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Originally Posted by RaymondChandlerLives
CSA vs MSA vs Urban Area vs Urbanized Area would be a good debate
Indeed it would be but I'll filter it for the most controversially debatable cities to be in this thread.
Criteria:
- New York
- Los Angeles
- Chicago
- Washington
- Bay Area
- Boston
- Miami
MSA:
- New York19,831,858
- Los Angeles: 13,052,921
- Chicago: 9,522,434
- Washington: 5,860,342
- Miami: 5,762,717
- Boston: 4,640,802
- San Francisco: 4,455,560
CSA:
- New York: 23,347,843
- Los Angeles: 18,317,025
- Chicago: 9,938,969
- Washington/Baltimore: 9,340,977
- Bay Area: 8,376,879
- Boston: 7,981,128
- Miami: 6,391,352
Urbanized Area (UA):
- New York: 18,351,295
- Los Angeles: 12,150,996
- Chicago: 8,608,208
- Miami: 5,502,379
- Washington: 4,586,770
- Boston: 4,181,019
- San Francisco: 3,281,212
UN Urban Area:
- New York: 20,464,000
- Los Angeles: 14,900,000
- Chicago: 9,121,000
- Bay Area: 5,864,000
- Miami: 5,582,000
- Washington: 4,679,000
- Boston: 4,427,000
Couple of questions now.
- Which city feels the largest (well this is a no brainer)? Which one the smallest?
- Which metric do think most accurately displays the size and feel of these cities and why?
- How would you arrange these in order of largest feeling to smallest feeling?
Also, leaving this broad option as well, if there's something you feel that should be shared in terms of the relevance of this debate, ala size, feel, metric then please feel free to state it!
In terms of feel
NYC
LA(It feels closer in scale to NYC than the numbers would indicate)
Bay Area
Chicago
Miami
Washington
Boston
In the northeast/mid-atlantic, the numbers tend to be much higher than the connective feel of an area would indicate, boston feels like 3mil then the rest of massachsetts, which is charming but is some of the worst sprawl, and does not feel connected to boston, the same is true for DC which feels like 5mil, Philly 4mil, and even NYC feels much closer to 10mil than 20. The same is not true for most of the rest of the country, except Atlanta which is an extreme case. LA, and the cities designed like it feel like they go on forever, and have a ton of flatland.
In terms of feel
NYC
LA(It feels closer in scale to NYC than the numbers would indicate)
Bay Area
Chicago
Miami
Washington
Boston
In the northeast/mid-atlantic, the numbers tend to be much higher than the connective feel of an area would indicate, boston feels like 3mil then the rest of massachsetts, which is charming but is some of the worst sprawl, and does not feel connected to boston, the same is true for DC which feels like 5mil, Philly 4mil, and even NYC feels much closer to 10mil than 20. The same is not true for most of the rest of the country, except Atlanta which is an extreme case. LA, and the cities designed like it feel like they go on forever, and have a ton of flatland.
I disagree on a couple of things, first I don't think the Bay area feels larger than Chicago, I think LA and Chicago are closer to each other than LA is to NYC, and Chicago feels like it goes on forever more than LA does to me atleast IMO.
In terms of feel
NYC
LA(It feels closer in scale to NYC than the numbers would indicate) Bay Area
Chicago
Miami
Washington
Boston
Aside from the two in bold, good list.
Chicago is not a Bos-Wash city nor does it develop like one. Chicago can best be described as where the eastern United States meets the western United States. Midwestern cities have an American style of built form which is a complete contrast from the upper Southeast and all of the Northeast.
Chicago has an impressive core and moving out from it, plenty of miles north, south, or west it never withers away in development and keeps a density three times higher on average than somewhere like Boston or Atlanta. You don't feel like you're out of Chicagoland until you are actually out of Chicagoland and the difference is noticeable when the development on the outskirts wither away to rural, coming in from rural and entering development from all sides will leave you with the impression you're "in the city" now.
Contrast that from a journey from say either Hagertown to Washington, Providence to Boston, or Allentown to either New York and Philadelphia where your trek will include rural country side for much of the way and in Providence's case low density forested neighborhoods.
Last edited by Trafalgar Law; 03-16-2013 at 11:30 PM..
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
8,129 posts, read 7,579,110 times
Reputation: 5796
Quote:
Originally Posted by killakoolaide
In terms of feel
NYC
LA(It feels closer in scale to NYC than the numbers would indicate)
Bay Area
Chicago
Miami
Washington
Boston
In the northeast/mid-atlantic, the numbers tend to be much higher than the connective feel of an area would indicate, boston feels like 3mil then the rest of massachsetts, which is charming but is some of the worst sprawl, and does not feel connected to boston, the same is true for DC which feels like 5mil, Philly 4mil, and even NYC feels much closer to 10mil than 20. The same is not true for most of the rest of the country, except Atlanta which is an extreme case. LA, and the cities designed like it feel like they go on forever, and have a ton of flatland.
A city can't "feel" like 4 or 5 million it just simply is what it is. ALL of these cities have unique commuting patterns and suburban attributes that none of the others have. Are the CSA's overdoing it and stretching too much? certainly, but that doesn't take away from what is factual in some instances.
DC does not feel 900,000 people smaller than Miami, which is what the UN Urban Area would indicate. That's not even possible when the CSA of DC/Baltimore is above 9 million. I'm not saying it "feels" like 9 million, but it definitely doesn't feel smaller than South Florida's metro.
