 American Community Survey - NYTimes.com

Thanks for this link. Awesome tool!

[Lizz0rd]

Originally Posted by Johnhw2

I understand your point now. I excluded from my count countries who had embassies in Dallas and Houston to not duplicate. I didnt of La and SF so close that countries chose one over both cities but they obviously would.

No worries, sorry about the skirmish.

[sacramento916]

Originally Posted by JoninATX

Care to back that up?

it already has. look through the stats of this thread.

[Nairobi]

1. Northern California
2. Texas
3. Florida

[Huge Foodie 215]

Originally Posted by JoninATX

Ok now I see, it just sounded like he was saying California was the only one to have wealthy foreigners while Florida & Texas had mostly poor ones.

To be fair, Northern California is home to a lot of knowledge based industries like Silicon Valley, in addition to state government which requires a degree to work in, so that is to be expected.

However, if you extend those statistics to cover the rest of California (IE the whole state), the percentages are either likely to be the same or even LOWER than Florida or Texas.

[Lizz0rd]

Originally Posted by Huge Foodie 215

To be fair, Northern California is home to a lot of knowledge based industries like Silicon Valley, in addition to state government which requires a degree to work in, so that is to be expected.

However, if you extend those statistics to cover the rest of California (IE the whole state), the percentages are either likely to be the same or even LOWER than Florida or Texas.

CA can be summed up as "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"
that is how you get media bashing on california going bankrupt and such or other things, where you also have arguably the most innovative state as well.

[Huge Foodie 215]

Originally Posted by Lizz0rd

CA can be summed up as "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"
that is how you get media bashing on california going bankrupt and such or other things, where you also have arguably the most innovative state as well.

As someone not from California, I think I can agree with that.

To be frank, the state is a microcosm of the United States as a whole. There really isn't any negative or positive that exists in California that doesn't exist in other areas of the nation at large. That being said, it also exhibits the extremes of both ends, while most other places are a bit more tempered.

For example, using the foreign born topic, California probably does have the highest number of highly educated immigrants by far. However, it probably also has the highest number of uneducated immigrants by far, putting California at a medium.

[EndersDrift]

Okay, so I propose some additional criteria to be looked at. I haven't voted and while I have my personal opinion on the matter I'll do my best to just offer some different criteria. True that some of this criteria is to support my decision but it is also why I think this way. I also think the question is very difficult because Northern California is not a state, it basically IS only two metropolitan areas (SF and Sacramento) where in Texas you have Houston and Dallas but also have the rest of the state; likewise in Florida you have South Florida and Orlando but also have the rest of the state to account for. That seems to me to be something that can be taken one of two ways. Northern California bests Texas and Florida because as a whole it is more diverse or taken the opposite way and said that while it is more diverse it has less than Texas and Florida in nearly every category. So that really drives this question as well.

Anyways, here's some criteria that was offered in the beginning as well as some other criteria that hasn't really been addressed:

1. Total Number of International Airports:
Northern California - 5
Texas - 14
Florida - 15

2. Total Number of Passengers (Couldn't find international only.... or more specifically this is starting to take a while and while I'm sure the numbers are out there I suspect it mirrors pretty much the total numbers anyways). Looking at the top 30 because I'm not going to track down numbers for every tiny airport:
Dallas: 27 million
Houston: 19.5 million
San Francisco: 19.3 million
Miami: 17 million
Orlando: 17 million
Ft. Lauderdale: 10.8 million
Arlington: 8.7 million
Tampa: 8 million

Texas: 56.2 million (total not international)
Florida: 52.8 million (total not international)
NoCal: 19.3 million (total not international)

Source

3. Ports by Total Foreign Trade
It would take me a while to add up but rest assured, Texas has a very commanding lead here
Source

4. Cruises by Passengers
Again it would take me a while to add up but rest assured that Florida has a commanding lead here
Source

5. Overall Port is harder to track. I found one report but it only covers Q1 for 2011 and it only covered the top 10. But from that report Houston is ahead of anywhere in Florida but Miami, Everglades, and Jacksonville were all on the list and when combined are more than Houston which is the only Texas port on the list.
Source

6. Race Crimes (based off FBI Crime Statistics which the FBI doesn't want used for rankings but seeing how we're not journalists or making anything official I think it serves just fine for our purposes):
Florida - 65
Texas - 85
California - 436 including SoCal. I don't know the area well enough to figure out which cities are NoCal and which aren't but considering the city of San Francisco alone has 28 I'm willing to bet if someone did take a minute to add up the Northern Cal cities it would be worse than Florida or Texas.

7. Top cities for foreign visitors:
Florida has 2 in the top Orlando and Miami
Cali has 1 in the top San Francisco (under both Orlando and Miami)
Texas has 0 in the top
Source (I'm sure there's better sources but all of them usually put Orlando and Miami at or near the top so I wasn't picky, feel free to find a different source if you like)

8. Consulates was already covered:
Texas
Florida
Northern California

I'd be interested in looking at International Business and Finance, but do not know a good way to find it. Fortune 500 really doesn't cut it since that doesn't take into account any companies that isn't publicly traded. I imagine it would be Texas then Florida then Northern California.

[Huge Foodie 215]

Originally Posted by EndersDrift

Okay, so I propose some additional criteria to be looked at. I haven't voted and while I have my personal opinion on the matter I'll do my best to just offer some different criteria. True that some of this criteria is to support my decision but it is also why I think this way. I also think the question is very difficult because Northern California is not a state, it basically IS only two metropolitan areas (SF and Sacramento) where in Texas you have Houston and Dallas but also have the rest of the state; likewise in Florida you have South Florida and Orlando but also have the rest of the state to account for. That seems to me to be something that can be taken one of two ways. Northern California bests Texas and Florida because as a whole it is more diverse or taken the opposite way and said that while it is more diverse it has less than Texas and Florida in nearly every category. So that really drives this question as well.

Yeah, I agree. However, if California was compared to Florida and Texas, then all the focus of the thread will be on Los Angeles alone, which has a CSA as large as Florida, and Southern California being nearly as populated as the state of Texas.

I think Florida and Texas are being sold a bit short though.

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by Huge Foodie 215

To be fair, Northern California is home to a lot of knowledge based industries like Silicon Valley, in addition to state government which requires a degree to work in, so that is to be expected.

However, if you extend those statistics to cover the rest of California (IE the whole state), the percentages are either likely to be the same or even LOWER than Florida or Texas.

But this thread is not about the entire state of CA.

It seems you like to attempt changing terms of a thread when the results are not to your liking, and that's hilarious.

Also, percentages aside, The Bay Area by itself has a higher TOTAL NUMBER of wealthy and highly educated foreigners than all of TX and FL.

This translates to all minorities overall as far as affluence btw:

Minority Households Earning $200,000+ Annually, 2010
San Francisco Bay Area 87,283
State of Texas 64,496
State of Florida 40,482

Meaning all households that are not Non-Hispanic White.