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I love Philadelphia for what it is. It is a fine city in many ways.
But when it comes to actual power and importance, I disagree with what you're saying.
DC and Philadelphia are not even close anymore. There will come a day in the not too distant future when the DC CSA will become 20 million people. This will not happen with Philadelphia anytime soon, unless you're talking about "merging" with New York City CSA. But at that point, Philadelphia will become even more dwarfed.
This is reality in the next 10-20 years. It has nothing to do with boosterism.
Wait...you really think the DC CSA will be 20 million people? How many decades are we talking? Approaching a century? In that time frame anything could happen. Such as 1) a nuke is dropped on DC; 2) the US splits up and DC loses importance; 3) global warming makes DC unlivable; 4) Philly picks up steam again because as we can see anything can happen in the span of just a couple decades so to write Philly off is completely stupid. Those are just 4 scenarios I can think of the top of my head. If everything stays status quo, then yeah sure DC may soon reach 20 million in several several decades. But predicting the future multiple decades ahead is pointless.
I do love Philly, but I also will agree, though, that DC's importance is closer to NYC's at this point. Not to say Philly is bad. I love the city. But it's hard to deny that the nation's capital that's going through a massive boom right now can't top Philly.
Wait...you really think the DC CSA will be 20 million people? How many decades are we talking? Approaching a century? In that time frame anything could happen. Such as 1) a nuke is dropped on DC; 2) the US splits up and DC loses importance; 3) global warming makes DC unlivable; 4) Philly picks up steam again because as we can see anything can happen in the span of just a couple decades so to write Philly off is completely stupid. Those are just 4 scenarios I can think of the top of my head. If everything stays status quo, then yeah sure DC may soon reach 20 million in several several decades. But predicting the future multiple decades ahead is pointless.
I do love Philly, but I also will agree, though, that DC's importance is closer to NYC's at this point. Not to say Philly is bad. I love the city. But it's hard to deny that the nation's capital that's going through a massive boom right now can't top Philly.
I looked back and realize my math is off. DC CSA is currently just under 10 million.
I think it will reach 13 million by 2040. That is a conservative estimate.
However, it's not just about population. It's also about economic power and wealth.
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cpomp
Philadelphia already has the bones in place and was at one point New Yorks rival. I am not saying it will ever happen, but if DC has a chance to "rival" NYC then so does Philadelphia.
I am sensing a ton of boosterism here. First claiming that DC has a chance to rival NYC, then completely dismissing Philadelphia.
And to reiterate, I never said DC wasn't powerful, but DC and Philadelphia are more comparable than DC and NYC. I don't understand why that is an insult or so hard to believe??
I think you are missing his point completely. First of all no "city" in the Americas will really rival NYC for multiple generations. The closest may be LA which to me still is not going to match NYC's level.
The point is that in the Eastern U.S. especially on the Eastern seaboard, DC has already catapulted to 2nd place in almost every important metric, except city proper size vs Philly. Yes that 2nd place is still far far behind in NYC i think that is obvious, but think about where the US Capital was 100 years ago. Today there is more growth in DC's metro area than anywhere in the entire Northeast Corridor, and that stands for something. Philly is in the rear view of DC in terms of importance. In life we look forward to where we are headed and not behind. This is no form a dismissal of Philadelphia, its wonderful city, and or people, it's just an assessment of where things are now.
This is not the 18th century anymore. In 2018 DC is the capital of the most powerful nation in world history and despite people creating hypothetical threads like this, that won't be changing anytime soon. So not expecting to hear or see comparisons to the city in front of it, is not very realistic.
The argument (at least for me) isn’t that DC takes away population, it’s that if the level density of the Boston-Washington corridor was similar (minus DC in this scenario) and there was only one major city in Maryland (with a likely bigger Philadelphia), it is very possible that Baltimore would be a more major city. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. There are a million alternate scenarios where maybe it wouldn’t be, but if all things stayed similar and the Boston-Baltimore (in this scenario) had similar population, Baltimore would likely be bigger.
It seems to me that you're saying that Baltimore would be larger than it is now if DC did not exist, which is the same as saying that Baltimore is smaller than it otherwise would be because DC does exist. Isn't that the same thing as saying DC is "taking away" population from Baltimore?
I don't think we can just take a population of ~52 million as a given and simply add some of DC's population on top of Baltimore's existing population. I mean, we need to account for the fact that the wealthiest and fastest growing county in the state of Maryland, which is part of the Baltimore MSA, owes this fact to the existence of the federal government in DC. You can't take away Ft. Meade, Northrop, Lockheed, Boeing, etc., and the multiplier effect created by these companies, and then assume that all of that industry would be replaced by manufacturing, healthcare, etc.
I looked back and realize my math is off. DC CSA is currently just under 10 million.
