Will Houston Surpass Chicago? (Marion, Worth: condos, houses, living in)

[Gaylord_Focker]

Originally Posted by nearnorth

Who cares? I'd rather have the better city than the bigger city.

+1. Houston is a sprawling swamp. Chicago is one of America's great cities, regardless of size.

[mjtinmemphis]

Originally Posted by Lookout Kid

Once you reach a certain population as a metro area, extra growth is no longer a benefit except for "whip it out" style bragging rights.

I've lived in fast growing sun belt cities of Charlotte and the Raleigh Durham area and trust me, I understand where your coming from.

New cities don't do it for me. I have to have an urban environment.

Houston has a lot going for it but I could never live there. I would take a Providence or St. Louis any day even though they are smaller.

Houston is not ready to be a ten million people metro! It's not going to happen. I do believe it may surpass Chicago and become the third largest city but it doesn't mean anything.

[Archguy]

Originally Posted by andrew61

Exactly. Because of rampant annexation, a great deal of what is considered "Houston" would be suburbia if you look at Chicago in the same light.

The Greater Houston metro area will not be bigger than Greater Chicago anytime soon, population-wise. Heck, even in Texas it's second to Greater Dallas/Fort Worth.

Exactly right, and it can become tiresome to see so many 'news' articles talking about how Houston or Phoenix are now well up among the nation's 10 largest cities--city limits are artificial political constructs. The more meaningful way to discuss this is in terms of simple agglomerations of people, and the broadest measure of that is the CSA "Combined Statistical Area" (formerly CMSA or "Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area") and by that measure it's Washington-Baltimore, not Houston, which is in fourth place. Houston is 10th.

[thegrid]

I share James Howard Kunstler's view that these southern towns that overly rely on A/C and auto transportation (i.e. unwalkable) and are poorly designed sprawled out growing monsters will not fare to well in the future.

[Maintainschaos]

I know a lot of people talk about Houston surpassing Chicago (city proper) by the next census. Even if the past census trends hold, it would take until 2030 at the earliest before Chicago were fewer people than Houston, and this is assuming loss of 7% per decade for Chicago and growth of 7.5% for Houston.

Year Chicago Houston
2010 2695598 2100263
2020 2509602 2257783
2030 2336439 2427116
2040 2175225 2609150
2050 2025134 2804836
2060 1885400 3015199
2070 1755308 3241339
2080 1634191 3484440

Now if current estimates are used (Chicago at 4% growth over the decade and Houston at 14.5%(!)), it would still take until the 2040 census:

Year Chicago Houston
2010 2695598 2100263
2020 2803422 2404801
2030 2915559 2753497
2040 3032181 3152754
2050 3153468 3609904
2060 3279607 4133340
2070 3410791 4732674
2080 3547223 5418912

So it would take at least two more decades of exactly the same sort of growth and decline before Houston would overtake Chicago. Now, Chicagoland has a HUGE lead in the metro area, so I'm not sure if anyone in our lifetimes would see Chicagoland at a smaller population than the Houston metro.

These exercises are really futile, though, because no city keeps up its record-pace growth forever. If it did, Houston would be virtually 20 million people in the city proper by 2200, and it would eat us all! And, of course, even if Houston does surpass Chicago in city population, it won't (and probably will never, in my opinion) mean that Houston is the better city.

[chicagotyler]

Chicagoland will must likely always be a bigger metro area than Houston's. Huston, however, may have a larger city proper within a few decades.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by thegrid

I share James Howard Kunstler's view that these southern towns that overly rely on A/C and auto transportation (i.e. unwalkable) and are poorly designed sprawled out growing monsters will not fare to well in the future.

The problem with his arguments is that the bleak future for these cities may be a lot further out than he thinks it is. If they cruise on for another fifty years before a crash, I may be dead by the time it happens. But in the mean time, I don't want to live there anyway.

[rparz]

Originally Posted by andrew61

Exactly. Because of rampant annexation, a great deal of what is considered "Houston" would be suburbia if you look at Chicago in the same light.

The Greater Houston metro area will not be bigger than Greater Chicago anytime soon, population-wise. Heck, even in Texas it's second to Greater Dallas/Fort Worth.

Exactly. Only NYC can eclipse Chicago as far as urban city life. IE: Living car-free, riding fairly decent public transportation to most places, and walking distance to quite a few amenities. When I lived in Chicago, I loved having 4 bars within a five minute walk, a corner grocery, two gas stations and a liquor store a few blocks away. About 3 blocks to a vegetable market, and 8 to the super grocery store. Who cares about parking and traffic at that point? Whatever it is, there was something that was closer.

[SalingerBananafish]

Chicago's population density is currently more than 3x Houston. Sounds like Houston is just a giant sprawl and has a long way to catch up in terms of being a city in the 'urban' sense.

Makes me wonder what kind of foot traffic Houston's downtown demands. Los Angeles is more populous than Chicago, but there's no area in LA that has the foot traffic of Chicago's Loop.

[Freefall18]

Are you also worried about New Mexico surpassing Chicago?