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I wish we had info broken out by purpose of visit. For example:
--Conventions
--Other business travel
--Visiting the city
--Visiting friends and family
--Stopping for a night on the way somewhere else
To psychoanalyze Seattle's number: We're very low on the convention list, but should be pretty high for other business travel due to our dependence on international trade and certain companies. A decent chunk might be headed for Alaska cruises(*). A lot of our Asian traffic might be visiting family. But our pleasure tourism has been growing, and has seemed more international. I doubt a large number are flying from overseas just to see Seattle for 10 days but it seems to be more common in conjunction with doing something else.
Philly deserves more than it gets. Dallas seems like a business and convention destination primarily, as well as some transferring (the overnight kind) due to its airport.
Chicago is doing very well on the list (#10). Obviously the higher showings like Miami (beaches, partying), LA (Hollywood, beaches), Orlando (amusement parks), Las Vegas (gambling, partying), Honolulu (beaches, natural beauty) are there for other reasons than traditional desire to see and explore a very urban city.
On the flip side, if you’re coming from Paris, London, Japan, Spain, Italy, etc there may not be anything particularly urban or interesting about Chicago.
Just hope the sea level rise doesn't swamp the coast.
I usually pay it no mind, I can't personally afford to worry about something I cannot control. My hope would be that the political leaders and engineers that devise infrastructural upgrades in Florida have given it some thought and have started working towards a viable solution. Whatever it may be. I'm optimistic that they have, the Southeast Florida Metropolis even right now, presently, has some of the best pumping systems and flood negating systems in place in the United States, but that is probably because they need it more than anywhere else. They still have many more decades to work out a viable and more full-proof solution to address rising sea levels. If we can put human souls on the moon, this should be much simpler.
If they have not, then unfortunately the generation belonging to our grandchildren and/or great grandchildren is not going to be so smooth while living in Southeast Florida. Fortunately, I wont be around.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarketStEl
Those are very impressive stats. But I thought Miami was already the capital of the Caribbean, so to speak.
Yes, the Miami/Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area (especially Miami-Dade County) is a dominant force in the Caribbean Islands.
It is the largest metropolis belonging to the Caribbean region, even though it is technically attached to the mainland of the United States and not on an island, I tend to view it more apart of the Caribbean Islands rather than an extension of the mainland of the United States. Miami is physically closer to both the Bahamas and Cuba than it is to Orlando and Tampa, the two geographically closest major cities to it in the United States.
Being the head honcho of an entire cultural sphere affords Miami certain privileges that only pertain to it. We can measure these by the cruise lines, banks, companies, and media associations that have established their presence in Miami from these other close-by foreign countries. Miami is the world's penultimate cruise port, thanks in large part to the traffic it gets from the Caribbean Islands visiting Miami/Fort Lauderdale to visit family, or for business, or for leisure.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarketStEl
I do find it interesting that Tampa and Philly are tied for international visitors. I understand Orlando's draw, but I'd always thought of the Tampa Bay area as appealing more to older folks.
The Tampa Bay Area is by far the most normal of all the major Florida metropolitan areas. That is both a good and bad thing depending on who you are and what your outlook is in life. If you're a natural born American, then it is good because it is more in line with the mainstream of America instead of being so culturally detached from it the way Miami/Fort Lauderdale (heavily foreign) and Jacksonville (heavily Southern) are. There is less of a culture shock with Tampa, especially if you're someone from Des Moines or Hartford and those cities along with mainstream American culture is all you've known your entire life, it'll be an easier fix for you when adjusting to Tampa than the others in Florida because it'll have more standards and norms in common with where you are from elsewhere in America. There's also the fact that aside from an extensive rail based rapid transit system, the Tampa Bay Area has everything else an American typically could want. All the stores, all the professional sports teams, the amusement parks and water parks (Tampa has its own, without sharing with Orlando), the museums, schools, and all the other stuff.
Unlike Orlando, it is a more diverse economy that is more closely tied to the one that the United States has overall. Which affords it the opportunity to draw in people from deeper working backgrounds than Orlando. Orlando caters to tourism and real-estate a little too much for its own good and while it is making progress in curbing that dependence as it grows bigger, especially with the development of its healthcare and tech economy, Tampa is a good deal further ahead of it. It is why major corporations usually choose Tampa to relocate their headquarters to over Orlando and most other Florida metropolises. Just earlier this week a Fortune 500 company named Mosaic or something moved from Minneapolis/Saint Paul to the Tampa Bay Area. That's because the business environment and open positions in the region are more in line with the mainstream employment force of the country it is in. This is a stark contrast from both Orlando and Miami in that regard, especially Miami, which has to rely on more unorthodox industries to grow employment in the region.
