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Orlando
Richmond
Tampa
San Antonio
Louisville
Birmingham
Raleigh
Memphis
Jacksonville
Oklahoma City
Tier 4:
Little Rock
Fort Worth
Hampton Roads
Charleston
Savannah
Greenville
Huntsville
I disagree with you placing New Orleans or San Antonio in a higher tier than Tampa. Also, there is no way that Richmond is in a higher tier than Hampton Roads; I am in both metros on a weekly basis.
I disagree with you placing New Orleans or San Antonio in a higher tier than Tampa. Also, there is no way that Richmond is in a higher tier than Hampton Roads; I am in both metros on a weekly basis.
I'm incorporating various aspects. While Orlando, Tampa, and San Antonio seem to have the larger numbers, but New Orleans actually functions like an actual "city."
I disagree with you placing New Orleans or San Antonio in a higher tier than Tampa. Also, there is no way that Richmond is in a higher tier than Hampton Roads; I am in both metros on a weekly basis.
Then Hampton Roads would have to be in the same tier at best. The Tidewater is a chronically underperforming metro against metros of comparable size (another reason why grouping cities by size is flawed). Also, the major city for the region, Norfolk, is a lesser city than Richmond head-to-head, so the core city advantage goes to Greater Richmond. And we're all familiar with both regions--I wouldn't say Greater Richmond is much better, if at all, as a region in its entirety than the Tidewater. I'm not saying that and I too understand some advantages Tidewater has over Richmond. As metros they belong in the same tier:
Hampton Roads peers by population
Raleigh-Durham (+11.10% growth since '10)
Nashville (+9.54%)
Greensboro-Winston Salem (+3.86) Norfolk-Virginia Beach (+2.87)
*(San Antonio, which is not a peer by size, is a peer economically but has a population growth rate nearly four times that of Hampton Roads)...
Hampton Roads peers by GDP
San Antonio ($108.879, +24.94%) Norfolk-Virginia Beach ($95.680, +13.58)
*(The Triangle and Nashville are too large to be considered economic peers, but are peers by population. Nashville has a GDP growth rate of 25.4%; RDU of 17.84%. Conversely, the Triad has a much smaller economy than HRVA, and has a lesser growth rate of 12.81% to boot)...
Of its peer metros by either size or economy, Hampton Roads lags everyone across the board except the Piedmont Triad in economy, which suggests it is better compared downwards. It is at the very lowest end of its "weight class" and the evidence is even more stark when looking outside the South at similarly-sized metros...
The Tidewater has an edge on Greater Richmond in historical importance (though both regions are chock-full of history); outdoor (particularly water-related) recreation); and possibly sports culture. Besides these, Greater Richmond isn't lacking much in comparison to Hampton Roads. The two are very comparable regions...
The difficulty in tiering the Southern cities/metros is that the region has both a deep American history like the Northeast and a more recent explosion of growth like the West. To complicate it, the more recent growth and power in the region has not followed the historical norms like has happened to a greater extent in the Northeast (Boston is an example of this).
It's easy to make the case that several cities/metros have since passed the heyday when they were more significant to the greater region than they are today. I'm not saying that all of these places are not important; I'm saying that their importance to the region is not as great as it once was. Off the top of my head, this list would include Memphis, New Orleans, Birmingham, Louisville, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Richmond, Norfolk, Charleston and Savannah. Conversely, there are cities that have risen to prominence more recently like all of the Florida cities, Austin, Charlotte & Raleigh. Cities like Atlanta and Nashville make up another category of cities that have maintained or grown their historical influence consistently and/or erratically over the last 100+ years. The rest of the Texas cities fall somewhere between the last two categories but that is likely due to the fact that they were settled later than the Eastern seaboard.
I think that we can choose to look at these cities through whatever lens we want to use and that we are likely tugged by what speaks to us individually. That said, and no matter which lens is chosen, I think that the data is clear that there is a rapidly changing metro landscape across the Southern states that's shifted and continues to shift the balance of influence in the region from many historically significant cities to the upstarts that are continuing to rapidly grow now.
