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Jacksonville is bigger than San Francisco.
[grabs popcorn and waits]
Excellent point. Here's another that differs from the thread so far. Orlando has a city population of 238,000 and an MSA of 2 million. Any other cities of that size "influence" their much larger geographic MSA (4000 square miles in Orlando's case)?
Location: Jefferson City 4 days a week, St. Louis 3 days a week
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BigCityDreamer
I always go by MSA or CSA. Those figures show the true size and influence of a city much more accurately.
Yes! Truer words have never been spoken. This is especially necessary with cities like St. Louis and Baltimore, whose cities aren't part of their counties.
This is interesting. I've noticed that around the world City Metro populations are listed as THE population more than city proper in most cases. I think it's because sources like the almanac still list US Cities by city proper than MSA that we get that confusion. But I remember looking up Australian cities and I could only find Metro Populations and not city proper. This whole time I thought Sydney was bigger than LA lol.
Also, this leads to some confusion when defining the biggest cities in the World. Tokyo is the consensus #1 but there are a few cities with a "city proper" population greater I think, I could be wrong...
I've always used MSA population instead of city limit population, mainly because it sounds better to say my city has over a million residents, than it does 200 thousand.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MB8abovetherim
This is interesting. I've noticed that around the world City Metro populations are listed as THE population more than city proper in most cases. I think it's because sources like the almanac still list US Cities by city proper than MSA that we get that confusion. But I remember looking up Australian cities and I could only find Metro Populations and not city proper. This whole time I thought Sydney was bigger than LA lol.
Also, this leads to some confusion when defining the biggest cities in the World. Tokyo is the consensus #1 but there are a few cities with a "city proper" population greater I think, I could be wrong...
Because in most cases that is the ONLY WAY in which our city populations are measured/counted.
Like I said before, Perth's official population is the Perth Metropolitan Region - a statistical 'region', also known as the Metropolitan region. There is a local government council known as the 'City of Perth' but it is nothing like American municipal local governments. It is just another 'city' or 'shire', which handles local things like rates, libraries, parks, sporting facilities, rubbish...that sort of thing. Nothing like a city police force.etc...The 'City of Perth' also includes the innermost 'suburbs' and the Central Business District (CBD) or 'downtown.' Only about 30,000 live in the jurisdiction known as the 'City of Perth.' 'Suburb' has a different connotation here. Here, a suburb is an official postal boundary with specific boundaries. Maybe equivalent to a 'neighbourhood' or post code in the US, like say Beverly Hills or Greenwich Village. The typical 'suburb' in Australia has about 2,000 - 20,000 people, with most being in the middle range. My suburb is 13 km from the CBD, has a population of 6,500, and is in the 'City of Melville', with a population of 100,000. The 'City of Melville' is one of about 40 'local government areas' (LGAs) in the Metropolitan area.
It works the same way in all the other cities. The 'city proper' of the Sydney City Council includes only the INNER area and has only 20,000. That's right, Sydney's 'city proper' has only 20,000 people! Yet nobody would ever say that Sydney has a population of 20,000 people and start comparing it to regional centres like the City of Coffs Harbour, which has more than 20,000 people but a metro area of only about 60,000. The metro area has about 4.7 million people, and if you include the area from Newcastle to Wollongong this number rises to over 5.5 million. Sydney probably has a similar density to a city like LA, to give you an idea. 'Cumberland County' is sometimes equated with Sydney, but other than that in a very real sense Sydney is broken up into many cities with their own function. Everything else is a state or federal concern. There's no such thing as city fire brigades or police forces: these are all state. Only the Brisbane City Council comes close to the American type of city municipality. It covers much of Greater Brisbane and has over 1 million people. Still, it doesn't have it's own police force or schools. That is a state function. So it would be the Queensland Police Force, not the Brisbane Police Force. Brisbane metro has about 2 million.
I hope this gives you some idea about how our administrative regions are arranged.
Most police in the US go by municipality, then county, then state. Some cities have metropolitan police. They all have roughly the same powers, but the only difference being how limited in where the lower levels serve and patrol. Quite a few other departments of government usually follow this pattern. It seems really redundant compared to Australia, but it creates situations in which city proper can have horrible services while the suburbs (or even select suburbs) have excellent services. Almost always city proper is larger than the surrounding suburbs. That then leads to various city vs suburb problems.
Where I live, it's often a big deal when a businesses and people move from the suburbs into the city proper since at one point the inverse was happening. People think of Detroit as having lost 25% of it's population since 1950 (which city proper did), but the actual metro population grew from 2.6 million to 4.8 million within roughly the same time frame. So what actually exists is a sort of hollow core of a metropolitan city. By city proper, Detroit is ranked 18th in the US, but by MSA it's 13th, and by urban area, it's 9th (year 2000). Without knowing the metro, you would have thought Detroit basically fell off the map (which quite a lot of Americans believe to be true).
