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

[Razor]

I thought that this may be an interesting topic.

Small cities that completely dominate a region, and are the service epicenter? This is certainly true for some Canadian cities.
I think a good criteria is that they are less the million metro, but the smaller the better in that it would be more interesting to read about.

I'm going to throw my hat in for two Canadian cities to start. That being both Sudbury and Winnipeg. Winnipeg is a more obvious example, but Sudbury is the alpha of North Eastern Ontario and acts like the unofficial capital of that region. It's population is only maybe 170k, but it takes on a much larger role with a regional University, Hospital, and shopping serving the entire North Eastern part of Ontario. Winnipeg may as well be NYC for that part of the prairies.

Others?

[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.

[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.

[SIGSEGV]

Reno to some extent.

Probably some cities in Montana.

Burlington VT

[Razor]

Anchorage Alaska is another one..I Imagine that it looms really large in that space.

[Tuckerman]

A case could be made for Des Moines

[Razor]

Originally Posted by Tuckerman

A case could be made for Des Moines

Des Moines is a good one!

Inversely, there are cities that would benefit from being more isolated a la' Winnipeg, Regina, and maybe the two Alberta cities as examples.
In Canada Hamilton comes to mind..Mississauga as well..Both are medium trees that are just not getting enough sun because of that much larger and taller oak tree right next to them. I imagine you see examples like that around Chicago or California..Oakland maybe?

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Razor

Des Moines is a good one!

Inversely, there are cities that would benefit from being more isolated a la' Winnipeg, Regina, and maybe the two Alberta cities as examples.
In Canada Hamilton comes to mind..Mississauga as well..Both are medium trees that are just not getting enough sun because of that much larger and taller oak tree right next to them. I imagine you see examples like that around Chicago or California..Oakland maybe?

Mississauga is a suburb and its emergence as a "city" is entirely because of its connection to Toronto. Hamilton is a better example of a city being outshined by a much larger city nearby.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Razor

Anchorage Alaska is another one..I Imagine that it looms really large in that space.

I'm not sure I'd agree. Anchorage is a mid-sized city, with just over 300,000 people. Of course, part of this is because it basically comprises the entire metro area other than the Mat-Su Valley to the north (which has another 90,000 people). But Anchorage is so distant from most of the Alaskan bush that I don't think it heavily registers. It's also a terrible city from the POV of walkability (even in the downtown area) with Juneau having much better urban form even with only 1/10th the population. Overall, Anchorage seems entirely appropriately-scaled for what it is, but it doesn't really seem like it has a lot of "pull" with the rest of Alaska.

[Razor]

Originally Posted by Docere

Mississauga is a suburb and its emergence as a "city" is entirely because of its connection to Toronto. Hamilton is a better example of a city being outshined by a much larger city nearby.

Yes I realize that it's entire being was because of Toronto, but I just assumed that it was independent because of Mississauga having it's own mayor.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Razor

Des Moines is a good one!

Inversely, there are cities that would benefit from being more isolated a la' Winnipeg, Regina, and maybe the two Alberta cities as examples.
In Canada Hamilton comes to mind..Mississauga as well..Both are medium trees that are just not getting enough sun because of that much larger and taller oak tree right next to them. I imagine you see examples like that around Chicago or California..Oakland maybe?

the old industrial ring cities that circle the outer edge of chicagoland (waukegan, elgin, aurora, joliet, and gary) might qualify to a degree, but they're all very small potatoes compared to the big giant alpha in the middle.

illinois' very liberal municipal incorporation laws created a situation where the VAST majority of chicago burbs are pretty damn small in terms of population. there's no suburban municipality here that comes anywhere close to a behemoth like 750,000 person mississauga.

if mississauga was in chicagoland, it'd be carved into 3 dozen or so different little pissant municipalities.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

illinois' very liberal municipal incorporation laws created a situation where the VAST majority of chicago burbs are pretty damn small in terms of population. there's no suburban municipality here that comes anywhere close to a behemoth like 750,000 person mississauga.

if mississauga was in chicagoland, it'd be carved into 3 dozen or so different little pissant municipalities.

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.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

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

You're right. I didn't make the connection that it's passed both Milwaukee and Detroit now.

It'll also likely soon have the 3rd largest skyline, if it doesn't already.

Mississauga is a very strange thing from an american perspective.

[DougB]

Any city that is geographically isolated:
-Anchorage
-Boise
-Calgary
-Denver (not exactly small, but has outsized influence over a very large area)
-Honolulu
-Perth
-Salt Lake
-Spokane

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

the old industrial ring cities that circle the outer edge of chicagoland (waukegan, elgin, aurora, joliet, and gary) might qualify to a degree, but they're all very small potatoes compared to the big giant alpha in the middle.

illinois' very liberal municipal incorporation laws created a situation where the VAST majority of chicago burbs are pretty damn small in terms of population. there's no suburban municipality here that comes anywhere close to a behemoth like 750,000 person mississauga.

if mississauga was in chicagoland, it'd be carved into 3 dozen or so different little pissant municipalities.

Aurora looks like it's pretty up there in population for a suburb at ~200k. Metro Detroit has a couple of +100k suburbs (Warren and Sterling Heights), and several hovering right under 100k. In fact, Warren has been the third largest city in Michigan for a few decades, behind Detroit and Grand Rapids.

Interestingly, there aren't really any true suburbs around New York City that break 100k. The only +100k municipalities in NY Metro are very urban satellite cities (Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Elizabeth). Meanwhile, over on the West Coast L.A. has a couple of whopper "suburbs" like Long Beach and Anaheim.

[Antares41]

Billings, Montana it a small city ~109K. When I visited many years ago it felt like it was the center of what is a very desolate region, population-wise, of the US. My definition of a small city being big.... because it has to.... there is noting else around.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Aurora looks like it's pretty up there in population for a suburb at ~200k.

Yeah, at nearly 200K, aurora is the largest chicagoland burb, and second largest municipality in IL, but it's still a far cry from a suburban beast like Mississauga that's closing in on 750,000! that's roughly the same population as all of lake county!

Of IL's 10 largest municipalities, 5 are chicagoland burbs, but 4 of them aren't really traditional burbs. rather, they're older 19th century industrial ring cities that got swallowed up by the post-war sprawl. Naperville is the largest "true suburb", in that 95% of its growth has been post-war



IL 10 largest municipalities:

1. Chicago - 2,709,534
2. Aurora -199,927
3. Joliet - 147,826
4. Naperville - 147,501
5. Rockford - 147,070
6. Springfield - 115,888
7. Peoria - 113,532
8. Elgin - 112,653
9. Champaign - 87,636
10. Waukegan - 87,297

[Centropolis]

Eureka, CA anchors a vast region...

[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.

[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.