Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I'm surprised this comparison hasn't come up before since they seem like to cities that have a lot of similar attributes. Both places are on my short list to relocate to so I figured I'd give this a look-see.
Milwaukee:
City: 600,000
Metro: 1.6 million
Has a train to Chicago.
Sacramento:
City: 480,000
Metro: 2.15 million
Has a train to San Francisco/Oakland.
Better/Compare:
1. Arts
2. Climate
3. Nightlife
4. Diversity
5. Friendly/Laid back
6. Downtown & Nearby attractions
7. Public Transit/Biking/Walkable
That's interesting. I would have thought the climate would have been closer with Sacramento's hot months canceling out Milwaukee's cold.
Sacramento summers are actually very nice, and quite tolerable. The dew points are very comfortable throughout the summer (more comfortable than just about everywhere in the USA except coastal Cali and the pacific northwest).
Sacramento summers are unique in that it cools dramatically (30+ degrees) regularly everyday during summer.
Typical average high temp of 88-90F will cool to 56-58F by morning.
Also, the "feels like" temp is almost always 5 degrees Cooler than actual temp.
You have to factor that in when studying daily and hourly temps throughout the summer in Sacramento.
Sacramento has the "perfect humidity levels", no more than 20% during the hottest time of day.
A typical midwestern American city will have 60% or more humidity during the hottest time of the day which makes the "feels like" temp typically 10 degrees hotter than actual temp.
Sacramento is NOT humid in the Summer, Nor is it bone dry like Phoenix, Vegas, Salt Lake and Denver.
Guess this must not be a great match up after all? Figured they were both underrated destinations that seemed to have a whole lot of similarities.
What it proves is that Sacramento is still in that "underrated" category, even "unknown" category.
Sacramento is "unknown/underrated" for several reasons: it's always compared to other California cities which top the charts: LA, SF, SD, Bay Area, Orange County. All those areas give us a bad rap, and if you are thinking of California you will automatically compare Sacramento to the other California cities. Milwaukee has only one real comparison, Chicago, and its not even the same state.
Sacramento is out west, and the bulk of the population is still east coast, so they don't know anything about Sacramento.
Milwaukee has been a larger city for many decades before Sacramento. Throughout the last century Milwaukee was always a larger city; it's only been until the last 20yrs that the Metro of Sacramento is larger, and the city of Milwaukee is still 100,000 more people than Sacramento.
Another reason Sacramento is so "unknown" is that despite it's 2.3 million metro pop, there has never been a large corporate presence, very small national convention business, nor is it a large tourist town, so you are not going to have a lot of people traveling here for work or some random vacation, or a convention. Sure, Sacramento has conventions and tourists but it's very very small compared to other cities of its size.
Sacramento's airport is a good example of this, and the airport is unique in that it has around 10 million passengers a year almost exclusively for local residents, next to 0% fly to Sacramento to connect somewhere else, and the only large tourist connections at Sacramento airport are for the Napa Valley Wine Region and for Lake Tahoe, but Sacramento still competes with SFO and Oakland for Napa, and Reno for Tahoe air traffic.
Another reason Sacramento is so "unknown" is that despite it's 2.3 million metro pop, there has never been a large corporate presence, very small national convention business, nor is it a large tourist town, so you are not going to have a lot of people traveling here for work or some random vacation, or a convention. Sure, Sacramento has conventions and tourists but it's very very small compared to other cities of its size.
Sacramento's airport is a good example of this, and the airport is unique in that it has around 10 million passengers a year almost exclusively for local residents, next to 0% fly to Sacramento to connect somewhere else, and the only large tourist connections at Sacramento airport are for the Napa Valley Wine Region and for Lake Tahoe, but Sacramento still competes with SFO and Oakland for Napa, and Reno for Tahoe air traffic.
People do know Sacramento for being the state capital.
People do know Sacramento for being the state capital.
But's that really all they know, and there are 49 other capital cities nothing special about that except Sacramento is the capital of a "nation-state" with an economy the size of 9th largest economy in the world.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
