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There is no doubt you are correct...Philly would be the biggest, most mountainous, best climate city it if was bigger, near the mountains and was in California for climate.
The Philly MSA was larger than the Dallas MSA before we lost so many counties in the past couple census. But your right the Dallas region is so much larger even though the Philly region reaches about 7,000,000 within 7,000 sq. miles without infringing on the New York, Baltimore and Lehigh Valley MSA. The Dallas area is so much bigger than the Philly area even though Philly is the 4th largest market, which is largely based off of raw population numbers.
Dallasites cannot deny the fact that their city's growth over time has been highly related to annexation; Dallas is more than twice the size of Philly by land area with even fewer people -- not to mention it does not have to contend with "land battles" from adjacent metro areas.
For this reason, the economic growth/influence of Philadelphia does tend to be understated. We're not asking for your sympathy, but at least understand that the geopolitical dynamics of these two cities definitely do not allow for an apples-oranges comparison.
Dallasites cannot deny the fact that their city's growth over time has been highly related to annexation; Dallas is more than twice the size of Philly by land area with even fewer people -- not to mention it does not have to contend with "land battles" from adjacent metro areas.
For this reason, the economic growth/influence of Philadelphia does tend to be understated. We're not asking for your sympathy, but at least understand that the geopolitical dynamics of these two cities definitely do not allow for an apples-oranges comparison.
Dallas hasn't annexed land in decades. The surrounding suburbs gobbled up all the land.
At this point in time, I'd say Dallas is slightly more important. Philly has the cultural and historical importance on its side, but Dallas has economic importance along with rapid growth.
I wouldn't mind living in Philly. I've only been a few times, but it seems like an awesome city. Philly has a lot of very cool neighborhoods, some of which are absolutely beautiful. It's a great food town as well. Personally, I would never consider moving to Dallas. I've been there a couple of times, and I feel like moving to Dallas would be a severe downgrade in quality of life.
Did you really need both a "too close to call" option and a "don't know" option for your poll? Isn't one just a sub-category of the other? Obviously, "don't care" means something different, but the other two I mentioned above essentially mean the same thing, said in different ways.
Now maybe you meant "don't know" to mean the respondent is not familiar with one or both of these cities, and that would mean something different. But in that case, you need to spell it out, because "don't know" by itself doesnt tell the reader that. And, really, anyone whose not familiar with both cities shouldn't be answering the poll.
The confusion inherant in you answer choices, especially the "don't know" in comparison to "too close to call" is leading to some pretty confusing poll results that are hard to interpet. You need to do a better job of writing answers that fit into clear, distinct buckets, so we can make better sense of the poll results.
Dallasites cannot deny the fact that their city's growth over time has been highly related to annexation.
Your confusing Dallas with Houston.
And before we get into this whole "Dallas is bigger because it's metro is 9k square miles" bull***t argument again, remember that 5.8 million people live in only 3600 square miles of DFW. The rest is small towns and open farm land.
Dallas hasn't annexed land in decades. The surrounding suburbs gobbled up all the land.
Be that as it may, it has annexed land much, much more recently than Philadelphia (like around one hundred years more recently). Hence, you have a much more mature growth rate in Philly.
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