U.S. cities with bloated city proper populations due to annexation

[liat91]

Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL

^ okay... well, i applaud your effort. sounds like a lot of work. but i have my doubts that eyeballing Google Maps results in accurate comparisons of... whatever it is that you're trying to compare.

Way more than eyeballing. I had to consider when adding Newark to NYC as plausible as it is comparable to existing areas within the city like Jamaica, Queens.

I did that for every city.

[liat91]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Of course not.

The arbitrariness of municipal boundaries is well known around here.

But that doesn't mean that your subjective exercise has much value for comparative purposes.

Why not? You don’t even know what the boundaries are. Evanston and Oak Park are either or. Doesn’t really change to city population much anyway.

Like you I presume, I’ve been to most of these cities and I like to drive around places, so I can recall the feeling on the ground as well.

I think you want hard measures, like ppsq/mi. That’s not going to work here, because of all the unique variables involved. It clearly is a complex educated objective measure. Urban in one city is not in another. Neighborhood designs and natural barriers are different as you said.

I did a lot of work, but I’m not trying to make a profit from it or anything. Which begs the question.

I respect what your saying and thanks for the interest. And though you didn’t ask, I’m not ready to make maps, Covid time or not. Lol

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by liat91

Why not? You don’t even know what the boundaries are. Evanston and Oak Park are either or. Doesn’t really change to city population much anyway.

Like you I presume, I’ve been to most of these cities and I like to drive around places, so I can recall the feeling on the ground as well.

I think you want hard measures, like ppsq/mi. That’s not going to work here, because of all the unique variables involved. It clearly is a complex educated objective measure. Urban in one city is not in another. Neighborhood designs and natural barriers are different as you said.

I did a lot of work, but I’m not trying to make a profit from it or anything. Which begs the question.

I respect what your saying and thanks for the interest. I’m not ready to make maps though, Covid or not. Lol

except it is both quite subjective and as you say hard to picture.

maybe if you made maps of just one or two cities and explained yourself it would help.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by liat91

You don’t even know what the boundaries are

I know that for chicago you included OP but didn't include evanston, which, as someone who has lived in chicago for 4.5 decades, tells me exactly how subjective and arbitrary your exercise was.

It makes me doubt every result you calculated for every city.

It is certaiy not a list that I would ever look to or reference when trying to make apples to apples comparisons about the relative sizes of US cities.

If you think it has value in that regard, that's super.

I do not.

[liat91]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I know that for chicago you included OP but didn't include evanston, which, as someone who has lived in chicago for 4.5 decades, tells me exactly how subjective and arbitrary your exercise was.

It makes me doubt every result you calculated for every city.

It is certaiy not a list that I would ever look to or reference when trying to make apples to apples comparisons about the relative sizes of US cities.

If you think it has value in that regard, that's super.

I do not.

Of course it has value. All of us here know a lot of stuff about cities. To much really.

Loved Chicago. Drove all over it, saw scary and nice. Cab driver there would agree with you btw. Not me..

[liat91]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

except it is both quite subjective and as you say hard to picture.

maybe if you made maps of just one or two cities and explained yourself it would help.

Thanks. I’ll try.

You used to be able to aggregate areas on google maps easily, but no more.

Maybe you can tell me what not subjective is, because American cities are all so different.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by liat91

Of course it has value.

I do not think that it does for comparative purposes.

When I want a list of the relative sizes of US cities that disregards the highly variable and arbitrary constraints of the municipal boundaries of central cities, I'll stick to something that relies on factual, objective, verifiable, and consistently applied information, not some dude on the internet making very subjective and arbitrary value judgements about what to include/exclude.

"You see, this place over here is kinda bulgy, so I'm not gonna include that, but this other place over there isn't as bulgy, so I will include that"

What?

Like I said earlier, if you think your exercise has value for comparative purposes, that's great.

I simply do not share that opinion.

[Handro]

Yea, what is "bulgy"? I'd argue that Evanston feels much more like a continuation of the north side of Chicago than Oak Park does of the west...

[Crawford]

I feel Oak Park, in terms of built form, is much more like adjacent parts of the West Side than Evanston is like Rogers Park. I've walked from Austin into Oak Park and the only difference is that Oak Park gradually becomes whiter and more affluent. The buildings are the same. But I could see adding Evanston. It's still urban, just not like Rogers Park.

But anyways, the whole exercise is subjective. I don't think it's super far-off in terms of relative contiguous prewar fabric.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by futuresooner

Right? I'm trying to figure out how St. Louis GAINED population.

what is it, pre-war built urban core population? that would make sense. could be higher even but a lot of pre-war stuff with their own downtowns is really suburban like kirkwood, overland, ferguson, etc...

i think i once saw it estimated for kansas city, and 200k is pushing it as it was the entire area south of the missouri river which has vast areas of 40s-80s suburban development, a lot of which just happens to be on a pre-war style grid like suburban denver. i think houston would be similar...starting off less dense than kc but having built quite a lot since.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by liat91

Some of the places you added, are clearly suburbs to me. I added the donut hole cities, a few municipalities to the south and I think one on the NE side. Detroit and it’s metro just don’t equate to a 1.5 million city to me.

