wwmiv |
Jul 16, 2022 1:30 AM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by the Genral
(Post 9677613)
Even if your criteria for determining if a city's size, small, medium, large, super large is based on the amount and size of the buildings downtown, I think Austin is considered a large city by me and many based on our downtown alone. Factor in that Austin is large enough to accommodate huge crowds for ACL, SXSW, F1 for example, and millions of tourists per year, and has a 50k plus neighbor attached directly to the north with UT, and population wise is the 11th largest US city,
I don't think there's anything medium about this city.
But I concede some might think our downtown has some catching up to do given it's 11th biggest status.
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In America, because of our balkanized urban planning and public transit infrastructure in the context of a regional personal transport infrastructure, city limits are of limited importance to how “big” a “city” feels. Austin may have the 11th largest municipal population, but because it itself is largely suburban in character (because of when it grew) and the collection of suburban municipalities around it sum to a much smaller population than, say, the 12th largest municipality in the country, San Francisco, it “feels” much smaller. In other words, Downtown San Francisco feels bigger because the Metropolitan Statistical Area is larger because our road and transit infrastructure differ: there are many more people who are able to commute into the city both by road and transit from outside the city limits regularly, and the built environment of San Francisco itself has to accommodate that in a much more confined geography. After all, the San Francisco MSA is double Austin’s, 4.6 million to 2.3 million, and the fully integrated Bay Area CSA including San Jose and others is more than four times that of Austin: 9.7 million. Austin feels like a medium “city” because, when you factor in all these other things that lead to urban core development, it is a medium city.
To me, even San Antonio “feels” like a larger city despite not having as large a skyline, because its traditional urban fabric is more expansive and comprised of larger buildings due it having grown earlier.
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