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Miami/Ft. Lauderdale feels a lot bigger to me than Atlanta MSA.
Alot? How? When riding around both metros, Atlanta clearly feels larger. It's much more extensive in every direction except north. I would even wager that ITP feels just as large as Miami's metro.
Miami/Fort Lauderdale is built vertically along the coast. When you look at it from the water or any elevated highway or rooftop, it's a curtain of highrises that stretches from Miami proper going into cities north of it seamlessly. They are all stitched together, so-to-speak, by both development and density. Depending on your angle, you'll see dual skylines stretched across the horizon since the barrier islands have a long skyline parallel to the even longer skyline on the mainland. As you move away from the coast and more into the inland areas of the Miami/Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area, you'll see some of the highest uniform residential density in the United States for single-family homes. Homes with small and more compact lot sizes generally, and wall-to-wall midrise structures thrown into the mix as well. Miami/Fort Lauderdale is already either at or is in the process of reaching its physical limits on available land to develop in general but especially available land for single family homes, which is why the super grand majority of the new developments are all midrises at a bare minimum or more typically the highrises and skyscrapers. What you need to keep in mind is that the Southeast Florida metropolis is the second largest concentration of highrises in the United States, behind Greater New York, on a metropolitan scale and the majority of that is flanked along the coast thus visually giving you a vertical wall that runs along the coast for quite some time and distance and through two counties. This is increasingly the trend there as the area becomes more and more vertical over time and generally gets taller with its vertical build as well. I'd say that 90% or more of it is all pure infill within the bounds of the urbanized area already, thus the rapid increase in density for both the city and the entire area as a whole. They're built in the core where there are still some lots left to develop because the suburban areas with single family homes are already either maxed out or close to maxing out. There isn't much space left to build those anymore, which is why Port Saint Lucie is increasingly becoming more integrated into Southeast Florida's metropolis as a whole.
Miami's entire metropolitan area is only about 22 miles wide at its widest point. Generally it is even less than that number. Essentially from east to west the layout you have is ocean, highly developed barrier islands, the bays, the highly developed mainland, then the Everglades Swamp to the west. To the south is the Straits of Florida, yet another body of water. Going north from Miami-proper, the density stays mostly consistent until you get to Palm Beach County where it drops off a bit, still very high for suburban density in the United States but less so than what you see in Miami-Dade or Broward. From Homestead in the south to Jupiter in the north, it is 123 miles of continuously built up urbanization and in that space you have about 6.2 million people. The Jonathan Dickson State Park just north of Jupiter finally breaks the development before it begins again on the otherside with Port Saint Lucie. If you look at the CSA then Key West to the south and Sebastian to the north are the northern and southern terminus officially as ascribed and detailed by the CSA metric. That's 314 miles straight and the only developmental break is Jonathan Dickson State Park between Port Saint Lucie and Palm Beach County. As a CSA, Southeast Florida's Metropolis has around 7 million people today. That's what happens when the metropolitan area is only allowed to have a maximum width of 22 miles. It becomes elongated. So if you base your opinion on an area by car and want to experience size in that way, then you go from the southernmost point or at least from Miami proper and just drive north. You'll be driving over 100 miles and never once feel like you've left the urbanized area since development will still be following you until you get to Jonathan Dickson State Park. Or you can plan something even more extreme, go from Sebastian in the north all the way down to Key West in the south. As mentioned before in this post, that's 314 miles and the only break in development is that state park between Port Saint Lucie and Palm Beach County. That journey will take a full 5.5 hours to make that drive and you'll be nestled in the urbanization for nearly the entire duration of it (it becomes more smaller scaled and somewhat patchy and linear towards Key West and south of Homestead because land in general becomes small patches along the road). Still built up with plenty of towns and hamlets though, still quite populated all the way through. Think of this extreme journey as the spinal column of the Southeast Florida metropolis.
That being said, regardless of the verticality, density, and elongated nature of the area as a whole, on paper both of these metropolitan areas are said to be of similar size. Both as an MSA and as a CSA, with Miami being a little bit ahead in both categories. The Miami/Fort Lauderdale urban area, it should be noted, is a decent bit bigger by Demographia's Urban Area. A good deal bigger by the U.S. Urban Area, and a good deal bigger by the City-Population.de's Urban Agglomeration metric.
Atlanta's true size is gauged by a 360 degree circumference around the encompassing metropolitan area, which is centered around the city's core. In other words, how far you can go out in each direction of the compass. Due to geography Miami doesn't have that luxury but also due to geographic constraint, it also has the much denser metropolitan area and portfolio. This question will boil down to what sort of attributes people value more overall. These are not similar types of metropolitan areas, not in the least bit. They're polar opposites you could say but the end result comes close to the same for them both on population counts, at least on paper. As evidenced by their MSA and CSA populations being close enough to each other to be within the same general range with Miami only a bit ahead. This comparison is comparing different city typology, thus you will get different answers depending on an individual's own perspectives. One final point that you have to keep in mind is that these places also represent two different set-ups as well. One is decentralized whereas the other is centralized. Atlanta is the center of gravity of its entire metropolitan area. Miami is a key cog to the broader and more seamlessly urbanized metropolitan area but there are other cities in its metropolitan area that are also quite populated and developed as well, thus the decentralization. This may or may not make a difference to people.
Last edited by Trafalgar Law; 03-10-2020 at 09:22 PM..
North / South, definitely Miami.
East / West definitely Atlanta.
However... Miami's density is just far more consistent throughout its growth than Atlanta which can get very low density and sprawling outside the core. Many parts of Atlanta dont feel urban at all but are still considered within the metro area and it's because the collection of suburban entities are much further spread out. If Atlanta were however as dense as Miami, its geographical metropolitan area would probably be much smaller... although i dont think that's necessarily a bad thing.
Miami easily! It just denser and feels denser through out the Metro including Broward and Palm beach counties... Metro Atlanta just feels more like sprawl from the City to the boonies IMO...
As has been mentioned by others, all the trees in Atl make Miami feel larger....you have to really drive around Atlanta to get a true feel of its size while Miami's size is more readily apparent on a first visit, even from a plane...and Miami is denser which adds to it
Last edited by whogoesthere; 03-11-2020 at 05:47 AM..
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