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impact on chicago going from #3 to #4 in terms of population total? none. i believe this has been covered before. malignant population numbers create an impact? on what? were the #2 financial buisness center outside NYC in the us and somehow population total affects this? chicago is the nations commodities exchange command center. also the nations airline and rail transportation hub. chi also ranks 4th GDP worldwide, and is an alpha+ rated city. LA places higher with #3 gdp worldwide, has a higher population, but still rated as an alpha city same as dc and san fran. houston currently holds a beta+ rating, not bad, but it still has a ways to go even if poulation total city proper to city proper is more. to underscore again population numbers has 0 nothing nada to do with a cities importance. my family comes from metro manila a city of 20 million yet its only rated the same as houston at beta+... more likely its what the people are doing in that city with their jobs that affect or help other people elsewhere that determine a cities importance.
one may say ah to hell with global rankings theyre just as meaningless as population totals.... ha think again... the rankings are based on criteria such as economic, cultural, political, infrastructural aspects. this is from wikipedia - "A global city (also called world city or sometimes alpha city or world center) is a city generally considered to be an important node in the global economic system. The concept comes from geography and urban studies and rests on the idea that globalization can be understood as largely created, facilitated, and enacted in strategic geographic locales according to a hierarchy of importance to the operation of the global system of finance and trade."
so again how does a higher population total create a city of greater significance?
if somehow houston population went to #1 ahead of nyc would that make it the usa flagship city? nope!
if houston went to #2 spot ahead of LA would that make h-town better than LA? not really.
im not trashin on houston, im sure its a great place. its just that population numbers are just that. numbers and nothing more.
livin here in chi 30 somethin years, ive yet to see some "impact" psychologically or any, from la goin to #2 spot. people here would view this thread as insignificant. but theyd sure be glad if you like deep dish pizza and rooted for the cubs lol.
your post here is a failure, jpchi60630. it is way too sensible and logical for many who read it. Indeed the very notion that Chicago would be affected by something as meaningless as Dallas and Houston passing it by is absurd. And what I write below is even more absurd: it covers every interrelated issue out there and does so at stupefying length so many would be well advised to stop reading at this point and avoid the lengthiness and discomfort of the read (PS...it is very discomforting; read ahead only at your peril)
in fact, raw population numbers are meaningless; what do they tell you about quality of life or economic power of a city. large numbers can easily be a deterrent for urban success: many cities in the world are failure for their huge size and overcrowded conditions.
besides, only Americans carry on the absurdity of counting city population over metropolitan population as the meaningful one. The world views Boston and San Francisco as large cities, not the small ones they are because the world isn't seeing Boston or San Francisco; it is seeing Metropolitan Boston and the Bay Area.
the notion that every city on the planet doesn't go through both growth and loss of population is insane; cities are orangic and thus gain and lose as circumstances arise.
Most missed by this ridiculous race to the future where cities "pass each other up" as if they were on turns on the track at Indy or at the Kentucky Derby is not only fool hearty; it's sick. The only thing that grows uncontrolled is cancer....and it ends up killing its host. Is that what these fools want? Would they finally be happy if their city had 20 million people, their metro area 40 million, and there were over 100 buildings at 100 floors plus on the landscape....or would they want more. MORE! What sort of maniacally sick huckerism could actually wish for and cheer Houston passing Chicago in population, thinking it a fabulous thing, and wishing to see their city at the top of the global population charts.
What does any of this crazy, insulated, in the American bubble fantasy have to deal with 21st century realities which will see all our cities shrink in size and climate change makes them less and less livable and that the economic structure of global capitalism falls apart not by revolution (though it may come), but by the inability of the planet to sustain this endless machine of endless supply for endless demands. Do they really think the US and the planet will be living under a market economy in the 20 or 30 years before the magical moment when Houston passes Chicago in population (on what, Btw: the remnants of the cancerous oil culture, oil being the chief component of Houston; could you get anymore 'today' without being the least bit relevant to a 'tomorrow' that is rushing into the present?); does the world care about Houston passing Chicago in size? Hardly. And it is the world in which we are now living....for better or for worse (I'll contend worse; we no longer live locally so all of the crap we use is extracted and moved from elsewhere at great expense to self and planet; we are so interconnected we can't even take care of ourselves as individuals any more and have lost that genius of living locally that sustained our ancestors, far smarter than we even with all our technologies, because they were able to live life taking care of their own needs in their ability to actually do things,not outsourcing of virtually everything they needed.
