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Charlotte's UA is misleading because for some reason Concord (215,000) has its own UA, Gastonia has its own UA (169,000), and Rock Hill has its own UA (105,000), all of which are not only in the metro, but in adjacent counties. Add those figures into Charlotte's official UA, and Charlotte's UA more accurately reflects it's relation to peer cities, at 1,738,814, which is over 200,000 more than Orlando, and in line with other peers like Vegas, Portland, Cleveland, San An, and Pittsburgh...
They are both big cities; they aren't small cities...
Based on the latest maps, Gastonia and Rock Hill deserve to remain separate UAs as there are still patches of undeveloped land between them and Charlotte that keep them distinct but Concord's UA shares a sizable border with Charlotte's and is definitely an extension of Charlotte's UA. I'd say by 2025 at the latest, they will probably all deserve to be one UA.
Buffalonians And Rochesterians definitely think they live in a big city. What you'll get is, if asking is Buffalo big compared to Cleveland, is "we're not that big, but we're the 2nd biggest city in New York." Same thing for Rochester: "We're bigger than everybody else in New York besides The City and Buffalo"...
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They absolutely do not, they consider themselves small cities. I hear people say "Rochester is a small city with a big city art scene" or something like that. Or Small time city, big time sports kinda thing for Buffalo but nobody thinks they are a Big city. Especially Rochester, and Buffalo folks certainly don't see Rochester as a big city.
Of course Buffaloians would claim they are the 2nd largest city in NY, cause they are. It's not like the Worcester is the 2nd largest city in New England schick, its true, on the UA, MSA, CSA and City levels. Similar to how people from Burlington VT will state they are the biggest city in Vermont but understand it's not a big city.
I don't know why people are arguing what a metro full of people think. Like we can speak for everyone in a city of 1M. Having lived in Rochester, some people think the city is big, some small. The folks that have traveled know the city is on the smaller or mid-range size, but it's not like there's a consensus. It's based on everyone's perception.
Some of the nuance is also within a historical context. Rochester and Buffalo used to be closer to big city size 60 years ago during an industrial age. Having shrunk in the core and having had anemic metro growth comparatively, they now have a larger feel for a smaller population. The reality is that they were both planning to continue growth by starting to build more transit and travel lanes, but instead, they shrank.
If people really need an answer so they can sleep, just choose your stat and look at a list of city pop, MSA pop, UA pop, pop density, etc. I stand by using a combination of metrics, including density and evaluation of city limits, MSA limits, how a city functions, etc.
They absolutely do not, they consider themselves small cities. I hear people say "Rochester is a small city with a big city art scene" or something like that. Or Small time city, big time sports kinda thing for Buffalo but nobody thinks they are a Big city. Especially Rochester, and Buffalo folks certainly don't see Rochester as a big city.
Of course Buffaloians would claim they are the 2nd largest city in NY, cause they are. It's not like the Worcester is the 2nd largest city in New England schick, its true, on the UA, MSA, CSA and City levels. Similar to how people from Burlington VT will state they are the biggest city in Vermont but understand it's not a big city.
I have a few friends from Buffalo, and you're pretty much right about that. Nobody considers it a "big" city. There's a lot of pride, especially for the sports, but it's not a big city and I've never heard anyone mention it as a "big" city.
I'm not sure about Burlington, but I have heard people in Maine call Portland a big city. Both in name (I've heard it referred to as "The Big City") and contextually ("I have a hard time driving in big cities like Portland."). Usually I don't care about that stuff, but when I lived there, it used to irk me all the time. Portland is wonderful for a quaint little coastal city. But the whole "Portland is the Big City!" attitude drove me nuts. It was probably one of the more annoying local quirks.
My office is in Boston and we have a satellite in Worcester. I'm there a few times per month. The Worcester folks use the "2nd biggest city in New England" bit all the time.
I have a few friends from Buffalo, and you're pretty much right about that. Nobody considers it a "big" city. There's a lot of pride, especially for the sports, but it's not a big city and I've never heard anyone mention it as a "big" city.
I'm not sure about Burlington, but I have heard people in Maine call Portland a big city. Both in name (I've heard it referred to as "The Big City") and contextually ("I have a hard time driving in big cities like Portland."). Usually I don't care about that stuff, but when I lived there, it used to irk me all the time. Portland is wonderful for a quaint little coastal city. But the whole "Portland is the Big City!" attitude drove me nuts. It was probably one of the more annoying local quirks.
My office is in Boston and we have a satellite in Worcester. I'm there a few times per month. The Worcester folks use the "2nd biggest city in New England" bit all the time.
