Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
I agree that the projections of where Houston might be in 50 years are silly, but I think it's also equally valid to state why the Detroit analogy was not a good one. The reason that Detroit is not a 3M resident city today is political. In 1920, about 70% of Metro Detroit lived in the city of Detroit. If that ratio were still true today, Detroit would be a city of 3M residents.
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That's before the era of suburbanization, though. Using growth patterns from the beginning to middle of the 20th century, the Detroit region was poised to be a much, much bigger place than it is now. Even if the city had kept growing, the percentage of metro population that lived in the city would have almost certainly decreased, just as it did for every city in the country as suburban living became possible and then later, popular. If Detroit was a 3 million person city today, the metro area would definitely be larger than 4 million people. It's not the best analogy, but I think it still works. I understand the nuance you were trying to provide here, so I do apologize for being dismissive of your initial clarification regarding city size.