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^^^That's what I was saying. I think it's a negative. I don't know why in tarnation the Philly posters are just dying to win this one, but I think people aren't able to properly digest and interpret the OP and comment accordingly.
I don't know which area is larger, but I find cities right on or near the ocean (or a Great Lake) to feel more compact due to one whole side of the city/metro area being water rather than surrounded by sprawling suburbs on all sides. It's like an illusion for me. This is true for cities like NYC, LA, SF, Chicago, and Philly even though all of NJ stands between it and the ocean because it's still close enough and the Philly metro area technically ends at the ocean at its eastern point. Cities/metros on or near the water literally cannot sprawl any more, which is why to me Philadelphia feels smaller. Sprawl, at least on city-data, is often perceived as a negative which is why I say I'm not sure if it's good or bad that to me the Atlanta area feels larger.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by anonelitist
ROW - I hate Philly on this forum because of people like you (similarly to the way you must hate SF). I don't hate Philly in reality, and if you cut me some slack I am very reasonable.
In the Philly vs Boston, you or some other Philly posters cut out ONE of my metrics I gave to Boston (transit) and slammed me for bias and hating Philly, when in reality I gave Philly MANY metrics (some of the funner ones, like restaurants, nightlife, museums, festivals, generally anything cultural, etc).
I would say that's a bit of harsh hate.
Also, if this were a Philly vs Atlanta thread, honestly, there would be very very little I would give Atlanta over Philly. But this isn't a Philly vs Atlanta, which is more desirable? thread! This thread is essentially which one (MSA was specified) sprawls more and feels more massive? If Atlanta were to cream Philly in this thread, it wouldn't be a renunciation of Philly.
But none of you guys are getting that because no posters mis-comprehend or get their panties in a bunch more than Philly posters!!! Dear Lord!
I think the Philly posters are 'getting' it. I just think they feel that Philly and its edge cities' higher density and larger population contribute more to a massive feeling than Atlanta's larger suburban sprawl and disparate development. Personally, it's a toss up, but I see both viewpoints. I don't think the Philly posters are dense any more than the Atlanta ones (and they're winning this poll). To each their own, let's not turn this into Philly posters vs the world...
I don't know which area is larger, but I find cities right on or near the ocean (or a Great Lake) to feel more compact due to one whole side of the city/metro area being water rather than surrounded by sprawling suburbs on all sides. It's like an illusion for me. This is true for cities like NYC, LA, SF, Chicago, and Philly even though all of NJ stands between it and the ocean because it's still close enough and the Philly metro area technically ends at the ocean at its eastern point. Cities/metros on or near the water literally cannot sprawl any more, which is why to me Philadelphia feels smaller. Sprawl, at least on city-data, is often perceived as a negative which is why I say I'm not sure if it's good or bad that to me the Atlanta area feels larger.
I get you on this one....this makes sense. Where the city and metro area is situated and built and you have the ocean it can go any further. It will always be this way...no more sprawl..everything is so tight and built in compact....you just add more people on top of each.
I get you on this one....this makes sense. Where the city and metro area is situated and built and you have the ocean it can go any further. It will always be this way...no more sprawl..everything is so tight and built in compact....you just add more people on top of each.
Except the distance to the ocean is 60 miles at least and the densest county in between Philadelphia and the ocean is the one with Camden whereby the county itself is less dense than several in the Atlanta area. The other South Jersey counties all around 500 ppsm, which is less than half the density of Jacksonville, FL.
No offense, but the thesis that Philadelphia is "constrained" by the ocean and people must build up and on top of each other because of it isn't true. Philly is a dense city constrained by its own density. It's at the size and building intensity/density level that true convenience comes from being in the city. It's not the same situation as an SF, or a Manhattan, or a Chicago or Miami in that there are total geographic constraints. Let's not kid ourselves.
Philadelphia predates the notion of sprawl. SF is fairly old as US cities go, but much of it is "new enough" whereby if it weren't constrained on ALL 4 SIDES it would undoubtedly sprawl to a degree (like LA) rather than build up as it does (and even LA is far more constrained than Philly...for its sprawl, it's a denser more land constrained city that can literally only build up at this point aside from a select few remaining hilltops and fields to build new housing communities in OC or IE). Totally different story. Also, as far as metros go, I can't really argue that NYC, Boston, and Chicago are constrained the way western cities are. Metro NYC is vast and limitless. My mom grew up outside of Chicago tens of miles outside the city center, and there was metro beyond that. They don't call it Chicagoland for nothing. Constrained on one side but not the other still leads to uber sprawl. Miami, LA, Honolulu Bay Area, and San Diego all have metro wide geographic constraints that can be clearly seen on the map. It's why these are the densest metro areas overall.
Atlanta is both entirely new and totally unconstrained without a super density to keep people locked in the core, so naturally it builds out more than up.
This debate can be ended pretty quickly. The Atlanta "MSA" Comprises almost 85oo square miles, while the Philadelphia MSA comprises 4600.
Thats the problem with the "MSA" business. Some MSA's are way larger than others, because it is all based on counties. By comparison the Boston MSA is about 3500 square miles and San Fransiscos MSA is about 2500.
The Atlanta MSA is about the same size as the Boston CSA!
