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And here's the #s for Washington-Baltimore if I allow DC to eat Baltimore. It takes all of Baltimore city, and nearly all of Anne Arundel, Baltimore County, and Howard.
WASHINGTON-BALTIMORE
Alexandria city - 158,309 - 15
Anne Arundel County excl. District 7 - 496,422 - 263
Arlington County - 236,434 - 26
Baltimore city - 602,274 - 81
Baltimore County excl. Districts 5, 6, 7, 10 - 798,990 - 409
District of Columbia - 701,974 - 61
Fairfax city - 23,312 - 6
Fairfax County - 1,149,439 - 391
Falls Church city - 14,309 - 2
Howard County excl. District 4 - 307,480 - 188
Loudoun County excl. Blue Ridge, Catoctin, Leesburg CCDs - 237,935 - 89
Manassas city - 41,038 - 10
Manassas Park city - 17,548 - 3
Montgomery County excl. Districts 3, 11 - 1,038,891 - 392
Prince George's County excl. Districts 4, 8 - 906,315 - 419
Prince William County - 466,834 - 335
Waldorf CCD - 86,393 - 57
Those were the only 32 I was planning to do, but I can add others if asked since I know there's some larger metros still mia (Columbus, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Juan, etc.)
They'd all drop of hard if you used Urban Area vs. MSA/county geographic.
Not to this extent. This is anomalous vis a vis likely most every major city in the country (e.g., NYC proper is about half of MSA). Are there other examples where this is true (city pop = ~ 50% of metro and/or UA).
Crazy how NYC fits in ~9 MM in 300 sq mile, and the next 7 spread over 2200. Bonkers that drop off.
That's going to largely be a function of when the area was developed. Purpose-built suburbs, like you see in the south and west (with their uniformly medium-high density spread for dozens of miles) weren't a thing when the area first developed. So all across the northeast, density drops really quickly (probably most pronounced in Boston, whose suburbs mostly maintained the large lot sizes through today, but you can also see this clearly in Westchester).
That said, just the suburbs of NYC would be in, what, the top 5-6 on this list (and within a smaller geographic area). That probably speaks more to just how dense the core of NYC is more than how not dense the suburbs are.
That's going to largely be a function of when the area was developed. Purpose-built suburbs, like you see in the south and west (with their uniformly medium-high density spread for dozens of miles) weren't a thing when the area first developed. So all across the northeast, density drops really quickly (probably most pronounced in Boston, whose suburbs mostly maintained the large lot sizes through today, but you can also see this clearly in Westchester).
That said, just the suburbs of NYC would be in, what, the top 5-6 on this list (and within a smaller geographic area). That probably speaks more to just how dense the core of NYC is more than how not dense the suburbs are.
Yeah good point and makes sense.
Just eyeballing the density for NYC; city is 10 x the burbs. Would be interesting to see for other cities. As you said, I could see western cities (outside SF) being almost 1:1. Also, are there any examples of where the suburbs are actually denser than city proper?
Just eyeballing the density for NYC; city is 10 x the burbs. Would be interesting to see for other cities. As you said, I could see western cities (outside SF) being almost 1:1. Also, are there any examples of where the suburbs are actually denser than city proper?
Las Vegas is a pretty notable example by quirk of having weird city boundaries:
But that's because you could argue Las Vegas is the suburb and the real city is further South (the northern border of 89109 is the southern border of Las Vegas city):
For similar reasons, Las Vegas is also unique as being far more conservative than its suburbs:
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!
Rhode Island
Barrington, Bristol, Central Falls, Cranston, Cumberland, East Providence, Johnston, Lincoln, North Providence, Pawtucket, Providence, Smithfield, Warren, Warwick, Woonsocket
Those were the only 32 I was planning to do, but I can add others if asked since I know there's some larger metros still mia (Columbus, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Juan, etc.)
Great stuff. I missed this thread and actually started doing something almost exactly similar based off 2020 census numbers. I was doing it at 3,000 square miles and then at 6,000 square miles ... my general basis was Cleveland-Akron MSA boundries combined at 3,000; and then Dallas-FW, Atlanta and Houston size, which all three I believe are right around 6,000. I gave up because of how cumbersome it is to figure out fair parameters for several areas. So, I know how much work you have put into this.
I will try to pull up my spreadsheet, but going off off memory, I would be interested in seeing what San Antonio's numbers would be. I can't remember if you could fit San Antonio and Austin into 2,500-2,700 square miles, but know you can once I increased it to 6,000 and the numbers there surprised me. Columbus, Indianapolis and Milwaukee (if you include Kenosha) I also believe all also would be over 2 million as well if you included them.
A couple of other questions.
1. Looks like you included Tijuana with San Diego. Did you include Windsor with Detroit (edit: i see you did).
2. If you take out the southern half of Erie County NY (a huge county land wise where most of the population is in the northern portion) then add Niagara County, the Canadian portion around Niagara Falls, Orleans County (connector between Erie County and Monroe) and then Monroe County (Rochester), I'm guessing that would fit in the criteria and would have a surprisingly big population. I'm guessing close to 2 million (though adding the Canadian portion may take you over the 2,500 to 2,700 square mile threshold).
Last edited by ClevelandBrown; 05-13-2022 at 07:21 PM..
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