California's Lopsided Population Distribution

[kittyhawk28]

Around ~45% of California resides in the contiguous urban area of Greater Los Angeles, representing ~17.5 million residents, compared to the rest of California with ~22 million residents. For a state this large and populous, you would have expected more evenly distributed population across multiple urban areas akin to Texas or Florida, but California seems surprisingly concentrated for its size. Of the top 10 largest US states, only New York, Illinois, and Georgia are more centralized than California into one metro area. The 5 other states (Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina) are much more polycentric/decentralized than California. Michigan is similar to California, where roughly ~45% of the state lives in one metro area, Detroit.

If you were to divide California into 2 equivalent halves with ~19.7 million, it would go through the heart of the City of Los Angeles, somewhere between Wilshire and Ventura Boulevards.

[iheartthed]

It's not really that surprising when you know that California is like half desert.

[Six Corners]

The most desirable parts of California are near the coast and the LA basin's flatness and fertile soil relative to the rest of coastal California made it the easiest place to grow an urban area that could house 17 million people.

[dimondpark]

Great thread idea! I think the most realistic way to divide the state is SoCal and NorCal.


Southern California has around 23 Million people(58%), Northern California has around 16 Million people(42%).

[twinpeaks]

it has a lot to do with geography, there are mountains, deserts and forest.

[Cirrus]

This is a nothingburger. People live in cities, and the west is arid and empty between cities. I don't understand how this is making such rounds all over the internet this week.

I actually kind of wonder if it's some kind of BS astroturfing from LA NIMBYs to try and convince people that LA doesn't need more housing--which for the record it obviously does.

[kittyhawk28]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

This is a nothingburger. People live in cities, and the west is arid and empty between cities. I don't understand how this is making such rounds all over the internet this week.

I actually kind of wonder if it's some kind of BS astroturfing from LA NIMBYs to try and convince people that LA doesn't need more housing--which for the record it obviously does.

For a state this large in area and populous, you would expect more decentralization, especially since the water situation is more forgiving up north, not to mention Sacramento and Bay Area were far more established urban regions in the first several decades of CA's history. DFW and Houston both have 7~8 million each, and each accounts for just ~25% of Texas. Greater Miami accounts for just 27% of Florida.

[kittyhawk28]

Originally Posted by dimondpark

Great thread idea! I think the most realistic way to divide the state is SoCal and NorCal.


Southern California has around 23 Million people(58%), Northern California has around 16 Million people(42%).

In 2020, 23.76 million people lived in SoCal and 15.77 million lived in NorCal, 8 million people more than NorCal despite NorCal covering twice the area of SoCal, with a far more forgiving climate and water situation than SoCal, which is largely desolate deserts. You can kind of see this in how there are alot more small town and small-to-medium sized cities scattered all around NorCal vs. SoCal.

[Steely Dan]

From my Illinois perspective, Cali hardly seems lopsided at all to me.

I mean, you have two giant, very globally relevant metro areas, and then a small constellation of other large and still significant metro areas - San Diego, Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield, and Stockton.



In Illinois, there is Chicagoland with its 9M people, and then????????

The Metro East? (683K, but it's just the cross-river burbs of another state's major city)
Peoria? (369K MSA)
Rockford? (339K MSA)
Champaign? (236K MSA)

And the pickings just keep getting slimmer and slimmer.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

This is a nothingburger. People live in cities, and the west is arid and empty between cities. I don't understand how this is making such rounds all over the internet this week.

Agreed, I don't understand the issue. The West doesn't really have empty, developable land. CA's population is right where you'd expect.

[kittyhawk28]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Agreed, I don't understand the issue. The West doesn't really have empty, developable land. CA's population is right where you'd expect.

Alot of Northern California is empty and flat enough though, and has suitable water/climate to develop settlements, even if on the scale of smaller 100K cities. E.g. Humboldt Bay, which really should have developed into a city at least as big as Eugene, OR

[JManc]

Originally Posted by kittyhawk28

For a state this large in area and populous, you would expect more decentralization, especially since the water situation is more forgiving up north, not to mention Sacramento and Bay Area were far more established urban regions in the first several decades of CA's history. DFW and Houston both have 7~8 million each, and each accounts for just ~25% of Texas. Greater Miami accounts for just 27% of Florida.

Texas is not really decentralized either; the four major metros are all relatively close to one another (in the east) while much of west Texas is desolate.

[TWAK]

There are uses for our open land:

Source

[kittyhawk28]

Originally Posted by JManc

Texas is not really decentralized either; the four major metros are all relatively close to one another (in the east) while much of west Texas is desolate.

I wouldn't call Dallas and Houston relatively close, they are 240 miles and over 3.5 hours apart. Same with Austin to Dallas, and Austin to Houston is over 160 miles or over 2.5 hours apart.