1) You said Atlanta's MSA is larger, therefore obviously Philly feels like the larger MSA. That makes no sense.
However, I know you're getting at density, and unfortunately, that's not what this thread is about. This thread isn't about which city/area is denser. Not to mention, 90+% of Atlanta's MSA population is in 3-4,000 sq mi and the remaining 4,000 sq mi should simply not even count as part of the MSA if it weren't for weird technicalities and those counties' strong desires to be connected to that somewhat political boundary (fed/state funding for road improvements at stake). Same goes for Houston where over 2/3 of the MSA population (4 million people out of over 6) are in the 1700 sq mi central county, and the other 1/3 are bordering that county, not in the lands that comprise the full 10,000 sq mi MSA.
When you get out of the Philly city limits, which comprise a much higher portion of MSA population than Atlanta's less dense and yet similarly sized (land) city does for its MSA, the MSA's have relatively similar housing density.
The difference is in how they're built. Atlanta single family has larger lot sizes and more spread out. But Atlanta also has high rise commercial and apartments well well well outside of the city center in all directions, and massive highways with insane congestion. Just driving through each metro, you're going to see this and feel like Atlanta is just huge. You won't passing through Philly, which from the road/getting through it actually seems like a smaller city. This from my experience.
Put it this way, Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas-Fort Worth feel more massive to me than the Bay Area. There. Does THAT solve it? South FL feels more massive than them all. Philly just doesn't "feel" massive at all. I don't know how people can't seem to get that. Heck, if it weren't for its puny skyline, I'd "feel" Orlando was more massive than Philly! I've done the I-4 drive countless times and Orlando goes on forever!
And on that note, despite your reasoning (MSA square mileage), if you have been to both Atlanta and Houston, you would NEVER say Atlanta feels larger. Houston, and all of its 10,000 sq mi (lol) feel larger than Atlanta. I could see Atlanta feeling larger than Dallas, however (to me it does).
I grew up in the Northeast and into my adulthood before moving to inner suburban metro Atlanta (Vinings area) in my mid twenties. I have spent time in NY city, upstate NY, lived in CT, been to Philly many times, driven through the megalopolis from Boston to Washington, DC on multiple occasions and I have to say that although the Northeast is more compact and densely populated, that without a doubt that Atlanta FEELS bigger than Philli. Atlanta FEELS much bigger as a metro area than it really is. It FEELS bigger than metros like DC, San Fran and Philly and on par with LA (which I've been to many times) even though it is no where near LA in reality. It's just how it feels when you drive around metro Atlanta. Now, as far as skylines, the metro has an impressive six or so highrise office areas (with only three in the city itself and a few outside the city) and half a dozen major midrise employment districts, mainly because of how inefficiently it was developed - lack of grid, huge tree buffers, etc (which DOES make it pretty). So where things come together, metro Atlanta was forced to build up, probably before its time, and that makes even some of the suburban "cities" have highrise, which makes them seem much bigger than they are. When, in reality, those suburbs would probably seem like a large town / core suburb and no bigger in the Northeast, minus the highrise business district that pops up just outside of suburban neighborhoods (much like some of the outer parts of Toronto, if you've been there and not to Atlanta). So the sprawl and development patterns are in Atlanta's favor. Congestion is too, mostly caused by those development patterns. In Northeastern metros, with the exception of NYC, things were developed much more efficiently and a cluster of 5-story buildings in an office area tends to do the trick. Roads were designed for pedestrians before there were cars, and things are close together. Atlanta, everything is far apart. You can drive in metro Atlanta in moderate development and just keep driving, and driving, and driving. It never seems to end. I could provide you a route where you could go about 40 mph from the SW edge of the metro to the NW edge, and it'd probably take you a few hours. By that time, you would have been way out of metro Philli and probably in metro NYC or Baltimore.
Like most Northeastern cities, there is no doubt that metro Philli is more compact than Atlanta, that it is more urban, has a more urban lifestyle, the per-capita economy is stronger to support the higher density even if the overall economy is comparable to Atlanta. However, those statistics don't affect the overall perception when you spend adequate time in both places. Metro Atlanta just feels bigger.
Philadelphia. And by far. Atlanta may be getting "somewhat" close to Philly in terms of MSA population, but sprawl does not equal a "massive metro". It makes it a massive suburb.
Last edited by speagles84; 12-16-2014 at 02:27 PM..
^^^See the OP and see the post above yours. There is something missing either with your comprehension or your familiarity with both metros, or a combination of the two. Not to mention Atlanta is very clearly a "metro". It may be sprawly, but it also fans out around one of the largest CBDs and dense clusters of important "things" in the entire country. Not sure where your line of thinking is that Philly has a metropolitan area/MSA and Atlanta does not simply because Atlanta's sprawls more. By definition an MSA doesn't have to have an uber dense city core. Most don't. Atlanta's core is also probably denser than you realize, and it also has a huge concentration of big city amenities, like world-renowned research universities, one of the largest convention centers, and tens of thousands of hotel rooms, not to mention about the same amount of office space that Philly has, along with high rise condos/apartments exceeding 50 stories in height.
These aren't things that teeny little towns or leafy suburbs have (though frankly Atlanta's suburbs do too, but that's an oddity).
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