I think that's mostly a mayor political thing. I Grew up in Worcester, I hang out in Worcester, I live in Boston now. Pretty much everybody I know thinks of Boston as the "big city"
JAX has large city limits and a bloated city population. Atlanta metro sprawls over 8,000 square miles with very little density or cohesive urban character for a metro its size. So, those two feel smaller than cities they typically sit close to on "largest population" lists. And when I say "feel" I don't mean the highways have lots of lanes and a thin string of tall buildings in the distance.
That's JMO.
The Feds decide the size of Metro areas by commuting patterns, but I'm sure you already know this.
Atlanta's Urban Area is a whopping 664 square miles miles larger than Philadelphia's at 2,645 square miles, and contained 4.5 million as of the 2010 Census. I'm guessing it's at about 5 million as of now. More than 90,000 people moved here in the past year, and our share of immigrants in recent arrivals and as a percentage of the population is greater than Philadelphia's. We are also third in the number of new jobs over the last year.
The 'thin string of tall buildings in the distance' you refer to are the four largest individual business districts between D.C. & Texas, built along MARTA's Gold & Red lines that terminate inside the world's busiest Airport.
It sounds like you aren't very familiar with the place.
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The following cities are the only cities that are big time cities across the board to everyone - NYC and LA. I would fully expect most of the world's population to know about or have heard of these two cities.
That being said, the following cities are big time to nearly/virtually everyone, but not all depending on their background (maybe growing up and living all their life in NYC, London, Tokyo, Shanghai etc.): Chicago, Washington DC, San Francisco, Dallas, Boston, Miami, Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Seattle, Phoenix, and Minneapolis. In that general order. In my opinion, these are still among the US's major global cities. I would expect a large percentage of people in the world to know or have heard of these cities too.
After that, it becomes more subjective based on user experiences, so I tend to think of those 14 cities as all-around big time cities, and I think the vast majority of people would really tend to agree. Now, are there more big cities, in my opinion? Absolutely! But convincing nearly everyone to agree on that becomes more and increasingly difficult.
In my personal opinion, the cut-off for a national big city is probably somewhere in the top 50 (1 million in urban area population), such as Richmond, VA. Also IMO, there can be a big city within a state that is most definitely not a big city nationally, such as Burlington, VT or Cheyenne, WY. Definitely small cities, but significant to their respective states.
The Feds decide the size of Metro areas by commuting patterns, but I'm sure you already know this.
Atlanta's Urban Area is a whopping 664 square miles miles larger than Philadelphia's at 2,645 square miles, and contained 4.5 million as of the 2010 Census. I'm guessing it's at about 5 million as of now. More than 90,000 people moved here in the past year, and our share of immigrants in recent arrivals and as a percentage of the population is greater than Philadelphia's. We are also third in the number of new jobs over the last year.
The 'thin string of tall buildings in the distance' you refer to are the four largest individual business districts between D.C. & Texas, built along MARTA's Gold & Red lines that terminate inside the world's busiest Airport.
It sounds like you aren't very familiar with the place.
I'm not saying Atlanta sucks or that it doesn't have a large business district. The reality is that Atlanta city and its metro sprawls a lot. I've been a few times and the "feel" doesn't equate to where it sits in a list of largest metros. That's in spite of intangible stats like immigration, number of jobs, and low-density UA criteria that allows for endless low density tracts to add up to a meaningless number for purposes of this conversation. I define a big city by its numbers AND how it functions and feels on the street level.
Edit: I know a lot of immigrants and international tourists (family and friends), and they have mentioned to me many times that some "big" US cities feel very small to them. Of course, there are a lot of people, but it's so spread out that they land in the core and expect more. Houston is one city that has been mentioned to me. In fact, here's an excerpt from Wikitravel:
Quote:
Houston's large population comes partly from the fact that it encompasses a whopping 600 square miles of land area, much larger in land area than New York City (300 square miles), Los Angeles (460 square miles), and Chicago (225 square miles) -the nation's three most populous cities- yet Houston has less population. Another noticeable fact, unlike most major cities around the country, Houston has relatively few suburbs surrounding it. This is because the city government tends to annex any substanial population centers that grow near it, evident in Houston's land area of 600 square miles. Such a spread out low-density city means a car is essential for getting around the area efficiently. However, Houston's concentration of attractions lay, more specifically, in between downtown and the Galleria.
And Wikitravel is no expert on anything, but it's a consensus on the experiences/perceptions of others to an extent. Again, it doesn't mean any of these places are bad, they just don't feel as big as they appear when looking at vanilla rankings.
Last edited by AJNEOA; 10-06-2017 at 07:14 AM..
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