Small Cities That Take On The Role Of Much Larger Cities.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

Probably the closest analog to Mississauga in the US is the Long Island towns like Hempstead (759k) or Brookhaven (486k).

For the thread title, Fairbanks is the center by default for Interior Alaska. Due to the sheer size and lack of infrastructure in Alaska, the state functions more as a set of semi-independent regions. The Yukon Delta -- a majority Yupik region -- revolves around Bethel, the North Slope revolves around Utqiagvik/former Barrow, so on.

Hempstead and Brookhaven are towns, which has a different meaning in New York than the commonly understood definition. A town in NY is sort of like a borough in that they are a layer between the local municipality and the county. There is also a village of Hempstead within the town of Hempstead, which is probably what most people are referring to when they say "Hempstead".

[JManc]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Hempstead and Brookhaven are towns, which has a different meaning in New York than the commonly understood definition. A town in NY is sort of like a borough in that they are a layer between the local municipality and the county. There is also a village of Hempstead within the town of Hempstead, which is probably what most people are referring to when they say "Hempstead".

Yeah, the town/ village/ hamlet thing up there is confusing..and if you live in a village, a lot of redundancy.

[Yuri]

Zurich (1.2 million inh.) and Geneva (500k) have massive international influence.

In Brazil, Florianópolis (1 million) is growing fast, is wealth and hassle very strong brand, and soon will be competing in some fields with the much larger Porto Alegre (4.2 million) and Curitiba (3.5 million), the other two state capitals in Southern Brazil.

[RC14]

I would say cities like Aspen, Park City and Jackson, WY have a large influence relative to their populations. However, they don't really "dominate" their regions. Elko, Nevada would be a small city that dominates it's region. I think it's considered one of the most isolated cities in America.

[Tom In Chicago]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Marquette, MI (21,000 city proper, 67,000 in the county) serves as the alpha city of Michigan's somewhat isolated upper peninsula, and therefore acts a lot bigger than your typical US city of 20,000 people.

The closest larger city to Marquette is Green Bay, WI, over 150 miles to the south.

And even Green Bay is not a center of anything (other than the Packers) while Appleton and the Fox Cities make up the bulk of the area's destinations. . .

. . .

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Tom In Chicago

And even Green Bay is not a center of anything (other than the Packers) while Appleton and the Fox Cities make up the bulk of the area's destinations. . .

. . .

yeah, wisconsin's fox valley corridor from oshkosh up to green bay is nearing 3/4 of a million people, but the population is widely dispersed among a handful of cities, with none of them truly rising to alpha status clearly above the others.

green bay obviously gets all the press because of the packers (the one thing of note that outsiders might know about the region), but oshkosh and appleton aren't a whole lot smaller.

[Tom In Chicago]

^And all the retail is in Appleton making it the defacto destination for shopping and everything else. . .

. . .

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by Doady

According to the 2016 Census, 54.2% of workers residing in Mississauga also worked inside of Mississauga, compared to 67.2% of workers residing in Hamilton also working within Hamilton. Are they really that different?

Mississauga's MiWay bus system also has much higher ridership than the Hamilton Street Railway. In fact, MiWay has the third highest ridership of all municipal transit systems in the Great Lakes, behind only TTC and CTA. In 2019, the city's MiWay bus system served 41.4 million linked trips (or 56.5 million unlinked trips) for a population of over 721,000. So the ridership per capita is between the HSR, which served 21.7 million linked trips for a population of 535,000, and the CTA, which served 455.7 million unlinked trips for a population of around 3.5 million that same year. So in terms of transit orientation, Mississauga is as close to Chicago as it is to Hamilton.

Not only that, but according to the SSP database, Mississauga actually more high-rises per capita than both Hamilton and Chicago. As a city of 721k with 322 high rise buildings, it is second in high-rise buildings per capita of all Great Lakes cities, behind only Toronto.

As a major employment destination in its own right, and with many transit riders and so many high-rise buildings, Mississauga can hardly be called a suburb. It is a city, certainly more of a city than Hamilton.

This is the heart of Mississauga:
https://goo.gl/maps/ps9JCbVhZDU5KXMa7
https://goo.gl/maps/eay48FUajjGMqzrz6

This is the heart of Hamilton:
https://goo.gl/maps/7Av4odWUcEFtkUt36
https://goo.gl/maps/6HMSBPkRAgnYs9G89

I think it’s pretty clear which one is actually a city (that’s had a few rough years) and which one is a suburb (that happens to hold a lot of suburban office parks and the regional airport).