The other thing is, Texas just has way more small-medium sized towns and cities independent of its big 4 metros than CA does. Around 67% of Texans live in the big 4 Texan MSAs of DFW, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio, while over 80% of Californians live in Greater LA, SF Bay Area, San Diego, or Greater Sacramento.

For reference, if CA were more like Texas, both Greater LA and Bay Area would sit around 9~10 million people, and 5 million people in Greater LA would be scattered across smaller towns and cities in the state

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by kittyhawk28

In 2020, 23.76 million people lived in SoCal and 15.77 million lived in NorCal

Yes, these are both massive amounts. No other state in the entire western US even comes close to NorCal in population, in fact, only TX, FL, SoCal and NY have more people than NorCal.

And they are both economic powerhouses.

2025 Q3 Statewide
$4,296.5B
Southern CA----$2.234T--52% of state total
Northern CA----$2.062T--48% of state total

This state is very fortunate.

[kittyhawk28]

Originally Posted by dimondpark

Yes, these are both massive amounts. No other state in the entire western US even comes close to NorCal in population, in fact, only TX, FL, SoCal and NY have more people than NorCal.

And they are both economic powerhouses.

2025 Q3 Statewide
$4,296.5B
Southern CA----$2.234T--52% of state total
Northern CA----$2.062T--48% of state total

This state is very fortunate.

If NorCal and SoCal broke off into different states, SoCal would be slightly larger than Florida as of 2020 census to be the 2nd most populous state after Texas, while NorCal would be solidly the 5th largest state after New York.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by kittyhawk28

I wouldn't call Dallas and Houston relatively close, they are 240 miles and over 3.5 hours apart. Same with Austin to Dallas, and Austin to Houston is over 160 miles or over 2.5 hours apart.

The other thing is, Texas just has way more small-medium sized towns and cities independent of its big 4 metros than CA does. Around 67% of Texans live in the big 4 Texan MSAs of DFW, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio, while over 80% of Californians live in Greater LA, SF Bay Area, San Diego, or Greater Sacramento.

Within the context of the sheer size of Texas, they kinda are; El Paso to Houston is about 11 hours so 3.5 hours between DFW and HOU is pretty reasonable. It's a boring ass drive but much more manageable than LA to SF.

But, yeah Texas does have more small towns than CA due to the more rural agricultural nature of everything east of the Rockies.

[eschaton]

I do think there's a strong argument that SoCal ended up overpopulated compared to the Bay Area.

Los Angeles was kind of nowheresville until midway through the 1880s (albeit the largest city in the south). The port sucked compared to San Francisco, and the amount of water available in the immediate area was negligible. BNSF choosing the city as the western terminus kind of saved it. Then they discovered oil, at which point things started to snowball.

[kittyhawk28]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I do think there's a strong argument that SoCal ended up overpopulated compared to the Bay Area.

Los Angeles was kind of nowheresville until midway through the 1880s (albeit the largest city in the south). The port sucked compared to San Francisco, and the amount of water available in the immediate area was negligible. BNSF choosing the city as the western terminus kind of saved it. Then they discovered oil, at which point things started to snowball.

The Bay Area has alot of growth boundaries, especially in Marin/Sonoma, Alameda, and Santa Clara counties preventing more sprawl unlike in SoCal, which was way more permissive and largely lacks the same scale of urban growth boundaries. That combined with the fact that even in its constrained developed urban footprint, the Bay Area is less dense on average than the sprawling urban area of LA, means that the Bay Area could have likely supported at least 2-3 million more people if it was more permissive towards both sprawl + infill development in the 20th century.

Out of any megacity, I think LA was most dependent on large scale human engineering to take off. Massive 20th-century megaprojects like the development of the Ports of LA/LB, construction of 2 transcontinental railways blasting through 10000 ft mountain ranges, engineering of the 3 major aqueducts (Owens Lake, Colorado River, and State Water Project aqueducts), and development of the SoCal freeway system, arguably the largest metropolitan freeway system in the country. These 4 massive earth-moving engineering projects, coupled with 20th-century boosterism, willed the growth of LA from a small farm town into one of the world's largest and most influential megacities.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by kittyhawk28

For a state this large in area and populous, you would expect more decentralization,

I wouldn't expect that. State boundaries are arbitrary lines on a map.

California is a huge state... ~900 miles N-S and 160k sq mi. Large population with high percentage clustered in few/relatively few areas.

Take a California-sized polygon and put it on the east coast with a line running from Boston 900 miles south to Savannah, then NW up to western NC, then NE up to central NY, and then east back to Boston... that gives you a roughly 900 mile N-S, 160k sq mi tract of land.

Where is this polygon's population clustered?