How many people live within a 50 mile radius of your city?
 

So I stumbled upon this website that allows you measure the population within varioius radiuses(sp?) within the United States. I know this will unfornutately not accurately measure certain boder cities(Detroit,San Diego,Buffalo, El-Paso etc).

I was suprised to see my city of Akron Ohio (uniquely positioned to border 3 other metropolitan areas) have over 4 million people within a 50 mile radius(largest in Ohio and 3rd largest population in the Midwest.

What's the population for your city using this criteria/radius?

http://www.statsamerica.org/radius/big.aspx

Houston: 6,892,427

Philadelphia: 8,666,832

Well, the answer to your question for San Francisco is 7,756,158. But more interesting to me is some of the other demographic information the site provides.

For example, I'm intrigued by the 203,909 people employed in "Information" with an AVERAGE salary of $316,862. I'm guessing these are the titans of tech but wondering how they differ from the 451,574 people employed in "Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services" at an average salary of $171,715. Clearly the latter is a much broader category that would include all manner of technical people (except those in health care which is a third category) but still, wouldn't some of them be in "information technology"?

for a 500 mile radius for central oregon is 28,006,056 population.
the highest number for scattered population in the world probably.
50 miles is only the population of central oregon. thats the west coast.

Newark, NJ
- 25 mile - 13.8 million people
- 100 mile - 30.7 million people

I believe we had a similar thread on this years ago, and it was determined that the biggest population area is somewhere inland between Philly and NYC, either in NJ or PA, depending on how many miles you are using as a measure.

Great find. This is going to be a great resource for me in a few weeks.

Anyhow it's interesting how this differs from MSA rankings:

50-mile radius population:
New York 20,812,722
Los Angeles14,208,130
Chicago 9,380,730
Philadelphia 8,666,832
San Francisco 7,756,158
Boston 7,355,243
Dallas 7,132,900
Washington DC 6,910,078
Houston 6,892,427
Atlanta 6,024,185
Phoenix 4,737,270
Miami 4,687,674
Detroit 4,670,928
Seattle 4,592,151
Tampa 4,190,864
Minneapolis 3,722,902
Cleveland 3,526,126
Denver 3,515,374
San Diego 3,337,685
Portland 2,901,364
St. Louis 2,857,604

^ Here is a cool one for 50 mile radius
Bayonne, NJ 20,803,126
Elizabeth, NJ 19,104,987

It, logically, tracks pretty closely to "media market" rankings.

https://www.newsgeneration.com/broad...radio-markets/

I only did major cities, not suburbs.

at the largest 500 mile radius, the biggest number i could find was charleston, WV with 140,299,799 people.

you get all of the mid atlantic, all the urban midwest minus the plains, and most of the SE minus florida.

can anyone find any place with a bigger number?

at 500 miles, i think the circle has to include NYC, Chicago, and atlanta at a minimum. when i tried to push things further NE to capture boston, you start losing too much of the south.

I looked at a lot of big cities (1 million plus metros) with the 500 mile radius on. The one with the least population was surprising.

I'm guessing a city by the water. Miami would be a good candidate, or Houston.
Also, since they don't count Canada, Seattle.

If you hate people, you might try living in Divide County, North Dakota. 500 mile radius yields only 3.7 million. Of course there's Alaska, but that's cheating.

A lot depends on geography. I'm surprised Chicago is so high. A good chunk of that 50 square mile radius will be water unless the center point was placed far inland. The same with Miami. Its not a "radial" city but a long thin one so a circle is not the best way to measure.

Boise: 773,661

but that felt tiny, so I moved the slider to 475 miles and got: 22,613,649 :D

Ft.Lauderdale returns about 6.2 million vs Miami's 4.7 million by being more central to the metro area.

I really enjoyed Boise when I visited there a few years ago.

Based on a quick glance at the numbers, these look more intuitively accurate than the CSA figures. A Los Angeles of 14 million is more reflective of its actual size than it's CSA population of 19 million that stretches to the Arizona border would suggest, for example. Anything more than 50 miles or so (I would say less, even) is beyond the distance of commutability and isn't really contribute anything to a city.

Philadelphia is probably the one exception here, as it's 50mi radius no doubt bleeds into NYC's NJ suburbs. Still, it does reflect it's potential commuter shed and media market to draw upon though.

I hope it was for the Akron bowl game. That was a great game.