Small metros that punch above their weight

[SIGSEGV]

Yeah I haven't been to Duluth but it looks fairly impressive from Streetview.

[Docere]

Kingston, Ontario. Very vibrant core for a city of 150,000.

[Razor]

Originally Posted by Docere

Kingston, Ontario. Very vibrant core for a city of 150,000.

+1 I agree!

[JAYNYC]

Wilmington, DE
New Haven, CT
Hartford, CT

[Dariusb]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Grand Rapids struck me as surprisingly large when I was there recently. It's metro is about 1,000,000, but that includes some suburbs which are a bit of a stretch to include (Muskegon / Holland). It's effectively more like 700,000.

Agreed on Calgary, it feels massive compared to it's metro population. The downtown isn't quite as busy as a larger city, but the skyline certianly matches a city more so double to triple it's size.

I think it has to do with it's role as the business headquarters for Canada's oil industry and it's associated highly concentrated downtonwn employment focus. It's much more of a white collar city than Edmonton, and most of the jobs are downtown.

Would you say Edmonton is in a similar league with Calgary or no?

[Dariusb]

Originally Posted by Chef

In terms of small metros with quality classic urbanism, Duluth and Madison are the winners in this part of the country. Both Des Moines and Rochester (and Fargo and Sioux Falls) are really wanting when it comes to street level urbanity.

Cool. I've heard nothing but good things about Madison.

[Razor]

Originally Posted by Chef

In terms of small metros with quality classic urbanism, Duluth and Madison are the winners in this part of the country. Both Des Moines and Rochester (and Fargo and Sioux Falls) are really wanting when it comes to street level urbanity.

I know that Duluth is a destination for cross border shopping trips, so it has that catchment area as well. Thunder Bay, etc.

[Sun Belt]

In addition to what's already been said, I'll introduce an overlooked outlier of a place: Tucson.

It's a pretty small and isolated city, yet has a huge university and a thriving urban in-fill environment with a street car. The entire metro region is about 1 million people. There's no skyline, but the built environment in the core has been gaining momentum in the last decade.

Everything is centered around the University of Arizona.

Here's a recent post with pics:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=7254


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Link

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

In addition to what's already been said, I'll introduce an overlooked outlier of a place: Tucson.

It's a pretty small and isolated city, yet has a huge university and a thriving urban in-fill environment with a street car. The entire metro region is about 1 million people. There's no skyline, but the built environment in the core has been gaining momentum in the last decade.

Everything is centered around the University of Arizona.

Here's a recent post with pics:
http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=7254

I’ve been curious about Tucson since I was a kid. Albuquerque too.

My sister is law went to NAU in Flagstaff and through that connection my brother spends a week there a year. He raves about the place. Says it’s a Southwestern Asheville.

Speaking of, shouldn’t Asheville be in this discussion?

[ThePhun1]

Not a metro but for a city of 50k within a metro but also with some distance from the core, Galveston packs an incredible punch. It operates more as a metro of 200-250k.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Rochester, Minnesota always struck me as impressive, but I'm not sure how much of that is the Mayo Clinic. Never actually been there.

Rochester kinda sucks. Remember that Mayo is still a US medical center, so it's got huge monolithic buildings, blank ground floors, and lots of parking garages and underutilized spaces.

Now, take a huge medical center from, say, Houston or LA and drop it into a small Midwestern town with the bones of a small Midwestern town. The traditional urbanism is very patchwork and not cohesive at all, and occupied by the usual mix of sleepy Main Street businesses - insurance salesmen, thrift shops, cutesy coffee shops, etc. Then the new buildings are all connected by skyway, so any life that exists in town is squirreled away from street level.

However, the original Mayo Clinic tower from 1955 is very cool in a Mad Men kind of way...
https://www.google.com/maps/@44.0222...7i13312!8i6656

And the Plummer Building is a beautiful Spanish Gothic tower that would not look out of place on Central Park West:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plummer_Building

But yeah, that's two buildings surrounding by dreck...

[craigs]

Victoria
Reno
Spokane
Eugene

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by Shawn

I’ve been curious about Tucson since I was a kid. Albuquerque too.

My sister is law went to NAU in Flagstaff and through that connection my brother spends a week there a year. He raves about the place. Says it’s a Southwestern Asheville.

I've spent a great deal of time in Flag and Tucson.

Flag is an interesting place with a great downtown core, next to the historic train tracks and the old Route 66 -- the present day 40 took over much of it, but in the old townsite areas it's still there.

It's Really really cold in the winter time, especially after 3pm, yet 2 hours from Phoenix, but during the day, it's sunny and pleasant.

[Razor]

Originally Posted by Dariusb

Would you say Edmonton is in a similar league with Calgary or no?

Oh for sure..Both have different MO'S, so as a result compliment each other .
If there was a third similar sized metro in Alberta, there would be an Ohio situation. Calgary does have a more impressive skyline though IMO. To me, Edmonton looks it's size.

[Dariusb]

Originally Posted by craigs

Victoria
Reno
Spokane
Eugene

I'm assuming you're talking about Victoria, BC and not Victoria, Tx, lol!

[Chef]

Originally Posted by Razor

I know that Duluth is a destination for cross border shopping trips, so it has that catchment area as well. Thunder Bay, etc.

The thing about Duluth was that it was built out like a real city prior to the depression but after WWII it stagnated so the old stuff was never torn down to build autocentric post war developments or podium towers like in more prosperous American cities but it also didn't get bad enough that it was cleared by urban renewal, so most of it is still there. It is rough around the edges. It kind of reminds me of a bigger city in the '70s/'80s - bohemian but not hipster, ungentrified, unselfconsciously weird, lots of characters. The whole thing is built on a steep hillside next to a big port. It is far enough away from everywhere else that it kind of stews in its own juices culturally speaking. It feels like a little coastal city at the edge of the world.

[ThePhun1]

Originally Posted by Dariusb

I'm assuming you're talking about Victoria, BC and not Victoria, Tx, lol!

Victoria is actually a pretty common name among places.

[pico44]

Originally Posted by Dariusb

Fayetteville, Ark; Billings, MT; Fargo, ND; Topeka, KS?

I honestly can't think of worse answer to this question than Topeka, Kansas. I've spent some time there and it is depressed as hell. Some cities are lucky enough to be stuck in previous eras that are lovely and quaint. Not Topeka, it's stuck in 1977. My wife lived there for a while as a child, and when she visited some old friends and they went to the same restaurant in the same 1970s strip mall she used to go to 25 years ago; and they had the same menu the same prices! And I've never seen a single pedestrian in any of my visits there, and I've only ever heard of one, and he mugged my sister-in-law! It's like a living William Eggleston photograph.

I love it

[Yuri]

Des Moines, Omaha, Tulsa and Honolulu. The four looks like much bigger metro areas. Maybe due strong economy and big hinterlands.

[north 42]

I would say Halifax punches well above it’s weight given it’s metro is just over 400,000. It’s effectively acts as the go to city for the Maritime provinces.