Sunbelt battle for #2?
 

Dallas/Fort Worth has 7.5 million. Houston(7 million), Miami(6.2 million), Atlanta(6 million) and Phoenix(4.5 million). Do you think Dallas will maintain it's lead or will one of it's Sunbelt brethren snatch it away? Could this happen in 20, 30, 40 years or not at all? I know these things are impossible to pinpoint but it's just hypothetical.

Probably not Miami.

Probably yes Dallas as second for the foreseeable future. The only one that I could see significantly picking up growth again in the future is Phoenix due to outflow from California.

That's interesting and Phoenix definitely has the land. I didn't pick Houston, although to some it seems obvious, due to flooding/hurricane. Then again I could be wrong. I know Atlanta was growing pretty quickly and has slowed down (correct me if I'm wrong). Then again it could once again go through periods of crazy growth.

Dallas will likely hold that #2 spot

Really, though? I consider "the sunbelt" to be the low overhead, fast growth swath of the southern and southwestern U.S. that I don't think includes coastal California, anymore.

That would mean that Dallas is top dog.

If California is the Sun Belt, SF probably has a good claim for #2. If California is not included, Dallas and Houston are probably #1 and #2.

I could see Atlanta ultimately overtaking Houston in the future.

If California counts as the Sunbelt, the Bay area is definitely #2.

considering the whole sunbelt from coast to coast as its own distinct regional entity seems silly to me.

miami, dallas, and LA are no more in a single region together than NYC, chicago, and seattle are.

which is to say that they simply are not in a single region together.

What are we defining as "sunbelt" anything south of Mason Dixon?

I dont know if Id call Miami "sunbelt" although it is quite sunny.

Phoenix is at just about 5 million today and it is growing rapidly but I dont think it will beat Dallas at least not for several decades. I expect Phoenix growth to peter off somewhere between 7 and 8 million.

How much can it grow long term for the rest of the century when it isnt on a boom-town-pace but a stable pace... hard to guess I think that depends on a lot of things

Agree within this broad term of sunbelt you have the Southeast, Southern Florida, the Deep south, the MId-south (Kentucky, Tennessee) the Carolinas/ Southern Virginia, Texas/Oklahoma, the Southwest/4 Corners and Coastal California

Each of these are there own regions with varying definitions and intra-regional economic connections and I think each region could eventually have its own dominant major Megapolitan metro + smaller metros within them. I mean we basically already see that.

Miami is 100% Sun Belt. Southern culture is not the definition of Sun Belt.

I think the only reason why California's Sun Belt status is in question is because its major cities reached major status in parallel with the more traditional Manufacturing Belt cities. San Francisco also experienced a decline that is more similar to the Northeast than to a Texas or Florida city. OTOH, Phoenix and Las Vegas are undeniably Sun Belt.

Sunbelt is pretty loose and broad I dont think people would ever think about or care about the "biggest city in the sun belt" its not like Atlanta or LA economically or culturally have that much to do with each other despite both loosely being called sunbelt

Same as saying : Who is number 2 in the Snow Belt NYC is #1 but I think Seattle is making a case for # 2 over Chicago.

its just not how anyone views the country or how it works.

I think a key characteristic of Sunbelt cities is that the growth is fueled in large part by accessibility of cheap, easy-to-develop land, of which the main California cities have little left (different if you count far East IE for LA I guess).

Atlanta's city center and areas adjacent (within the Beltline or so) will continue to improve a decent bit in the future, but the region seems to be unwilling to work together to really move forward on fixing transportation issues. It's happening some, with the additional sales taxes to fund light rail projects within the city limits, but not enough is being done outside. (we need commuter rail really, and there's almost no movement there, instead we're spending billions on HOT lexus lanes that cover the same existing territory.)

I don't think that is distinct to the Sun Belt. I think almost all American metro areas (except the NE Corridor), including California, have developed that way. Particularly from 1950 - 2000.

I think Sun Belt is generally understood to be the cities that grew rapidly in the post-industrial era. Their commonality is that they are 1) relatively warm and 2)mostly grew after 1950.

You are not getting trains, not until the cost of owning/driving a car via gas/time in traffic/cost to garage/taxes gives mass transit an appeal over driving.

In most "sunbelt cities" that wont happen for a very long time or if somehow all oil becomes extremely expensive.

Bay Area. If LA is Sunbelt, than Bay Area has to be Sunbelt too.

But if we're only including "relatively cheap, fast-growth, low regulation" areas, I'd say Dallas is (just barely) first and Houston and Atlanta roughly tied. But even these areas are trending towards an LA-style scenario where growth slows and costs and regulation increases. They wont be "Sunbelt" in 30 years.

Not in our lifetimes. Seattle's economy just surpassed that of Detroit. Its population is still well behind Detroit and it still has fewer HNWIs.