I think it will reach 13 million by 2040. That is a conservative estimate.
However, it's not just about population. It's also about economic power and wealth.
There's no denying DC will continue to grow as long as nothing catastrophic happens. 13 million is definitely within reason of what the CSA could reach. The major point holding it back IMO is the urban layout and infrastructure. I'm just not sure where you put all those people in the CSA. You'll end up with massive exurbs that are not served by public transit and DC traffic is already terrible. WMATA is not expanding enough to serve all these potential exurbs, or even properly serve all the suburbs. And the height limits in the District mean that at some point DC will actually reach capacity IMO. It's not like NYC where 2 story buildings were torn down for 5 stories and 5 stories are torn down for 50 stories. NYC just keeps reinventing its housing. DC doesn't have the capability, and it certainly does not have the transit infrastructure to handle multiple high rise apartment buildings in nearly every neighborhood. If anything, I think Arlington will have to pick up the slack and start building higher in NYC-fashion.
Best case scenario, IMO, is people get sick of the drive commutes from exurbs and further out suburbs, so more people move to Baltimore. At some point, the exurbs are going to start being the same time/distance commutes to DC as Baltimore. At least Baltimore already has the urban fabric, and if high speed trains are installed properly from Baltimore and more MD suburbs to DC, then we've got a good game plan. Without transit improvements to the VA side and urbanization of the suburbs out there, the MD side will start to dominate. I know VA does TOD pretty well, but there are so many areas with missed opportunities or just entirely skipped by rail.
Back to the thread topic. No matter if DC was built or not, I think it was always going to work out for Baltimore. Its had a rough couple of decades to put it lightly. But without DC, I don't think the white flight would have been as drastic. Because the white flight to the MD suburbs got picked up by DC, so the re-urbanization other cities are seeing is not happening in the same way. Bmore's suburbs aren't moving back into Bmore, they're moving into DC. But, eventually, DC's influence is going to spread into Bmore city again. I see it at this point mostly in the form of Bmore attracting urbanites that can commute to DC easily combined with urbanites who don't work in government who find the price there not worth it. Those two groups will combine to improve Bmore.
If DC wasn't there to pick up Bmore's white flight and reurbanization the way it has, then the reurbanization would have nowhere to go but back into Bmore. Bmore has experienced some rough times, but with or without DC, reurbanization of major cities is going to do Bmore well...eventually...whenever that is.
As expected the regular DC kids jumping on this thread to boost. Act like you belong! It’s amateurish to feel the need to boost your city all the time. You don’t see people from legacy cities like NYC, LA, Chicago, Boston, Philly, or SF wasting our time boosting or even defending our cities on every thread. We know we belong! Act like you belong with the upper tier! There’s no need to boost. It comes across as amateurish and insecure. It’s reflective of the no-distinct culture of people from DC!!!
I looked back and realize my math is off. DC CSA is currently just under 10 million.
I think it will reach 13 million by 2040. That is a conservative estimate.
However, it's not just about population. It's also about economic power and wealth.
It is silly comparing growth rates in the past to the future. In the past, US population was exploding both with immigrants and people having 8 kids.
Presently, United States already has a negative total fertility rate and it is plummeting and we are converging with Japan. By 2040s, even if we started sucking in all of the people from Mexico, we would be lucky to have 0.1% population growth rate...
If DC wasn't there to pick up Bmore's white flight and reurbanization the way it has, then the reurbanization would have nowhere to go but back into Bmore. Bmore has experienced some rough times, but with or without DC, reurbanization of major cities is going to do Bmore well...eventually...whenever that is.
I doubt DC picked up much of Baltimore's white flight. Those folks mostly went to Baltimore's surrounding suburbs. The growth of the DC suburbs was initially fueled by domestic migration from all corners of the country and then later by immigration.
I doubt DC picked up much of Baltimore's white flight. Those folks mostly went to Baltimore's surrounding suburbs. The growth of the DC suburbs was initially fueled by domestic migration from all corners of the country and then later by immigration.
I don't mean immediately. I mean in the past couple decades, as people have been returning to urban city centers, I bet a lot of the families that moved out of Baltimore in the MD suburbs have children who are moving to DC now instead of Baltimore. OTOH, cities like NYC Boston and Philly have a lot of people who are from the suburbs of their respective cities that are moving into the city centers.
As expected the regular DC kids jumping on this thread to boost. Act like you belong! It’s amateurish to feel the need to boost your city all the time. You don’t see people from legacy cities like NYC, LA, Chicago, Boston, Philly, or SF wasting our time boosting or even defending our cities on every thread. We know we belong! Act like you belong with the upper tier! There’s no need to boost. It comes across as amateurish and insecure. It’s reflective of the no-distinct culture of people from DC!!!
Wow its almost as if "Washington, DC" isn't in the title of this thread.
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