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UAs >200K within 200 (driving) miles of your city.
A pretty straightforward little exercise here to count up the number of Urban Areas with at least 200,000 people that are within a 200 mile driving distance from your city.
why 200K within 200 miles? 200K seems like a round enough arbitray cut-off for where a place starts to feel like it has some actual weight of its own and 200 miles driving distance (~3 hours) seems like a nice round upper limit for easy weekend getaways (people obviously drive further for weekend getways, but beyond 200 miles, the "time in the car" really starts to eat away at the "being there" time for a short little weekend escape).
parameters:
1. any UA with at least 200,000 as of census 2020 is fair game. if there's a nearby UA that qualifies on distance with like 196,000 people, you can round that up a touch. but don't get silly with the rounding.
2. driving distance is from center of UA to center of other UA, as determined by google maps. so for eaxmple, if you type in "St. Louis, MO" to "Evansville, IN", it spits back 167 miles driving distance, so it counts. typing in "St. Louis, MO" to "Springfield, MO" spits back 216 miles, so it does not count. like with population, if there's a qualifying UA that's only a handful of miles beyond the 200 mile threshold, say like 205 miles or something, you can go ahead and round that down a touch, but again, don't get silly with it.
3. some major metro areas (especially the cali ones) get chopped up into all kinds of smaller UAs by the CB, despite their contiguoisity with each other. you may count them all, and also denote their contiguosity with the main UA if you like. determining the driving distance to these might be a bit nebulous because of their lack of a true "center", but if they're contiguous, it won't matter much anyway.
anyway, here's the list for chicago, ranked by distance:
Round Lake Beach UA: 261,835 | 58 miles (contiguous with the Chicago UA)
Rockford UA: 276,443 | 89 miles
Milwaukee UA: 1,306,795 | 92 miles
South Bend UA: 278,921 | 96 miles
Madison UA: 450,305 | 147 miles
Kalamazoo UA: 204,562 | 147 miles
Fort Wayne UA: 335,934 | 162 miles
Peoria UA: 259,781 | 166 miles
Davenport UA: 285,211 | 176 miles
Grand Rapids UA: 605,666 | 179 miles
Indianapolis UA: 1,699,881 | 185 miles
Appleton UA: 230,967 | 195 miles
Green Bay UA: 224,156 | 207 miles
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Last edited by Steely Dan; May 30, 2023 at 1:00 PM.
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