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So, of the Top 11 most populous cities in Virginia, 7 of them are the major cities of the Hampton Roads area. These 7 cities are located directly next to each other. It would be similar to the NYC boroughs being separate cities. If they were treated all as one, it would drastically change VA's place on the list.
Jacksonville proper is also a county. It's not unreasonable to think to compare it other counties and not city('s) proper.
City proper is meaningless as a comparison metric.
Jax is a special case indeed, but it does makes sense that Florida would be in the middle of the list. It's has a good mix of urban, rural, suburban, and undeveloped land. Florida's metros are also tiny outside the big 4 (Jax, Tampa, Orlando, and Miami). Tallahassee metro is under a million, and Gainseville metro is pretty small to. It makes sense as to why Florida didn't make the top of the list versus the smaller northeastern states. It debunkes the Florida is full theory.
The largest city [proper] in FL is Jacksonville... Just saying...
A place like Tampa, or Orlando, has a metro pop of ~3 million, while Jax metro is at roughly half.
Orlando's city limits are especially weird.
I can appreciate the work that went into this thread, but I don't think it works.
Florida is the perfect state to use to explain a flaw in the methodology. Jacksonville is just one side of the equation. Its polar opposite is Miami, the second largest city by population in Florida. Jax is the largest land area city in the contiguous US, while Miami has the smallest land area of any major American city at just 36 square miles.
In fact, the land areas of #'s 2-5 in Florida don't even add up to half the land area of Jacksonville. If Jacksonville's land area was more in line with the rest of the state, the top 5 in Florida would be very close to each other. Conversely, if Miami's land area was the size of Jacksonville's (or Houston's or Phoenix's for that matter), it would be a top 3 or 4 city in the United States.
Is this city limits or metro area? No way Georgia is at #22 if it's metro area but if it's city limits makes sense as Atlanta city limits aren't that much bigger than the rest of the cities.
Edit: I see this was done for city limits. I'd be interested to see the same list for metro areas.
Is this city limits or metro area? No way Georgia is at #22 if it's metro area but if it's city limits makes sense as Atlanta city limits aren't that much bigger than the rest of the cities.
Edit: I see this was done for city limits. I'd be interested to see the same list for metro areas.
There's no way that this is a metro area comparison.
Your result is still heavily influenced by your arbitrary choice of "top 5", and might be very different if you had defined for a different cutoff. For example, there is a near-tie for 5-6-7 in Tennessee. But for Alabama, there ia a huge gap beetween 4-5, with a virtual tie for 1-2-3-4. Fifty years ago the positioning of #5 in Tennessee would have resembled today's Alabama.
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