Pinellas County in the Tampa Bay Area is the most densely built-up county located between the Washington D.C. metropolitan area and the Miami/Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area. As a muli-core metropolis, Tampa is also working hard to build up its downtown and other nodes as well. Then again, the same can be said of every city in America and quite possibly the world at-large.
Last edited by Trafalgar Law; 05-19-2018 at 02:18 PM..
I usually pay it no mind, I can't personally afford to worry about something I cannot control. My hope would be that the political leaders and engineers that devise infrastructural upgrades in Florida have given it some thought and have started working towards a viable solution. Whatever it may be. I'm optimistic that they have, the Southeast Florida Metropolis even right now, presently, has some of the best pumping systems and flood negating systems in place in the United States, but that is probably because they need it more than anywhere else. They still have many more decades to work out a viable and more full-proof solution to address rising sea levels. If we can put human souls on the moon, this should be much simpler.
If they have not, then unfortunately the generation belonging to our grandchildren and/or great grandchildren is not going to be so smooth while living in Southeast Florida. Fortunately, I wont be around.
Yes, the Miami/Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area (especially Miami-Dade County) is a dominant force in the Caribbean Islands.
It is the largest metropolis belonging to the Caribbean region, even though it is technically attached to the mainland of the United States and not on an island, I tend to view it more apart of the Caribbean Islands rather than an extension of the mainland of the United States. Miami is physically closer to both the Bahamas and Cuba than it is to Orlando and Tampa, the two geographically closest major cities to it in the United States.
Being the head honcho of an entire cultural sphere affords Miami certain privileges that only pertain to it. We can measure these by the cruise lines, banks, companies, and media associations that have established their presence in Miami from these other close-by foreign countries. Miami is the world's penultimate cruise port, thanks in large part to the traffic it gets from the Caribbean Islands visiting Miami/Fort Lauderdale to visit family, or for business, or for leisure.
The Tampa Bay Area is by far the most normal of all the major Florida metropolitan areas. That is both a good and bad thing depending on who you are and what your outlook is in life. If you're a natural born American, then it is good because it is more in line with the mainstream of America instead of being so culturally detached from it the way Miami/Fort Lauderdale (heavily foreign) and Jacksonville (heavily Southern) are. There is less of a culture shock with Tampa, especially if you're someone from Des Moines or Hartford and those cities along with mainstream American culture is all you've known your entire life, it'll be an easier fix for you when adjusting to Tampa than the others in Florida because it'll have more standards and norms in common with where you are from elsewhere in America. There's also the fact that aside from an extensive rail based rapid transit system, the Tampa Bay Area has everything else an American typically could want. All the stores, all the professional sports teams, the amusement parks and water parks (Tampa has its own, without sharing with Orlando), the museums, schools, and all the other stuff.
Unlike Orlando, it is a more diverse economy that is more closely tied to the one that the United States has overall. Which affords it the opportunity to draw in people from deeper working backgrounds than Orlando. Orlando caters to tourism and real-estate a little too much for its own good and while it is making progress in curbing that dependence as it grows bigger, especially with the development of its healthcare and tech economy, Tampa is a good deal further ahead of it. It is why major corporations usually choose Tampa to relocate their headquarters to over Orlando and most other Florida metropolises. Just earlier this week a Fortune 500 company named Mosaic or something moved from Minneapolis/Saint Paul to the Tampa Bay Area. That's because the business environment and open positions in the region are more in line with the mainstream employment force of the country it is in. This is a stark contrast from both Orlando and Miami in that regard, especially Miami, which has to rely on more unorthodox industries to grow employment in the region.
Pinellas County in the Tampa Bay Area is the most densely built-up county located between the Washington D.C. metropolitan area and the Miami/Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area. As a muli-core metropolis, Tampa is also working hard to build up its downtown and other nodes as well. Then again, the same can be said of every city in America and quite possibly the world at-large.
You forgot about other areas like Sarasota, Fort Meyers, Naples, Daytona Beach
Even though the census bureau has this as its own metropolitan area, I personally view this as an extension of the Tampa Bay Area.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BPt111
Daytona Beach
This actually is an extension of Greater Orlando, even the census bureau puts it in Orlando's corner (ahem, "CSA"). Which works great for me because I view it as a component of the broader Greater Orlando area.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BPt111
You forgot about other areas like Fort Meyers, Naples
True.
Cape Coral-Fort Myers-Naples (also known as "Southwest Florida") is # 51 here and the only place larger than it that is growing faster, at least according to percentage population growth, happens to be Austin.