Heck the MSA's even speak to that:
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV: 5,860,342
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL: 5,762,717
Obviously the topography and layout of Miami has an effect on how people feel driving through the place, but that's only a part of what the reality is. S FLA just feels long because you ride through it on I-95 for 100 miles without disruption. DC has many satellite suburbs that circle or surround it with LARGE populations, it may not be as obvious from the highway as Miami's but it's still there.
And how does NY feel like 20 million, but DC feel like 5 million? DC shares a metropolis with another major city, it is more like the Bay or DFW, not NYC. It really only matters how the entire region feels not just the immediate DC ring of suburbs. Be careful in assessing the size of a metropolis because I would not be adding Monmouth, NJ to the "feeling" of NYC being 20 million. And if so, I certainly could make the case for Baltimore suburbs that are closer to DC than Monmouth is to NYC in order to achieve the same feeling.
Last edited by the resident09; 03-17-2013 at 01:47 AM..
DC does not feel 900,000 people smaller than Miami, which is what the UN Urban Area would indicate. That's not even possible when the CSA of DC/Baltimore is above 9 million. I'm not saying it "feels" like 9 million, but it definitely doesn't feel smaller than South Florida's metro.
The difference between the United States' version of the urban area and the United Nations' version of the urban area is that the United States version doesn't combine the continuous urban stretch of an area when they are beyond MSA boundaries lines, which is why they have somewhere like Los Angeles as 12.1 and the United Nations' version has it as 15 million. That's a three million difference and the United Nations is more accurate, Los Angeles is continuously and densely (for America anyway) built up into the Inland Empire.
They also account for the fact that while the CSA is 18 million, that places like Lancaster, Hemet, Temecula, Barstow, Palmdale, Palm Springs, Indio, Victorville, the Channel Islands have little to no developmental connection with the rest of the urbanized stretch.
Albeit like all metrics, even they have their flaws but they are by far and away the most accurate of them all.
Here's a graphic I made a few days ago which shows Los Angeles bleeding development right through the gates of Inland Empire, it's a very large and thick development right in and stays that way for much of it. Here's Washington/Baltimore, the area in red for Los Angeles is a population of 15 million people (I drew it in a haste and it included some leafy areas in it, which is more than 15 million people but the developed and continuous stretch is 15 million) and the one for the DMV is 6.7 million people by a continuous urbanized and developed stretch. Miami's MSA to both United States' UA and United Nations' UA is a 100% match. The population stays consistent in all three metrics and I can see why, it's a very dense, linear, and continuous development without and scatter shot disjointed portions to it. In actual life by my personal experience and my own opinion, both Southeast Florida and the Metroplex absolutely feel like a peer of the DMV and to me they feel a bit larger like a 50.1% to a 49.9% type of situation, it's close but yeahhh. That's just my opinion with no basis of facts on that one. To me, the DMV, Houston, and Philadelphia areas feel roughly about the same size all things considered for an area and then it's Boston and Atlanta. Bay Area feeling fourth after Chicago, by a hair over the other eight that all closely compete with one another. They are essentially all the same tier for total area comparison.
In my opinion, Los Angeles model is a metropolitan while the DMV is a conurbation. The lives of people in the Inland Empire revolve around living in a massive bedroom community of Los Angeles, the place has no economy outside of construction and it's reflected by it's GDP for more emphasis. Whereas I am willing to bet with no facts but I am willing to put stock on it that over 2 million people of the 2.7 million people in the Baltimore area rarely venture into Washington and their lives don't revolve around Washington, just as several millions of us here in Washington view Baltimore more similarly. They are undeniably a conurbation but not a metropolitan. Bay Area and the Metroplex are more similar to Los Angeles on this, Tarrant County in the Metroplex where Fort Worth is a bedroom community to the fullest of Dallas and it's county, likewise Santa Clara to San Francisco in my personal opinion based off living in one and spending a few months in the other.
Last edited by Trafalgar Law; 03-17-2013 at 02:09 AM..
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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I agree Baltimore and Washington definitely have their separate sphere's of influence that kind of dominate the area, but that does not take away from the cross commuting or interaction that does happen. Not only between the two cities, but between their individual suburbs which run into each other, however you want to slice it there are people who travel from Glen Burnie to College Park, or Greenbelt to Annapolis, or Beltsville to Baltimore for whatever reasons on a daily basis. All of these cities are within 25-30 miles and roughly no more than 30 minutes or so away from each other. Now if I use those similar metrics in S. FLA how much more connected is Boca Raton to Hialeah for example which is more like 45 miles and 1 hour from each other. Yet their Urban Area all runs together as one due to the linear metro that never is more than 20 miles wide and at some points only 5 miles wide. IMO this is misleading when comparing it to DC-Baltimore.
Those graphics are good and I believe everything within the red should really be what is considered as the true population of those regions. To me that map shows DC-Baltimore as a whole being around 7.5- 8 million within those red lines, which to me sounds fairly accurate, but correct me if I'm wrong.
DC-Baltimore feels like a region, but not a metropolis. DC-Baltimore should have metropolitan divisions. Metropolitan divisions, is the most accurate metric. Philly's is ony 4mil, and that's about the number of people connected to CC via SEPTA, so seems about right.
IMHO, metropolis defines a much stricter area vs "region" or "area". Infrastructure is a defining role in what defines one single metropolis.
Until downtown DC to downtown BMore is truly a reasonable commute, they are not really one.
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