Seattle would need 50 years of incredible growth to match Chicago. Chicago has 10 million people and is probably in the top 10 metropolitan economies on earth. And this is factoring in the incredible Seattle transformation due to Amazon, and earlier, Microsoft.

You aren't wrong. The problem is that we aren't getting anything. Dallas and Houston are both blanketed by freeways and toll roads that make driving a car as easy as possible for their size/sprawl. Meanwhile in Atlanta, good luck getting across town in the suburbs. (like from Lawrenceville to Woodstock, two of the bigger burbs) We are going to be getting some more trains in the city soon, at least. Here's a good map of what's been approved for the currently allotted funds:

SF is definitely not sunbelt. To me, saying SF is sunbelt is the same thing as saying that Seattle is.

These cities fall into the PacNW category, which is not sunbelt for a variety of reasons not related to their actual climate, but their fabric. SF is a traditionally urban city, nothing like any sunbelt city, including LA.

The Bay Area is very much like LA. 90% of "SF" looks the same as LA, with similar climate, architecture and planning. Cupertino looks like Costa Mesa. The only difference is that SF has a better traditional core. If LA is Sunbelt, so is Bay Area.

It wasnt a serious statement my dude

Exactly, there are more similarities between the two than not.

Yup, parts of the Silicon Valley could be mistaken for parts of the LA area for sure.
It maybe more green up there, but I see many similarties.

The older areas on the Peninsula and around Oakland/Berkeley are very east coast feeling but San Jose and the sprawl beyond the Oakland hills is your stereotypical Western style suburban sprawl.

I put LA and SF in their own categories. They might have been Sunbelt 60 years ago when they were cheap alternatives to the crowded northeast and midwest but that's no longer the case. They are just sunny now that's all.

Sure, there are similarities between New York and Chicago too but nobody lumps them as the same type of city.

Sunbelt cities are generally looked at as attractive alternatives to move to from colder climates due to the warmer climates in Sunbelt cities, cheaper cost of living, ect. San Francisco is really not a magnet for this type of migrant.

Los Angeles definitely has way more of this type of person that the Bay Area has. Also, the Bay Area is a unicorn compared to Sunbelt cities, as it's economy is not based on the service industry or some kind of banking (like Charlotte or ATL.)

Its not based on the service industry or Banking? What is "tech" if not a form of a service. Facebook, Twitter, Google, these are services, technology services but services nonetheless.

And San Francisco is a west Coast Financial hub and has been for a century its where Wells Fargo is HQ'd

^I said it's not based on the banking industry, not that it doesn't have banking industry.

I work in tech and while, yes, it's ''service'' as it serves a client- but it's not service like Hotels, Restaurants, and tourism like Miami, for example. It's also not a big back-office like Atlanta or Dallas or Phoenix or basically any other Sunbelt city.

What I'm saying is San Francisco's economy is based off of innovation. Other than Austin, no other sunbelt city can claim this.

This can be said for any suburb in any metropolitan region in any region of the US. New York sprawls, but nobody's calling it sunbelt. The Bay Area contains nodes of urban development that is mostly absent in sunbelt cities. Please compare Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, Phoenix or Las Vegas to the Bay Area and let me know how the two are similar.

I'm not arguing that the Bay Area is an East Coast city, cause it's not, but it's definitely not the same animal as most other Sunbelt cities, which is why I consider it it's own category with Portland and Seattle.

To be fair, Los Angeles is also different than most sunbelt cities but it definitely leans more towards the sunbelt than San Francisco does.

Here's a map of the Sunbelt, so hopefully that settles things.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/42/43...74763c121c.png

?

I don't even consider Silicon Valley to be green; its natural landscape is just like much of SoCal's, when it's only green during late winter and spring because of the rains. When I drove up to SF from LA in June via the 101, as I entered the San Jose city limits, the undeveloped rolling hills were all that wheat-like golden color; in fact, as a kid, I remember reading that California's nickname of "The Golden State" comes from the early American settlers seeing all the golden colored hills and valleys. And I associate the natural landscape of those golden/brown/olive-green colored hills and valleys with California, and it's the kind of landscape you see in the Mediterranean.


Regarding California as being part of the so-called Sun Belt, I never considered it a part of it. When I think of "Sun Belt," I think of Phoenix and everything east of there to the American South, that boomed after WWII. Wasn't the term "Sun Belt" even coined in the early 1970s or something? California boomed a couple of generations before the end of WWII, and continued to grow after that, so I don't see California as being part of that Sun Belt growth. California has been growing in population and with changing industries since the end of the 1800s. Even within California, Los Angeles' population surpassed San Francisco's by the 1920 census. Prior to that, San Francisco was *the* teeming metropolis of the whole west coast, though San Francisco's population was never as big as those more prominent east coast cities during that time (in 1910, San Francisco proper's population was only 416,912). By WWII, California already had an extensive highway network, between the big cities and within the metro areas, all obviously predating the federal Interstate system, unlike most of the Sun Belt.