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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Quote:
Originally Posted by animatedmartian
Most police in the US go by municipality, then county, then state. Some cities have metropolitan police. They all have roughly the same powers, but the only difference being how limited in where the lower levels serve and patrol. Quite a few other departments of government usually follow this pattern. It seems really redundant compared to Australia, but it creates situations in which city proper can have horrible services while the suburbs (or even select suburbs) have excellent services. Almost always city proper is larger than the surrounding suburbs. That then leads to various city vs suburb problems.
Where I live, it's often a big deal when a businesses and people move from the suburbs into the city proper since at one point the inverse was happening. People think of Detroit as having lost 25% of it's population since 1950 (which city proper did), but the actual metro population grew from 2.6 million to 4.8 million within roughly the same time frame. So what actually exists is a sort of hollow core of a metropolitan city. By city proper, Detroit is ranked 18th in the US, but by MSA it's 13th, and by urban area, it's 9th (year 2000). Without knowing the metro, you would have thought Detroit basically fell off the map (which quite a lot of Americans believe to be true).
I think our system works quite well. What I don't get is why the need for city municipalities in addition to counties? I suppose it's like the English system where most metropolitan areas are designated urban areas. But isn't say, King County synonymous with Seattle? Why not give King County 'rule' over Seattle and it's suburbs, as any other county? I don't get why the need for special city administrative regions. Just make them counties like all the rest but with the functions needed to run a city. And then you have strange situations like Atlanta with a metro over 5 counties or something.
This whole city vs suburbs thing you speak about is quite alien to Australia. We talk about the CBD, inner suburbs and outer suburbs. In most cities, many inner suburbs are actually not too different to some outer 'burbs except for the housing stock and density. I've always thought of suburbs as merely divisions of a city. The Downtown of Perth itself is actually a suburb, too, technically speaking. The rural equivalent is a 'locality'. I guess it's lost it's original meaning of sub-urban here.
Maybe equivalent to a 'neighbourhood' or post code in the US, like say Beverly Hills or Greenwich Village. The typical 'suburb' in Australia has about 2,000 - 20,000 people, with most being in the middle range. My suburb is 13 km from the CBD, has a population of 6,500, and is in the 'City of Melville', with a population of 100,000. The 'City of Melville' is one of about 40 'local government areas' (LGAs) in the Metropolitan area.
One slight correction here: Beverly Hills is its own municipality with its own mayor (as an aside, the mayor is the first Iranian-American mayor in the US), post codes (90210!), and schools. http://www.beverlyhills.org/governme...il/default.asp
Technically, it is a "suburb" in then it's separate from the city of Los Angeles but when Angelenos talk about "the suburbs," they're not talking Beverly Hills -- they may be referring to someplace like Sherman Oaks or Van Nuys, which despite their location across the mountains in the San Fernando Valley, are part of the city of Los Angeles. Right next door to Beverly Hills is the city of West Hollywood which didn't become a city until 1984 when residents decided to incorporate. Before that it was an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County and was not part of the city of Los Angeles. (Which, as another aside, is why so many music clubs and gay bars historically have been in West Hollywood; when it was unincorporated, West Hollywood was under the purview of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs who had a reputation for being more tolerant of "alternative lifestyles" than the gung-ho LAPD of the era. The same with Venice which became a haven for hippies and the like.)
And Greenwich Village is just a neighborhood in New York City, not its own city. It can be very confusing to someone from overseas.
If you want to see the "City limits" vs. MSA/CSA battles go epic, visit any Houston vs. Dallas smackdown thread.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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Originally Posted by TrueDat
One slight correction here: Beverly Hills is its own municipality with its own mayor (as an aside, the mayor is the first Iranian-American mayor in the US), post codes (90210!), and schools. Technically, it is a "suburb" in then it's separate from the city of Los Angeles but when Angelenos talk about "the suburbs," they're not talking Beverly Hills -- they may be referring to someplace like Sherman Oaks or Van Nuys, which despite their location across the mountains in the San Fernando Valley, are part of the city of Los Angeles. And Greenwich Village is just a neighborhood in New York City, not its own city. It can be very confusing to someone from overseas.
If you want to see the "City limits" vs. MSA/CSA battles go epic, visit any Houston vs. Dallas smackdown thread.
It's amusing the see those Texans go at it with each other. No one outside Texas is the least bit interested in those generic sprawl-fests.
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