I consider anywhere with a minimum of a 7 digit population number to be a major sort of place, so a minimum of 1 million is my hardlining cutoff point (and I should note, it's Amazon's cutoff too ).
That being said, I still don't consider Southwest Florida (Cape Coral-Fort Myers-Naples) to be a normal place, not the way Tampa Bay Area is. I'm no expert on Southwest Florida as I've only driven through and stopped there a few times, but it is a weird place. None of its major cities of Cape Coral, Naples, and Fort Myers have an actual downtown. People on this forum jokingly say a place like San Jose or Phoenix lack downtowns but that is untrue because they have real ones with real office buildings, real restaurants, real residential units, real transit, real nightlife areas, real everything. They're just more spacey, less urban, and more dead with regards to pedestrian traffic but they have real downtowns.
Southwest Florida (1.15 million people) and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas (1.35 million people) are the only two places I've ever stepped foot in the United States that have more than 1 million people and none of their major cities have an actual downtown. Like they don't even have a Sunbelt-caliber downtown. None. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Nothing. To me, that's weird and out of the ordinary. You're talking about two places that anchor areas with more than 1 million people that don't even have a functional downtown core. That's as oddball a place as they come, even for America, for places to be that large and to not have a functional heart to their metropolis.
Last edited by Trafalgar Law; 05-19-2018 at 04:07 PM..
Not having a functional downtown anywhere in the whole of Southwest Florida is why I consider it an oddball and why I can't consider that area normal or in-line with the mainstream features of America as a whole. Outside of America and a select few other countries, no one talks of a "downtown" because the heart of the city is called other things in other countries like "the core," "the city," "the center of the city," "the center," and the like. However, in America, even in stereotypical Sunbelt America, all major metropolitan areas (and the grand majority of the minor ones) all still have a functional downtown. The below two places seemingly don't though.
Here's a broad illustration of my point. I typed in "Downtown (Enter city name here)" on Google Streetview. Even though Google Maps is telling me that these streetviews are right in the heart of each of these cities' downtowns, these are no downtowns. Not even by Sunbelt standards are these actual downtowns. I'll start with Southwest Florida first then I'll do the Rio Grande Valley.
Southwest Florida (population 1.15 million people) has 3 major cities; Cape Coral, Naples, and Fort Myers:
For me personally, trying to imagine places of this size in America without an actual functionally sound downtown core is unfathomable, they're not even remotely close to Sunbelt-standards on downtowns. This is why I don't view Southwest Florida or any of its major component cities of Cape Coral, Fort Myers, or Naples to be a "normal" place that is "in line with the rest of America and/or containing features in line with the mainstream of America." Downtown San Jose or Downtown Phoenix, which likely take the brunt of the beating on this forum with regards to downtowns, are practically Lower Manhattan compared to these "downtowns" in Southwest Florida or the Rio Grande Valley.
For the record, I'm not mocking these places, having been to both before I know they have their plus points and good qualities for sure (and I'm positive they are decent to good places to live too for the average person) but how can you not have a functional downtown? How can you be that populous and not have a downtown at all? Even when accounting for how much a laggard America is in most things urban, this is still baffling to say the least.
Last edited by Trafalgar Law; 05-19-2018 at 03:32 PM..
I wish we had info broken out by purpose of visit. For example:
--Conventions
--Other business travel
--Visiting the city
--Visiting friends and family
--Stopping for a night on the way somewhere else
To psychoanalyze Seattle's number: We're very low on the convention list, but should be pretty high for other business travel due to our dependence on international trade and certain companies. A decent chunk might be headed for Alaska cruises(*). A lot of our Asian traffic might be visiting family. But our pleasure tourism has been growing, and has seemed more international. I doubt a large number are flying from overseas just to see Seattle for 10 days but it seems to be more common in conjunction with doing something else.
Philly deserves more than it gets. Dallas seems like a business and convention destination primarily, as well as some transferring (the overnight kind) due to its airport.
Similarly I wonder how many of LA’s numbers are people driving in from Mexico, staying with family, and spending relatively little.
Asian family visits probably do help the So Cal numbers (over a million people of Asian descent in L.A.), just like family visits from South America and the Caribbean probably affect the South Florida numbers. But it goes without saying that both destinations are highly popular with traditional tourists as well.
I don't think it's shocking that overseas visitors focus on cities that have famous sights or lifestyle features (such as beaches and an attractive climate). This mirrors the tourism structures in Europe which also see a lot of focus on a few famous primary cities like Paris and London and the warm weather regions in the Mediterranean.
Places like say Minneapolis, St.Louis, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh etc. just don't have anything specific that's so noteworthy that it's become known across either pond.
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