The games must be fun and they will continue. It is far easier to play the games and don't do any serious reading on where this planet is heading to. Too many intelligent minds out there are sharing the realities of a climate at the breaking point, of ecosystems collapsing globally, of the point of no return passed, as well as the limitations of what resource exploitation has done to the planet and its citizens, the growing poverty, and the total breakdown to society and the growing dead zones that already exist across the world and in the US, as well. Google "dead zones" and places like Camden, NJ, and see what people in the US have been written off by the system and live not under capitalism but 21st century feudalism under the control of the uncaring, unnational corporation. And ask yourself....unless we try to stop it soon, where is the rest of America going. And who wants to face the fact that human population and the size of our cities will fall and fall greatly because the world cannot sustain 7 billion people (heading for 10 billion this century, if left unchecked; but it is no longer left unchecked) on a planet that scientists tell us has an outside limit of sustaining no more than 2 billion lives. Doesn't anyone find that whole population graph that shows a virtually left turn, almost a full 90° somewhere starting around 1800 (the first industrial revolution) and jumping skyward from there a bit creepy? Our first global billion was around that time, 1800. That's from the whole long story of the human race. the second one came around the time of the Great Depression (1929 variety; not the 2008 variety) and the time increments keep getting smaller and smaller. Thank extractable oil and rising technologies for the hike....all very much in the moment with no regard to what they will bring on afterward.
Al Gore was right; there are a lot of inconvenient truths out there. In many ways, it would be nice to escape them, to continue our living in fantasyland, to continue the games we play as if the present was merely the happy extension of the second half of the consumer filled 20th century. Unfortunatlely the future is nipping at the heals and biting us in the ass at this very moment. Real time.
but heck if low tax, low service Houston, built on a fossil fuel that is depleted and can only be extracted by digging deep into the ocean or fracking (yea, those are two things you want to do to the only home we have) and that Houston's population will rise...magnficiently....along with the temperatures, I guess that is their prerogative. Although they sure are going to be PO'd when reality smacks them across the face on something that they have hidden themselves from and haven't got a clue.
Population size of the city does not equate to greatness. I live in Dallas and prefer it for many reasons over Chicago. However with that being said, Dallas like many large cities is not a great place to raise a family. I'm ready to get out of here and the sooner the better.
Why do people keep whacking away at these pinatas?
Riverside CA has already gone past Detroit, Sacramento is past Cincinnati and Cleveland, and Virginia Beach is past Milwaukee. So what impact has all that had on ANYTHING?
Why do people keep whacking away at these pinatas?
Riverside CA has already gone past Detroit, Sacramento is past Cincinnati and Cleveland, and Virginia Beach is past Milwaukee. So what impact has all that had on ANYTHING?
I don't think any of this is true.
Detroit has over 5 million in CSA, Cincy and Cleveland have over 3 million. Sacramento really has over 3 million residents?
Eh I take this all with a grain of salt. I mean Miami, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Boston and DC are all smaller cities (proper because the I don't include metros as the Chicago metro continues to grow) than Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Phoenix. Yet those other smaller cities are more well known around the world.
Like almost anything, it's not the size that matters but the rather the quality. I mean Mexico City, Sao Paulo are larger than NYC and London, yet what cities do you hear about more? My point exactly.
Eh I take this all with a grain of salt. I mean Miami, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Boston and DC are all smaller cities (proper because the I don't include metros as the Chicago metro continues to grow) than Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Phoenix. Yet those other smaller cities are more well known around the world.
Like almost anything, it's not the size that matters but the rather the quality. I mean Mexico City, Sao Paulo are larger than NYC and London, yet what cities do you hear about more? My point exactly.
You don't count MSAs because Chicago's continues to grow? You don't like the idea of areas adding land? Surely an MSA growing in population by adding counties due to strengthening commuting ties is the same or in fact more valid a concept than Sunbelt cities annexing masses of land to increase it's population.
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