The US Census Bureau thread

[subterranean]

Originally Posted by memph

I mean, sure, but you could also expand Philadelphia's sphere of influence to include Vineland, Atlantic City, Ocean City, Dover, Trenton, Reading, Allentown, Lancaster, etc and that could give Philadelphia's sphere of influence 10m+. I agree if you're talking about cultural and economic pull, it makes more sense to look at metro/regional population, but I'd say Philadelphia is still bigger by those metrics.

Philadelphia is bigger, always will be. I think in Detroit's case, a lot of people forget how big the region really is just because of the issues it's endured. At very least Windsor is closer than most of its suburbs and there's another 300k right there within sight of the CBD - but can't be counted in the census for obvious reasons. Ann Arbor has also always had super close ties to Detroit (it's a half hour drive to DTW from Ann Arbor) and there's another 300k there. As an urban agglomeration it is rather enormous. The lower half of Michigan is just medium size city after medium size city. Hell, south of the US-10 is almost 9 million people and that's just 1/3 the state geographically.