[summersm343]

Guys... this Boston being "half Philadelphia's size" is not really true. You're way too focused on city limits which means very little in todays day and age.

While Philadelphia city limits are about 1.6M and Boston's 675K, the Metropolitan area of Philadelphia is over 6.2M, and Boston's is just under 5M. Furthermore, Philadelphia's CSA (Combined Statistical Area) is just under 7.4M and Boston's is just under 8.5M.

Even further so, Boston is the only city in Massachusetts... Philadelphia is not the only city in PA (Pittsburgh). Boston is also the capital of Massachusetts, and Philadelphia is not the capital of Pennsylvania.

Even further, while the "Greater Boston Region" covers parts of three states (Mass, RI and NH), and so does Philadelphia's (PA, NJ and DE), Boston is really the capital of all of New England and really has influence over the entire region, and attracts the entire region whom wants to visit a city. Only once you get to Connecticut and Rhode Island does Boston share influence with NYC... Boston has the rest of RI, parts of CT, all of MA, VT, NH and Maine. Philadelphia really only has influence over about 40% of Pennsylvania, the lower half of NJ which probably only equates to about 40% of NJ's population, and maybe 75% of Delaware. Then, Philadelphia is wedged between NYC and DC/Baltimore and the rest of Pennsylvania is Kentucky 2.0 and despises cities, or sides with Pittsburgh.