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Exactly...city proper populations don't mean ***** per se. It's the MSA # that matters.
I think 10 miles by 10 miles is not a bad judge of core cities if we really wanna focus just on cities
Would be nice to get a reading on what each city has in that area.
I can tell you neither Columbus or San Antonio has anything to put it in the top 20 cities list.
At 100 sq miles places like SF and Boston rises while SA plummets. At 100 sq miles Houston is just slightly more populous than Atlanta, closer to their actual rank than Houston being 5 times as big as city limits would suggest.
San Antonio metro is estimated at about 2.64 million and an urbanized area population over 2.1 million according to latest estimates. Columbus would be closer in size with Austin. Urbanized area population San Antonio has moved up in the rankings and is closing in on the top 20 largest urbanized areas.
San Antonio is growing at a fast rate and within the next decade should rank amongst both top 20 largest Urbanized areas as well as the top 20 largest metro areas. Bexar county has 2.1 million people and is the 15th most populous county in the U.S. where the majority of the S.A. metro population is concentrated.
San Antonio is growing at a fast rate and within the next decade should rank amongst both top 20 largest Urbanized areas as well as the top 20 largest metro areas. Bexar county has 2.1 million people and is the 15th most populous county in the U.S. where the majority of the S.A. metro population is concentrated.
Not growing with the type of people I want unfortunately--just more and more established families and retirees, not childless professional singles like myself.
San Antonio for me. The warm weather and close proximity to the Texas hill country and Texas coast for day trips. Plus I can be in the desert mountains in 6 hrs. Hard to do that in Columbus.
I like both cities a lot. I lived in Columbus for a year and liked it. But I'd choose San Antonio due to having more things go do overall. I find SA underrated.
That's because San Antonio is not really 7th, it's more like 25, and Columbus is somewhere around 30.
They also don't get mentioned a lot because San Antonio at 25 has the number 4 and 5 city in the same state and Columbus isn't really the biggest in the state. It has competition from Cleveland and Cincinnati.
Houston and DFW has been bigger than SA for many decades and Cincinnati and Cleveland has been historically bigger than Columbus.
As for which I would choose... I am not a big fan of either but Columbus is closer to big cities ( Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland...) so I would go with Columbus
You're totally confusing CITY population with METRO population, uggg. Both city and metro matter. Metro, IMO, is more "relevant" than city in terms of getting the full picture of what the area as a whole offers and is like. Looking at just the city or just the suburbs is very shortsighted. Their relationship and influence on each other is undeniable. But it's a bit surprising that so many on a site like C-D struggle to differentiate something as basic as "city" and "metro" on such a consistent basis.
I personally don’t know enough about Columbus to make an accurate judgement but it did leave a good impression on me when I first visited it. I like both of them but I don’t like cold weather... As a place to live I would probably choose Columbus OH over SATX but SATX has a lot to offer for visitors.
That's because San Antonio is not really 7th, it's more like 25, and Columbus is somewhere around 30.
They also don't get mentioned a lot because San Antonio at 25 has the number 4 and 5 city in the same state and Columbus isn't really the biggest in the state. It has competition from Cleveland and Cincinnati.
Houston and DFW has been bigger than SA for many decades and Cincinnati and Cleveland has been historically bigger than Columbus.
As for which I would choose... I am not a big fan of either but Columbus is closer to big cities ( Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland...) so I would go with Columbus
How do you figure that? There are multiple ways that cities can be measured/compared, with the following being the most common: 1. City Limits, 2. Urbanized Area, 3. Metro Area, 4. CSA, 5. Media Market
Each one has its own pros and cons. "Largest city" tends to be based on #1- city limits. City limits are all different sizes and some seem to think that puts some cities higher in the rankings than they should be, but that's true of literally every method to measure and compare the sizes of cities. There is no perfect way. Based on city limits, SA and Columbus are ranked appropriately.
Second, what does history have to do with current rankings? What the cities were in 1900 or 1950 is irrelevant to how they are now. You are factually wrong that Cincinnati and Cleveland are larger cities, at least without any doubt or challenge. By city limits, Columbus is larger than both by several hundred thousand people. By urbanized area, it is the smallest, but soon won't be. By metro, it is larger than Cleveland, but smaller than Cincinnati, etc.
Additionally, every 10 years, the US Census does a report about population by "Distance from City Hall", the closest thing there is to standardized population counts for cities. The last one of these reports was in 2010, so it's somewhat outdated now. However, if all 3 cities were the same size (either comparable to Columbus or the other 2), Columbus would still be the largest.
Exactly...city proper populations don't mean ***** per se. It's the MSA # that matters.
These designations and their importance are very selectively applied here. There have been endless threads about Houston passing up Chicago at some point despite Houston being far larger in area size, for example. And no one questions city growth or rankings of those places that include their entire core county as their city limits, such as Nashville. People take the designation they like the most, but they're all flawed.
Metro area designations are based almost exclusively on commuting patterns of neighboring counties and have zero to do with city size. A relatively small city, for example, can have an outsized commuting draw if it's located in an area or state that otherwise lacks many other cities of any significant size nearby. You also end up with areas that are 1-2 or more counties removed from the core city that are otherwise included in the metro. Are we really going to argue those places are a direct part of the core city's size?
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