The 2,500 square mile metro: American metros using a fixed land area limit

[the resident09]

Originally Posted by Boston Shudra

Had some time on my hands so I decided to make a 2500sqmi area around Boston that went town-by-town along the more major transit corridors rather than by county. I'll put a spoiler box below with a big list of the towns I included (based on my own discretion and momentary whims). Based on 2020 census data, I came up with: 5,918,961 people in 2501.21 square miles!

Spoiler

Massachusetts
Abington, Acushnet, Amesbury, Andover, Arlington, Attleboro, Auburn, Avon, Bedford, Belmont, Bellingham, Berkley, Beverly, Billerica, Boston, Braintree, Bridgewater, Brockton, Brookline, Burlington, Cambridge, Canton, Carver, Chelsea, Chelmsford, Clinton, Danvers, Dartmouth, Dedham, Dighton, East Bridgewater, Everett, Fairhaven, Fall River, Fitchburg, Foxborough, Framingham, Franklin, Gloucester, Haverhill, Holbrook, Holden, Hopedale, Hudson, Lawrence, Leominster, Lexington, Lowell, Lynn, Lynnfield, Malden, Manchester-BTS, Mansfield, Marblehead, Marlborough, Medfield, Medford, Melrose, Merrimac, Methuen, Middleborough, Milford, Milton, Nahant, Natick, Needham, New Bedford, Newburyport, Newton, North Andover, North Attleborough, North Reading, Northborough, Norwood, Peabody, Plymouth, Quincy, Randolph, Raynham, Reading, Revere, Rockland, Rockport, Salem, Salisbury, Saugus, Seekonk, Sharon, Shrewsbury, Somerset, Somerville, Southborough, Sterling, Stoneham, Stoughton, Swampscott, Swansea, Taunton, Tewksbury, Tyngsborough, Wakefield, Walpole, Waltham, Wareham, Watertown, Wellesley, West Boylston, West Bridgewater, Westborough, Westwood, Weymouth, Whitman, Wilmington, Winchester, Winthrop, Woburn, Worcester

Rhode Island
Barrington, Bristol, Central Falls, Cranston, Cumberland, East Providence, Johnston, Lincoln, North Providence, Pawtucket, Providence, Smithfield, Warren, Warwick, Woonsocket

New Hampshire
Derry, Hampton, Litchfield, Londonderry, Manchester, Merrimack, Nashua, Plaistow, Salem, Seabrook

Hopefully I didn't miss any.

Good work!

[2Easy]

Originally Posted by manitopiaaa

Which gets us this, as a rule-of-thumb:

1. Atlanta: 4,551,458
2. Austin: 2,091,343
3. Boston-Providence: 5,115,563
4. Charlotte: 2,107,079
5. Chicago: 8,159,598
6. Cincinnati-Dayton: 2,567,487
7. Cleveland: 2,866,419
8. Dallas-Fort Worth: 6,573,299
9. Denver: 3,185,908
10. Detroit: 4,483,928
11. Houston: 5,803,845
12. Kansas City: 2,116,629
13. Las Vegas: 1,953,370
14. Los Angeles: 14,251,729
15. Memphis: 1,260,634
16. Miami: 6,764,724
17. Minneapolis-Saint Paul: 3,117,335
18. Nashville: 1,614,171
19. New Orleans: 1,278,476
20. New York: 16,611,895
21. Orlando: 3,199,080
22. Philadelphia: 5,621,503
23. Phoenix: 4,271,482
24. Pittsburgh: 1,892,931
25. Portland-Salem: 2,732,290
26. Raleigh: 1,891,400
27. Saint Louis: 2,383,579
28. Salt Lake City: 2,460,181
29. San Diego-Tijuana: 5,230,748
30. San Francisco-San Jose: 6,955,255
31. Seattle: 4,248,384
32. Tampa-Saint Petersburg: 3,999,783
33. Washington-Baltimore: 7,283,897

Maybe I'm lost, but I'm not seeing the post where your LA numbers came from.

[manitopiaaa]

Originally Posted by 2Easy

Maybe I'm lost, but I'm not seeing the post where your LA numbers came from.

https://www.city-data.com/forum/62003752-post19.html

And note the caveat in my post.

[ClevelandBrown]

Originally Posted by Joakim3

They'd all drop of hard if you used Urban Area vs. MSA/county geographic.

Not necessarily. I'll use Cleveland as an example because its what I'm most familiar with.

According to the metrics the OP used, the 2,500 square mile Cleveland (which also includes the core counties for Akron and Canton MSAs) comes out to a little less than 2.9 million. Those three also have separate urban areas (Elyria-Lorain, which is part of the Cleveland MSA also has its own urban area), but since all are adjacent they are part of a combined urban agglomerate (according to worldpopulation ... first one I looked at) of 3.1 million.

So, this metric actually has "Cleveland" at roughly 200,000 less than what the combined urban area populations would be. It's fairly easy for me to see why. Most of western Geauga County is in the Cleveland urban area and Geauga wasn't included in the list of counties being pulled from. The bulk of the population in Geauga is on the western border with Cuyahoga (the eastern portion is sparsely populated Amish area).

Same with Portage County (Population 160,000). Portage also wasn't included here but again, a large part of the population there is in the western portion of the county, with the northwest portion in the Cleveland UA and the west and SW portion in the Akron UA.

If you add those areas up it's about 153,000 in 193 square miles. Adding them would put Cleveland 80 square miles over the +10 percent max (2,780 square miles), but would boost the population to about 3,020,000. That is still a little less than what the estimated combined urban area populations for the same geographical area.

[2Easy]

Originally Posted by manitopiaaa

https://www.city-data.com/forum/62003752-post19.html

And note the caveat in my post.

Thanks. I kept missing it.