[DCReid]

None of them feel like a big city although some are big. When I think about big cities - I think about active street life most of the days including weekends and activities that would draw people downtown like unique shopping or entertainment venues. I think a lot of the southern cities got big mainly through sprawl and their downtowns are for mainly office workers on weekdays. I guess one question to ask - if you were visiting (a city), would you stay downtown. For NYC, Chicago and many northern or western cities, yes, for most southern cities, no.