We can measure objectively what's going on and choose our baseline data set to compare but no one method is going to be perfect. As already mentioned, there's the whole MSA/CSA debate that can't be easily solved. There's municipal limit population that comes with its own set of problems because the metros over 1M have core cities that range in size from under 36 square miles (Miami) to well over 700 square miles (Jacksonville). There's UA's but some multi-core metros have more than one UA. Even the single core vs multi-core issue brings about comparative problems.
That said, I picked my data point and criteria and just went to work looking at population and growth rates to see what the trend was. Not surprising to me, the trend confirmed what I already knew anecdotally, that the historically important Southern metros were losing ground and influence to the upstart and rapidly growing metros.
Tier 2:
Charlotte
Nashville
Austin
New Orleans
Orlando
Tampa
Tier 3
Louisville
Richmond
OKC
Jacksonville
Raleigh
San Antonio
Birmingham
Memphis
Hampton Roads
Tier 4
Little Rock
Charleston
Savannah
Greenville
Columbia
Knoxville
Baton Rouge
Winston Salem
Tulsa
Tier 5
Augusta
Myrtle Beach
Jackson
Huntsville
Wilmington
Asheville
Montgomery
Jizzle's post #62 is the one I agree with the most.
A few changes would be Greensboro in tier 4. Savannah in tier 5. Chattanooga is headed towards tier 4. Other tier 5 cities include Roanoke, Charleston WV, Lexington, Tallahassee, Macon and Columbus GA.
Then Hampton Roads would have to be in the same tier at best. The Tidewater is a chronically underperforming metro against metros of comparable size (another reason why grouping cities by size is flawed). Also, the major city for the region, Norfolk, is a lesser city than Richmond head-to-head, so the core city advantage goes to Greater Richmond. And we're all familiar with both regions--I wouldn't say Greater Richmond is much better, if at all, as a region in its entirety than the Tidewater. I'm not saying that and I too understand some advantages Tidewater has over Richmond. As metros they belong in the same tier:
Hampton Roads peers by population
Raleigh-Durham (+11.10% growth since '10)
Nashville (+9.54%)
Greensboro-Winston Salem (+3.86) Norfolk-Virginia Beach (+2.87)
*(San Antonio, which is not a peer by size, is a peer economically but has a population growth rate nearly four times that of Hampton Roads)...
Hampton Roads peers by GDP
San Antonio ($108.879, +24.94%) Norfolk-Virginia Beach ($95.680, +13.58)
*(The Triangle and Nashville are too large to be considered economic peers, but are peers by population. Nashville has a GDP growth rate of 25.4%; RDU of 17.84%. Conversely, the Triad has a much smaller economy than HRVA, and has a lesser growth rate of 12.81% to boot)...
Of its peer metros by either size or economy, Hampton Roads lags everyone across the board except the Piedmont Triad in economy, which suggests it is better compared downwards. It is at the very lowest end of its "weight class" and the evidence is even more stark when looking outside the South at similarly-sized metros...
The Tidewater has an edge on Greater Richmond in historical importance (though both regions are chock-full of history); outdoor (particularly water-related) recreation); and possibly sports culture. Besides these, Greater Richmond isn't lacking much in comparison to Hampton Roads. The two are very comparable regions...
I can agree with the idea that they are in the same tier and that was what I was attempting to convey in my previous message. However, I do not think the Richmond metro is in a higher tier than Hampton Roads; I would give a slight edge to the Tidewater region at the moment. With that said, I think Richmond is a better city than Norfolk, although I like Norfolk and believe it is chronically underrated on this forum. I wish Richmond contained some aspects of Norfolk such as light rail and I wish Norfolk had some aspects of Richmond such as more retained urban neighborhoods/visible history (Norfolk destroyed 90 percent of the inner core in the 50's). I'm glad that Richmond has progressed so much over the past 10 years because I can remember a time in the 90's and early 2000's where the city had some of the highest murder rates in the country and the economy seemed to decline. What events do you think led up to the rebirth and mass gentrification of Richmond?
The only way I can see New Orleans doing so well is if it tiers based on tourism or historic events (or the risk of being wiped off by natural disasters), but in those cases, it should probably be doing even better than most are ranking it.
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