[ue]

Originally Posted by BnaBreaker

So many Canadian cities fit the bill there due in part to the wide open spaces in between urban areas. I think any primary city in any of the less populated provinces would qualify here, whether it's Halifax or St. John's, or even the much smaller Whitehorse or Charlottetown or Iqaluit.

I agree. Halifax was the first place that immediately came to mind. It feels somewhat larger than it is, and takes on a role of a city far larger than it is. The city feels perhaps in the 600-800k range and functions at times like a city >1 million. Similarly sized Victoria, on the other hand, doesn't really have as much of this, and is an antidote to the 'bustle' of Vancouver, which takes on the big city draw for BC (and most of Western Canada, really).

St John's is another one, as are the territorial capitals. Although Winnipeg does feel similarly sized to Quebec City and Hamilton, it has much greater prominence due to being the only city greater than 500k between Edmonton and London, Ontario. So I think in outsiders perceptions, Winnipeg is a lot larger. Many people don't even consider Hamilton and Quebec City is seen only by its cutesy Old Town appeal.

In the US, I think Anchorage, Spokane, Des Moines, Omaha, Salt Lake City, Boise, Billings, El Paso, Honolulu, etc could fit the bill.

[ue]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Municipalities have very little power in Canada compared to the US which is why you see gigantic suburban cities like Mississauga, Brampton, Laval, Surrey, etc. These were all forced amalgamations of former rural townships by provincial governments when it became clear that development was imminent and that there needed to be a lot more planning and servicing.

Mississauga is a Frankenstein creation of the province gradually amalgamating the 8 independent towns and unincorporated land within Toronto township (not to be confused with Toronto proper) in what was then Peel county. Then they dissolved Peel County.

Scary fact: Mississauga is now the third largest city proper on the Great Lakes.

FWIW, at least the mega-municipalities in the GTA have borders that mostly make sense. It's sort of a minor gripe, but I've always found the borders for the suburban municipalities in Metro Vancouver very annoying.

Surrey and Delta are the most annoying. 'South Surrey' is completely disconnected from the huge, main blob of development and really operates more like a northern extension of White Rock. Cloverdale and East Surrey are similarly disconnected from the main blob, but contiguous with Langley. Cloverdale makes more sense either as its own thing, or part of Langley. East Surrey should just be part of Langley. East Delta is contiguous with, and operates as an extension of, Surrey. Delta could just be the Ladner area. The Langley City/Langley Twp thing is also unnecessary and just functions to add needless bureaucracy. Coquitlam should annex Port Coquitlam. Burnaby should be split between the northern part (with Brentwood, SFU, Lougheed) and the southern part (with Metrotown, Royal Oak, etc) as the two halves are fairly disconnected by the TCH and Burnaby Lake).

That being said, Vancouver should probably have something akin to what Toronto had happen to it in the late '90s, though on a smaller scale -- a new 'borough'-ed larger City of Vancouver. I would only include Burnaby and New West to start, though I could see an argument for Richmond and/or North and West Vancouver.

[Prahaboheme]

Key West, FL

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by ue

That being said, Vancouver should probably have something akin to what Toronto had happen to it in the late '90s, though on a smaller scale -- a new 'borough'-ed larger City of Vancouver. I would only include Burnaby and New West to start, though I could see an argument for Richmond and/or North and West Vancouver.

Vancouver kind of gets around this by having a strong regional government (Metro Vancouver) that coordinates transportation, utilities and high level land use planning (not zoning).

Metro Vancouver is somewhat similar to an American Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) and/or Council of Governments (COG). Maybe not coincidentally, Vancouver proper is kind of "American-sized" - 650k in a 2.5M metro.

I don't know how regional planning works in other provinces, but there are some cities where the vast majority of the metro is covered by a single municipality (e.g. Halifax, Ottawa (Ontario side)), while in places like Toronto, the province has a ministry that sets growth targets and tells municipalities to get in line, and basically controls the purse strings for major transportation projects.

[Shawn]

Portland, Maine: ~67,000 residents, but it's the cultural and economic hub for 2/3rd of the state, and it's the critical direct-to-Boston connection. The metro is pushing 700,000 now.

