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.
None. I live in New York City, the largest city in the United States.
If anything, rather than adding yet more bodies to a crowded metropolis, most of us would prefer it if the people who didn't want to be here would put their money where their mouth is and leave already.
(Of course, that includes the malcontents on the NYC city-data sub who do nothing but whine and cry about how AWFUL and AGONIZING it is for them to live here. Then go! Nobody'll miss ya. Now do tell us, when is your flight leaving?)
Boston has a population currently of approximately 695,000. Boston is also one of the smaller sized cities, our land area is just slightly larger than San Francisco with a square-mile area of 48.43.
Boston is also surrounded by many cities that make up a very densely populated area. All of these suburb cities (close enough for commuting, but are seperate cities) are seemingly expanding vertically instead of horizontally because of space. The suburbs I'm describing are all within the 128/95 belt, not the further out suburbs.
Hypothetically, these are the suburbs that most closely resemble and/or connect to Boston along with their populations: (all numbers rounded to make it a bit easier to calculate)
Quincy - 92,000
Milton - 27,000
Dedham - 25,000
Brookline - 59,000
Newton - 85,000
Watertown - 32,000
Waltham - 61,000
Cambridge - 119,000
Somerville - 76,000
Medford - 56,000
Malden - 60,000
Chelsea - 34,000
Revere - 52,000
Winthrop - 17,000
Total suburbs population: 795,000 wow.. The suburbs around Boston (if you look at a map of Greater Boston, you'll see why I chose those cities) are more populated collectively than Boston itself.
Okay, so Boston 695,000 + Suburbs 795,000 =
1,490,000 people.
If this happened Boston would go from the 22nd most populous city (2019) just behind El Paso, Texas to the 8th most populous US City, which would put us just before San Diego, California (1,450,000 people).
Of course I don't think all the cities in the Greater Boston area would go for being annexed. ☺
Like Massachoicetts said, if Boston annexed half of Cambridge (which would be 59,500) or Brookline (59,000) if would go from 695,000 to 754,000 placing it just more populous than Denver, Colorado (732,000) as the 19th most populous US City.
Detroit:
Currently#23 with 667,662 with a land area of 138.8 square miles. If it incorporated 94 to 100 square miles, it would have a population of over 1 million.
Let's first add the cities 45.5 sq miles that are carved out from inside Detroit and logically should be part of it.
If you go beyond adding 45 square miles of cities within Detroit to then make a clean square boundary, then you would need to add:
Redford 47k/11.2 sqm, Dearborn Heights 56k/11.7 sqm, Ecorse 9500k/2.8 sqm, Wyondotte 25k/5,3 sqm, Taylor 61k/23.6 sqm, Allen Park 27k/7sqm, Lincoln Park 37k/6sqm, and Southgate 29k/7 sqm: Total of 291,500 people with 74.6 sq miles.
Detroit would be 1,159,778 people at 258.9 square miles. It would be #10 in the country. So basically it needs to incorporate 120 square miles to become the 10th largest city.
Otherwise it could just incorporate Warren and Sterling Heights and Dearborn (3 suburbs and it would increase its current population of 667,662 to 1,030,272 people with 94.2 sq miles (134,500/33 sqm + 133,000/37 sq miles + Dearborn 95,000/24.2 sqm). It would jump from 23 to 10.
The politics behind it would make this impossible.
For LA to reach NYC population, it would need to expand to cover the Southern third of LA county minus Catalina Island. Catalina Island and most of the the Northern 2/3 of LA County are relatively lightly populated, with under a million people. So the dividing line would basically be everything in LA County South of the Santa Susanna and San Gabriel Mountains. It would include the Verdugo, San Fernando, San Gabriel, and Pomona Valleys as well as the LA Basin except for the part in Orange County. It would exclude the Antelope Valley, Santa Clarita Valley, Angeles National Forest, Los Padres National Forest, and Catalina Island.
Area would be enormous, somewhere around 1000-1500 sq miles, population would be somewhere around 8.5 - 9 million. So density would be 5,670-9,000 people per square mile, so in range of current density of LA at 8,000/sq mile. Decent, but still far below NYC's almost 28,000/sq mile.
Dallas would need an additional 81,000 residents to pass 8th-ranked San Diego. There are six suburbs of 100,000+ bordering Dallas – Carrollton, Grand Prairie, Irving, Mesquite, Plano and Richardson – so it would take only one of them to move up.
Another way would be to annex the enclaves of Cockrell Hill, University Park, and Highland Park along with a few of the inner-ring suburbs and smaller towns bordering the city.
Dallas 1,345,000 / San Diego 1,426,000
Cockrell Hill (4,000)
Highland Park (9,000) University Park (25,000) Enclaves (38,000)
Just out of curiosity how many cities/suburbs adjacent to your city would you need to add to surpass the city above yours? For example how many suburbs would Chicago need to swallow up in order to surpass the 4 million that is Los Angeles?
Interesting.
Isn't Chicagoland like 10 million though? If that is still the case it means that Chicago would only have to absorb a third of the surrounding suburbs, in theory, population withstanding.
Well, Hampton Roads is a case where that has already happened. Virginia Beach did this to Norfolk a while ago.
But say Hampton Roads against Richmond. If you grow Richmond or it's suburbs by 510,000, which can easily happen, Richmond MSA could surpass Hampton Roads, AKA Virginia Beach/Norfolk MSA. AKA Tidewater for those keeping score.
Or for laughs and giggles, maybe Norfolk can add 200,000 and surpass Virginia Beach. But if history is any indication Virginia Beach would have added the same amount of people by then. 600,000 people Virginia Beach here we come. Get ready!
Last edited by goofy328; 08-19-2019 at 06:52 AM..
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.