So I see nothing culturally in common with California and the Sun Belt. I don't even like the term "West Coast" because collectively, California has nothing culturally in common with the Pacific Northwest.

Below is the growth percentage between 1950 and 2010 for the primary cities of 30 of the top 31 metros as of 2010 (Riverside,CA excluded). The average growth rate of these cities combined is 207%. L.A. falls in the top half, so I think it looks very Sun Belt-y city. It looks closer to a Texas city than it does to anywhere in the NE or Midwest. OTOH, San Francisco is identical to New York. It and Seattle were the only western cities in the bottom half, but no western city was in the bottom 1/3rd.

St. Louis -63%
Detroit -61%
Pittsburgh -55%
Cincinnati -41%
Baltimore -37%
Minneapolis -27%
Philadelphia -26%
Chicago -26%
Washington -25%
Boston -23%
Kansas City 1%
New York 4%
San Francisco 4%
Atlanta 27%
Seattle 30%
Denver 44%
Portland 56%
Miami 60%
Los Angeles 92%
Tampa 169%
Dallas 176%
San Antonio 225%
Sacramento 239%
Houston 252%
San Diego 291%
Orlando 446%
Charlotte 446%
Austin 497%
Phoenix 1253%
Las Vegas 2271%

That map is very simplified. It's basing the whole concept of ''Sunbelt'' off of climate.

Who considers New Orleans, Birmingham AL, and Columbia SC sunbelt? I hope nobody. They're warm places but not sunbelt cities.

Actually, it doesn't. That map looks like it skims along warms states and calls it a day. MS and AL aren't exactly sunbelt but Charlotte (which barely makes it) and Nashville (not even included) are. Hawaii is not sunbelt or at least I never seen it classified as such.

This says more about annexation and the relationship between city and metro population growth than anything else.

All those retirees moving to extreme southwestern Kansas!

This map is kind of nonsense

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xUD-tJjreR...omy)121811.jpg

The Bay Area is much more green in general than LA though. LA's landscape is more dry and desert like. The natural landscape of the Bay Area has more trees, especially coastal redwoods, which stop growing south of Big Sur.

Annexation attitudes tend to be more accommodating in places that are growing rapidly.

Going by this the sunbelt starts at the San Bernardino county line.

Topanga State Park
https://westcentric.files.wordpress....pg?w=636&h=477
https://westcentric.wordpress.com/ta...ga-state-park/

Big Basin Redwoods State Park
https://www.daytrippen.com/wp-conten...k-day-trip.jpg
https://www.daytrippen.com/big-basin...amping-hiking/

Well as we all know NYC would only have 8 million people had it not Annexed a huge piece of Long Island and the Entirety of Staten Island

Oh yeah and the Bronx too.

What about San Diego? People absolutely move there for the weather, and it looks/feels like typical Sunbelt. Sprawl heaven. Also boomed due to postwar govt. military and research spending. But it has high costs and regulation, and slowing growth.

I bolded the cities that I think everyone can agree are Sunbelt-y. Looks like a pretty accurate way of identifying Sunbelt cities. I'm on the fence about whether or not to include LA. I definitely don't think SF is the Sunbelt. For one, the city boomed way earlier than the rest of the sunbelt cities, and it's a real urban, walkable city. I think in addition to the cheap, sprawling identifier for Sunbelt cities, another thing that they have in common is orientation towards cars. SF (city) definitely isn't cheap or sprawling or oriented around cars. LA isn't cheap, but it is sprawling and it is car oriented. Maybe San Jose and SF exurbs are Sunbelt (they are much sunnier than the city, which really isn't all that sunny of a place), while the city is not. And the SoCal version would be the IE is Sunbelt (maybe OC, too) but LA isn't?

Angeles National Forest
https://www.roadrunner.travel/images...ading/7352.jpg
https://www.roadrunner.travel/magazi...-2018/page/20/

Big Basin
http://www.redwoodhikes.com/BigBasin/BigBasin2.jpg

http://www.redwoodhikes.com/BigBasin/BigBasin4.jpg'
http://www.redwoodhikes.com/BigBasin/BigBasin.html

Orange County and south looks more traditional sunbelt, but it's not actually traditional sunbelt. This same idea could be applied to the South Florida metro region. Not ''Sunbelt'' like Dallas or Atlanta is.

When I think sun belt I think sunny sprawl.

The southern and eastern suburbs of the Bay are definitely more Sun Belt-y. SF, Oakland, and Berkeley are not. OC and IE are very Sunbelt-y too.

I don't think anything in Coastal CA can be construed as sunbelt anymore. 1950, yes. Today, no. Way to expensive.

^^Bingo