What small-medium city offers the best big city and urban feel? (suburban, residential)

[Charlesaf3]

Richmond, Portland,Burlington, providence

[KodeBlue]

Originally Posted by ColdAilment

I'm not sure how Baltimore gets away with only having a metro of 2.7 million. It's basically part of the greater D.C. metro area, although Baltimore is older and was established first. D.C. metro is over 5 million, and Baltimore is a quick commute from D.C.

Baltimore is its own city and metro apart from the DC metro. They're 2 separate metros.

[tcave360]

Definitely Baltimore.

[tcave360]

Originally Posted by KodeBlue

Baltimore is its own city and metro apart from the DC metro. They're 2 separate metros.

They are separate but these days, as they continue to grow, especially from here in the DC area, the two metros are becoming more and more connected and infused. Even though both areas and their host major cities have nearly extreme cultural differences.

[costello_musicman]

Charleston, SC and New Orleans, LA as well.

[Jdawg8181]

Long Beach, NY

[Poquoson7]

Rva

[Iconographer]

Albany, NY
Wilmington, DE
Providence, RI

[eschaton]

It depends upon what you're looking for. Most medium-sized cities will have a relatively built up downtown. But in a lot of cities, particularly in the Sun Belt but to a lesser extent in New England and the Great Lakes, once you get outside of Downtown you're in relatively suburban neighborhoods full of detached single-family housing. It might be old and small lot, but it's not really hyper dense/urban in terms of its look.

I tend to think the "rowhouse belt" cities tend to provide the most urban feel. The major ones being Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Saint Louis as you travel east to west. Technically past Pittsburgh it's more common to have "detached rowhouses" which front on the street but have gaps from neighboring houses, but they still look very similar overall to one another, and not much like most Southern or Great Lakes cities.

In Pennsylvania this dynamic is continued even in smaller cities and boroughs. So Allentown has less than 120,000 people, but hundreds of blocks which look like this. The same general model holds for Norristown, a borough of 35,000. Or hell, Jim Thorpe, a borough with less than 5,000 people. That's not to say they all have the big city hustle and bustle, of course, but you can end up with surprisingly urban environments in the middle of nowhere.

[jeromedot]

Norfolk, VA has majority of the amenities that you would find in an big city. The city has a real gritty/ urban feel to it in certain parts