I could have added half of northern NJ to NYC and gotten to 11-12 million people, but I don’t see Clifton, NJ as being a part of NYC.

So this isn't objective at all?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I don't think it's super far-off in terms of relative contiguous prewar fabric.

do you honestly think there are 5.4M people in LA living in contiguous pre-war fabric?

i would say that figure is "super far-off".

besides, liat91 wasn't trying to measure contiguous pre-war fabric anyway, otherwise he would have had to include evanston (and many other burbs) in chicago's figure (which he didn't).

it's why his whole exercise is fairly meaningless, IMO. all he's given us for his criteria is that he goes by "feel" from driving around various cities and looking at maps and making vague value judgement about whether or not a given place seems "bulgy".

i'm sorry, but that is not a sound basis for a system of making objective, apples-to-apples comparisons of the relative sizes of US cities while disregarding municipal boundaries.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

So this isn't objective at all?

from what he's given us thus far regarding his criteria, not in the slightest.

it's all "feel" and vague, extremely subjective value judgements about what to include/exclude.

and apparently he changes up his opinions about what to include from city to city, so we're not getting anything close to apples-to-apples here.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

do you honestly think there are 5.4M people in LA living in contiguous pre-war fabric?

Definitely not. While LA's pre-war urbanism was more extensive than most people realize, the whole of LA County had only 2,785,643 people in 1940, with the city of LA having just over 1.5 million. LA County added more than 2 million people between both 1940-1950, and 1950-1960...that's pretty astounding growth. So if you made the cutoff for this exercise somewhere around 1955, that figure for LA might hold.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by edale

LA County added more than 2 million people between both 1940-1950, and 1950-1960...that's pretty astounding growth.

not quite.


LA County:

1940: 2,785,643

1950: 4,151,687 (+1,366,044)

1960: 6,038,771 (+1,887,084)

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_An...a#Demographics



but yes, LA's immediate post-war population growth was amazing.

lots of WWII soldiers & sailors first exposed to cali by way of fighting in the pacific theater came home after the war and said "this seems like an awfully nice place to settle down and start a family". and so they did, by the tens of thousands.

[Buckeye Native 001]

There was also a shit-ton of military and related development (defense and aerospace in particular) throughout California that propelled it's growth during the mid 20th century.

The massive amount of base closures and reduction in force in defense and aerospace R&D hit Southern California particularly hard in the late 80s/early 90s. Its how/why you ended up with guys like D-Fens and why there are still massive abandoned hangars in El Toro and empty missile silos in Seal Beach and Los Alamitos

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Buckeye Native 001

There was also a shit-ton of military and related development (defense and aerospace in particular) throughout California that propelled it's growth during the mid 20th century.

The massive amount of base closures and reduction in force in defense and aerospace R&D hit Southern California particularly hard in the late 80s/early 90s. Its how/why you ended up with guys like D-Fens and why there are still massive abandoned hangars in El Toro and empty missile silos in Seal Beach and Los Alamitos

my dad used to spend a lot of time in socal/orange county as a defense contractor in the 80s and early 90s. seemed weird to me as a midwesterner that there were factories “at the beach.”

the tv series “ Lodge 49” has a subplot about a defense/aerospace facility closure in southern california and its impact on the surrounding area/people.

[Buckeye Native 001]

I knew a couple of folks from Orange County when I lived there who talked about the defense layoffs in the late 80s/early 90s with the same kind of PTSD people have when talking about experiencing the 1994 Northridge earthquake. For better or for worse, it was (in some ways) the SoCal equivalent of Midwesterners who had decent jobs at the plants (steel mills, auto, etc) before they all started closing en masse.

My personal favorite "factory on the beach" was San Onofre. I am simplifying this/dumbing it down way too much but it always amused me that someone thought it was a good idea to construct a nuclear power plant right on the beach in a major seismic area. I think it went offline right around the same time as the incident in Fukushima?

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I feel Oak Park, in terms of built form, is much more like adjacent parts of the West Side than Evanston is like Rogers Park. I've walked from Austin into Oak Park and the only difference is that Oak Park gradually becomes whiter and more affluent. The buildings are the same. But I could see adding Evanston. It's still urban, just not like Rogers Park.

But anyways, the whole exercise is subjective. I don't think it's super far-off in terms of relative contiguous prewar fabric.

Sure but it doesn't look a whole lot different from West Ridge.

[Segun]

I've lived off Howard (dividing line of Evanston/Rogers Park) in two locations, up by West Ridge and down by Rogers Park. There is no real discernable difference when crossing the street, unless you consider Evanston's streetlights.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Segun

I've lived off Howard (dividing line of Evanston/Rogers Park) in two locations, up by West Ridge and down by Rogers Park. There is no real discernable difference when crossing the street, unless you consider Evanston's streetlights.

Really? Rogers Park near the lake, to me, feels more like Edgewater and Uptown. It's very urban. Evanston feels more like a streetcar suburb, with older suburban neighborhoods. Much of Evanston feels more like Wilmette than like Rogers Park, IMO.