Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
as for the answer to the thread topic, there is no one answer.
different people are going to weigh different aspects of "urban" differently, and depending on how one weights those variables, you can get lots of different answers here.
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I was going to say the same thing.
My first reaction is to want to say "Detroit", same way I'd say, without thinking, Philly for Northeast's 2nd city and Orlando for Florida's 2nd city (when maybe depending on the metric, it could well be respectively Boston and Tampa, haven't checked lately).
However, I can see at least three candidates depending on the metric.
For prewar downtown skyscrapers, Detroit;
For sum of prewar urbanity, St. Louis;
On paper, using today's data, Minneapolis.
All things considered, the latter is probably the winner. I love old architecture but it's illogical to draw such a solid line there that it would dwarf actual data for density and walkability.