Quote:
Originally Posted by DZH22
Portland Maine's population is 68,000 and its downtown rips SLC's to shreds. It may not have the highrises but it has 50x the urbanity. Harrisburg PA's population is only 50,000 and also has a way better, denser, more urban downtown. So it's all relative, and on a relative scale SLC feels like a fake city in the same vein as Raleigh and Charlotte. Aside from the smattering of highrises, it certainly doesn't give off a "city" vibe the way I'm used to, coming from the Northeast.
So yeah, since it doesn't have the dense urbanity that I equate with cities, it doesn't really feel like a true city at all. I couldn't care less about the metro population if the whole place, up to and including downtown, is built more suburban. If I held SLC to the same standards I hold cities to around here, I'd say from an "urban population" standpoint a real argument could be made that it's 0.
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Having just been to Portland, ME I can agree that it's indeed a great downtown, and it benefits from having much of its pre-war architecture intact. However, downtown SLC is also a great place and doesn't deserve the label of "fake city" from arrogant Northeasterners. In fact, despite the wide streets I think it has the bones to someday be a lot bigger and better than the places you mention. It certainly does not feel small even now and I guarantee that your late 90s perceptions are mostly false at this point and will continue to be more false over time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IluvATX
Maybe 100k is more accurate. Anchorage on the other hand has ~290,000 in 1,706 square miles almost all of which is in the Chugach state park. But it still feels more dense than SLC. So the wilderness/rural argument doesn’t work here. Are there numbers for downtown density/population which would make SLC denser or larger? Probably not, but I can think of plenty of cities with under 200k that are denser and have bigger skylines than SLC. I’m sure hosting the Olympics helped, but SLC is just another airport transit spot with a smoking area airside IMO.  |
The point I was making was that the city proper and MSA comparisons between SLC and Providence were not apples-to-apples. Bringing Anchorage into the discussion and saying it feels denser is just shifting the goalposts.
I haven't been to Anchorage but I just spent a week in downtown Austin and I have to say that downtown SLC feels bigger in some ways even despite Austin's recent construction boom. Austin has better food and some taller buildings but outside of maybe 6th street it's really not much more interesting than SLC from an urban standpoint. SLC has more and better historic architecture.
And I had to spend like $40 to take an Uber from the airport to get downtown. My friend took the bus and it took 3x as long. What gives? At least there's a train in SLC.