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Any list that puts Nashville over Sacramento is immediately invalid. People are just voting for their favorite or whatever city they heard of the most recently. Sacramento gets so much disrespect on these forums, while Nashville gets unwarranted praise.
I would say Nashville is definitely the most favored here and Sacramento, while not hated like Austin, is underrated.
I'd been sitting on the sidelines as everyone else hashed out the American urban hierarchy between #10 and now, but since the discussion has reached Kansas City, I decided I should jump back in.
Poor Oakland and Fort Worth. They both probably deserve better treatment than they got in this poll, including from me, but since — unlike San Jose — both are long established as the cities riding in the passenger seat of bipolar metropolitan areas (with San Francisco and Dallas, respectively, in the driver's seats), they don't get recognition as metropolitan centers in their own right. However: if these two get broken out and set apart from their "mates," then so should have St. Paul and St. Petersburg.
I think it rather interesting that their status as entertainment centers pushes Nashville and Las Vegas higher in the poll than I think they ought to be. However, Nashville has things going on besides country music, while LV is pretty much a one-trick pony, so there's a stronger argument for Nashville. Edited to add: The same goes for Orlando, but it seems that it's moving to diversify its heavily tourist-driven economy.
Kansas City "the best downtown of the bunch"? I love my forever hometown to death, think it punches well above its weight in the urban amenities, arts and culture, architecture, QOL and attractiveness categories, and has a strong diversified economy despite the former Governor of Kansas' best efforts to wreck it, but — pace the Power & Light District — its downtown (or at least last time I visited) still goes limp after 6 pm unless there's some event going on in the P&L, like its peer downtowns in Columbus and Indianapolis. However: unlike those two, it's building up its residential population, and like Columbus, it has a very lively arts district right next to it, separated from the downtown proper by a freeway (again like Columbus, but in that city, the state transportation department decided to hide the freeway behind storefronts where the main street connecting the two districts crosses it). It may already have gotten livelier in the evening than it was when I was there in 2018, then. I haven't been there so can't really say, but it's my impression that downtown Cincinnati (also a peer) probably tops downtown KC on the vitality scale. However (again): none of the cities in this pack save San Antonio have anything like a Country Club Plaza or Westport within their city limits.
I voted for Cincy, KC, Columbus, San Antonio and Sacramento as my 26-30, in that order.
Last edited by MarketStEl; 05-16-2020 at 03:30 AM..
Atx was voted as #19 in the 15-20 thread, but there was also consistent questioning of its place more than any other city, which indicates at most people may see it as #20. So I put it in the 20-25 thread and it finished slighty behind the 3-way tie of #20 cities at #23---->but it had more cumulative votes in both threads combined, and beat out Pdx and StL in the 15-20 thread, so it stands to reason that people feel it's slightly higher than those cities...
Pgh got a few mentions in the 15-20 thread that I didn't put it in, but wasn't mentioned all that often and the "Other" category doesn't register that it was largely regarded as Top 20, so I think its tie status with StL and Pdx in the 20-25, two cities that were well regarded in the previous thread, speak to the fact that Pgh comes in at #23...
Just a general assumption on where CD places these cities, if they were in a tiered scale:
I: NY, LA, Chi
II: DC, SF
III: Boston, Hou, Atl, Philly, Dallas, Sea, Mia
IV: MSP, Det, Denver, Phx, SD
V: Clt, Bmore, Atx, Pdx, StL, Pgh, TB, SJ
Obviously the orders of both the polls and tiers are subjective and could be reordered according to preference and varying criteria, but that's about what it looks like on here!
The old guard still thinking of Dallas and Houston as a rung below Boston need to die out already. In the post-2010s, both Texas cities are absolute superstars.
NY, LA, Chi, DC, SF, Dal, Hous, Phil, Bos, and Atl should be top 10 in that order based on GDP, population, influence, and recent trends.
However: if these two get broken out and set apart from their "mates," then so should have St. Paul and St. Petersburg.
I understand the idea here, the only reason I didn't is because St Paul specifically is pretty entirely contiguous with Minneapolis as a single urban entity, it really doesn't seem prudent to split those two and that makes that city/those cities unique amongst all these other dual core metros we speak of. None of the other ones are as completely connected to the larger city...
St Pete and Tampa have the Oakland/SF dynamic, separated only by a bay, and while St Pete has it's own identity similar to Oakland, my feeling is nobody would consider it a Top 30 candidate, and at best it would be seen somewhere in the mid-to-late 40s range (or typically with cities in the 1-1.5m range). Feel the same about Fort Lauderdale, I doubt people with any conviction feel they could stand as Top 30 candidates...