From a similar cultural and economic heart view, basically the entire state of Vermont is metro Burlington.

[Razor]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Portland, Maine: ~67,000 residents, but it's the cultural and economic hub for 2/3rd of the state, and it's the critical direct-to-Boston connection. The metro is pushing 700,000 now.

From a similar cultural and economic heart view, basically the entire state of Vermont is metro Burlington.

I just looked at some pictures of Portland ME..Looks nice!
Would make a nice road trip detour on the way to Boston or something. Just over 7.0 hours driving from here..Not bad. Through pictures, it looks larger then 67000, but I noticed the metro number after..I just can't get behind city proper though.It's all about metro to me when I guage..

[SunDevil]

Definately a lot of bias, but, Bismarck, ND fits the description (grew up there). It's now an area of about 100k people and it serves as the medical center (two major hospitals), shopping center, and entertainment center of central and western North Dakota and some of central South Dakota as well as being the the state capitol.

Part of the charm of the city used to be that there weren't many national chains there. I remember the first Starbucks in the city was in the late 1990's which was located in the first Barnes and Noble when it opened up . Didn't even have a Walmart until some time in the early 90's.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Razor

I just looked at some pictures of Portland ME..Looks nice!
Would make a nice road trip detour on the way to Boston or something. Just over 7.0 hours driving from here..Not bad. Through pictures, it looks larger then 67000, but I noticed the metro number after..I just can't get behind city proper though.It's all about metro to me when I guage..

Portland is definitely worth a visit if you're in Boston. The drive up the sea coast is highly recommended

[itom 987]

Yellowknife takes the cake in Canada, I don't think any other place comes close and that includes Whitehorse and Iqaluit.

[xzmattzx]

Wilmington is the anchor in Delaware, and we consider ourselves to be pretty much separate from the Philadelphia metro, despite what the Census Bureau says.

Breaking Delaware down into smaller parts, Rehoboth Beach is the anchor for eastern Sussex County (the beach towns and the beach sprawl heading inland).

Cheyenne seemed like a significant anchor for southeast Wyoming and far western Nebraska.

Flagstaff is the clear anchor for northern Arizona.

Gallup is the anchor for western New Mexico, and also for the Navajo Nation. As a sidenote, Gallup has to have the worst nightlife of any anchor town or town of any significant size that I have ever been to. Both times I was there in the evening, I could not find a bar that was open after 9 PM.

Paducah is the anchor for western Kentucky.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by JManc

Portland is definitely worth a visit if you're in Boston. The drive up the sea coast is highly recommended

I cannot recommend this enough. Portland probably has the best selection of seafood restaurants in the country. Better than anything you'll find in Boston or on the Cape. And Old Port is like a whole other North End to explore.

The Rt 1 seacoast drive is a blast. You'll go through Portsmouth on the way, which is arguably New Hampshire's best city and it too acts as a bigger economic and cultural center than its size would indicate. Bonus: before you hit swanky Portsmouth, you'll get to experience Hampton Beach:

(there are no emojis for tattoo parlors, gun shops, or clam shack/Oxycontin-illegal firework combo stalls)

[hauntedheadnc]

You could make an argument that Greenville-Spartanburg serves this purpose in Upstate South Carolina. You'd expect some largish town to anchor a region of this size, but when you combine two of them, place them midway between two bonafide metropolises, and give them a government that thinks nothing of courting major league companies from Germany, France, and Japan, among others, you end up with a place that is an economic engine far beyond what you'd expect from towns this size in this region. It's to the point that when you consider the region, you wouldn't be able to call it a small one if there was only one focal city. However, because this is a multi-nodal urban area, you have a metro approaching a million people anchored on each end by a smallish city, with little towns in between all swamped by sprawl.

Meanwhile, up in Western North Carolina you have Asheville anchoring that entire part of the state. And because it anchors a good third of the state, and because it is a major hub for tourism to boot, it boasts amenities such as a hospital with an ER that was (and perhaps still is) one of the busiest in the entire country, and shopping and dining opportunities far beyond what you find in most cities of 92,000.

By sheer numbers inside the city limits, due to the difference in annexation laws in North Carolina and South Carolina, Asheville is the largest city between Charlotte and Atlanta despite Greenville having a much larger metro area. Asheville is also the largest city between Columbia and Knoxville.