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I mean, it would kinda be interesting for a lot of other people too. Chicago's been the country's 3rd largest city for 35 years. Some other very big cities like Philly and San Francisco are on track to drop multiple ranks in less than a 5 year period, especially so in San Francisco's case, falling from 12th just 5 years ago to 16th next year or so.
Chicago will 100% certainly fall to 4th largest at some point, and it's invariably going to be from Houston so Houston might as well speed up the process and bring on the inevitable.
Nobody outside of Texas cares though? It's not a topic of conversation on the coasts and if size matters, it's metro size. Technically, Austin is larger than Atlanta. Now, factor in the metros and Atlanta is 5 times the size. Don't worry about that stuff.
Nobody outside of Texas cares though? It's not a topic of conversation on the coasts and if size matters, it's metro size. Technically, Austin is larger than Atlanta. Now, factor in the metros and Atlanta is 5 times the size. Don't worry about that stuff.
I'm from Texas and I don't care, it doesn't take anything away from Chicago.
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?
probably like .5 to 1 mile around the edges (so probably like another 10 sq miles) so maybe like 145 sq miles total
to surpass Houston it would need to ~ double (slightly less than double) its sq mileage which would still less than half the sq mileage of Houston - at a continuous 200 sq miles (extended to the 134 sq miles) Philly is a little north of 2.1 Million
in terms of the number of suburbs I am not sure many of the municipalities are just a sq mile or so
townships/boroughs/towns are really small in PA area wise
I mean, it would kinda be interesting for a lot of other people too. Chicago's been the country's 3rd largest city for 35 years. Some other very big cities like Philly and San Francisco are on track to drop multiple ranks in less than a 5 year period, especially so in San Francisco's case, falling from 12th just 5 years ago to 16th next year or so.
Chicago will 100% certainly fall to 4th largest at some point, and it's invariably going to be from Houston so Houston might as well speed up the process and bring on the inevitable.
but city population for bragging rights is sort of stupid I mean who in their right mind would suggest Phoenix is larger than Philly or Austin is larger than Boston or San Diego is larger than SF etc.
sure with huge borders they get there but the cities deemed smaller look feel and are much larger actual cities
I think there are some value to larger boarders for taxes and services but its lines and not actual cities
I mean the actual city part of a place like Austin feels smaller than Providence in many ways, hell the city part of Trenton almost feels as larger
If you added Raleigh (469,000), Cary (165,000), Durham (274,000), Apex and Morrisville (80,000 combined), that city would he 989,000 people in 335 square miles making for a mediocre density of 2945 per square mile. Interestingly, this puts the population 100,000 more than Charlotte city proper which has 306 square miles and an equally as mediocre density of 2825 per square mile. Food for thought.
but city population for bragging rights is sort of stupid I mean who in their right mind would suggest Phoenix is larger than Philly or Austin is larger than Boston or San Diego is larger than SF etc.
sure with huge borders they get there but the cities deemed smaller look feel and are much larger actual cities
I think there are some value to larger boarders for taxes and services but its lines and not actual cities
I mean the actual city part of a place like Austin feels smaller than Providence in many ways, hell the city part of Trenton almost feels as larger
I may be pessimistic but I think the vast majority of people who don't use City Data or don't know much about how cities grow would suggest Phoenix is bigger than Philly, because it is, or that Austin is bigger than Boston, because it is.
This reminds me of an interesting thread on CD I was looking at just a few days ago. Some guy was asking if a city, such as Phoenix, growing rapidly by population from annexing it's suburbs, leads people to misinterpret that as people actually *moving* to the city in large numbers, when in fact the vast majority of the population growth was from people who have already lived in the area for years.
This could possibly in turn lead to people moving there because they think everyone is moving there when in reality, no one is moving there.
See how terrible and misleading this is thanks to municipal population being used as the benchmark?, when cities in some other countries aren't affected by this because they already have city limits of over 1,000 square miles, like in Australia for example.
So is this really a possibility? Can annexation actually lead to further growth? If so, cities like Philly and Boston are fn screwed.
This reminds me of an interesting thread on CD I was looking at just a few days ago. Some guy was asking if a city, such as Phoenix, growing rapidly by population from annexing it's suburbs, leads people to misinterpret that as people actually *moving* to the city in large numbers, when in fact the vast majority of the population growth was from people who have already lived in the area for years.
This could possibly in turn lead to people moving there because they think everyone is moving there when in reality, no one is moving there.
I'm with you on the categorical worthlessness of using city population as a comparison metric. But you lose me with the bolded. Everything about this statement is misleading, and uninformed. Phoenix definitely benefits from large boundaries. Can you state the last time Phoenix actually annexed land for population growth? Did you know the state of Arizona over the last 40 years has continually passed laws to make annexation more and more difficult? Or that the last time Phoenix made a large annexation it was 100sq mi of uninhabited land preserve that can't be developed? Not to mention that Phoenix never annexed it's suburbs, and the land it did acquire over the years was largely undeveloped and uninhabited at the time of annexation. We are talking about the desert southwest here. There weren't and aren't large swaths of unincorporated areas that are populated, and vulnerable to annexation.
Maricopa County had 660,000 people in 1970, it has almost 4.5million now. That is stunning growth and there is no intellectual way to honestly claim Phoenix's rapid population growth is largely due to land grabs.
I may be pessimistic but I think the vast majority of people who don't use City Data or don't know much about how cities grow would suggest Phoenix is bigger than Philly, because it is, or that Austin is bigger than Boston, because it is.
This reminds me of an interesting thread on CD I was looking at just a few days ago. Some guy was asking if a city, such as Phoenix, growing rapidly by population from annexing it's suburbs, leads people to misinterpret that as people actually *moving* to the city in large numbers, when in fact the vast majority of the population growth was from people who have already lived in the area for years.
This could possibly in turn lead to people moving there because they think everyone is moving there when in reality, no one is moving there.
See how terrible and misleading this is thanks to municipal population being used as the benchmark?, when cities in some other countries aren't affected by this because they already have city limits of over 1,000 square miles, like in Australia for example.
So is this really a possibility? Can annexation actually lead to further growth? If so, cities like Philly and Boston are fn screwed.
in the 1990's i heard a few persons from philly ask 'boston is bigger, rite ?'.
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