Oakland is an established city across the board so it warrants its spot. And while SJ and FW are "new" cities, they are much larger and much more standalone than Sts. Paul/Pete, even within the shadows of their respective main cities. FW/SJ are large enough and in the process I think of establishing themselves of their own accord, SJ probably a little more distinct in the public consciousness...
I understand the idea here, the only reason I didn't is because St Paul specifically is pretty entirely contiguous with Minneapolis as a single urban entity, it really doesn't seem prudent to split those two and that makes that city/those cities unique amongst all these other dual core metros we speak of. None of the other ones are as completely connected to the larger city...
St Pete and Tampa have the Oakland/SF dynamic, separated only by a bay, and while St Pete has it's own identity similar to Oakland, my feeling is nobody would consider it a Top 30 candidate, and at best it would be seen somewhere in the mid-to-late 40s range (or typically with cities in the 1-1.5m range). Feel the same about Fort Lauderdale, I doubt people with any conviction feel they could stand as Top 30 candidates...
Oakland is an established city across the board so it warrants its spot. And while SJ and FW are "new" cities, they are much larger and much more standalone than Sts. Paul/Pete, even within the shadows of their respective main cities. FW/SJ are large enough and in the process I think of establishing themselves of their own accord, SJ probably a little more distinct in the public consciousness...
I'd say SJ is actually way more distinct in the public consciousness than Fort Worth — and so is Oakland.
SJ has been celebrated in popular song, even though the SJ Dionne Warwick sang about was a sleepier place than the one that exists now. Oakland gave us the Black Panthers* and Tower of Power — and unlike the other cities we're talking about here, it has (had, in the case of the Raiders) two major-league sports teams and its own airport.
Fort Worth, sorry to say, has none of these notches in its belt. Very few scheduled airline flights served Amon Carter Field, and the Metroplex (as it's called in D/FW) now has one main airport bearing the names of both cities and located midway between them; the "secondary" airport, which is Southwest's home base, is in Dallas.
I knew Fort Worth for two other things: it was the home of Tandy Corporation, which originally promoted leathercraft (my Dad bought several of their leather-goods kits, and I still have the mongrammed wallet he made for me when I was a teenager) but became better known as the electronics-geek's heaven through its ownership of Radio Shack. And it was also home to the only newspaper whose circulation matched that of The Kansas City Star when Capital Cities Communications, which owned the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, bought The Star from its employees in 1977. (Cap Cities, which later bought ABC and was in turn acquired by the Walt Disney Company,** called The Star its flagship newspaper after the acquisition.)
*There's a reason Eric Killmonger, the lost Wakandan who became "Black Panther's" challenger in the hit 2018 film, grew up in Oakland: the Marvel character, its first black superhero, was actually the source for the Black Panther Party's name.
**One of the best Local Angle Headlines I ever saw ran in The Kansas City Star on the morning after Disney acquired Cap Cities/ABC:
"Disney to buy paper Walt delivered"
(Walt Disney was born in Marceline, Mo., and his parents migrated to KC when he was 11. He learned animation from a book he checked out of the Kansas City Public Library, and his first animation studio was in the city; there's a fitful effort to have the building that housed it preserved as a museum.)
Atx was voted as #19 in the 15-20 thread, but there was also consistent questioning of its place more than any other city, which indicates at most people may see it as #20. So I put it in the 20-25 thread and it finished slighty behind the 3-way tie of #20 cities at #23---->but it had more cumulative votes in both threads combined, and beat out Pdx and StL in the 15-20 thread, so it stands to reason that people feel it's slightly higher than those cities...
Pgh got a few mentions in the 15-20 thread that I didn't put it in, but wasn't mentioned all that often and the "Other" category doesn't register that it was largely regarded as Top 20, so I think its tie status with StL and Pdx in the 20-25, two cities that were well regarded in the previous thread, speak to the fact that Pgh comes in at #23...
Just a general assumption on where CD places these cities, if they were in a tiered scale:
I: NY, LA, Chi
II: DC, SF
III: Boston, Hou, Atl, Philly, Dallas, Sea, Mia
IV: MSP, Det, Denver, Phx, SD
V: Clt, Bmore, Atx, Pdx, StL, Pgh, TB, SJ
Obviously the orders of both the polls and tiers are subjective and could be reordered according to preference and varying criteria, but that's about what it looks like on here!
This seems pretty spot on, with a couple caveats (and this is obviously just my subjective perception):
1. I would place Boston in tier II
2. There may be a legit argument that Seattle belongs more in tier IV than tier III, though all things considered tier III seems fair. Also, I noticed that Seattle was placed higher than Miami. Really? That's weird.
3. Tier V is the most contentious one as there are several additional candidates with a legit argument. I think what you've got is mostly right, though I would put in Cleveland in lieu of SJ.
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