City proper populations bloated by geographical size

[jayden]

What some cities that have large population mainly due to it's geographical size?

[jd3189]

Jacksonville. And I’m deadass serious.

[muertecaza]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...cities_by_area

For cities with larger populations, Jacksonville, Houston, OKC, Phoenix, San Antonio and Nashville are near the top for land area.

I'm sure all of those have at least some caveats though. Phoenix, for instance, largely annexed its land first, and the population filled in afterward. You can see that in the north and south ends of the city, where there are still probably 100 sq. mi. in the city limits of open desert and mountain preserves.

[BnaBreaker]

You couldn't just google this? Are you just starting a thread to start a thread?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by muertecaza

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...cities_by_area

For cities with larger populations, Jacksonville, Houston, OKC, Phoenix, San Antonio and Nashville are near the top for land area.

I'm sure all of those have at least some caveats though. Phoenix, for instance, largely annexed its land first, and the population filled in afterward. You can see that in the north and south ends of the city, where there are still probably 100 sq. mi. in the city limits of open desert and mountain preserves.

I would suggest looking at city land area as percentage of metro land area.

[iheartthed]

Columbus, OH, Indianapolis, Louisville, Charlotte, Austin, maybe Memphis.

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by jayden

What some cities that have large population mainly due to it's geographical size?

Phoenix, See Below, Notice the northern 1/3 of the city is open desert. Its not even defined in a planning zone in some cases.






Population of Encanto village (My Hood)
Total 63,800 (unofficial Estimate)
Density 6,800/sq mi (2,600/km2)

Population of Rio Vista (LMAO completely arbitrary distinction)
Total 8,770

Much of the city (Like LA) was annexed while it was farms or empty desert, clearly evident in aerial map above

[Yuri]

In my view, there are no “bloated cities” issue, but a “tiny city” one. It would be preferable if US cities were much bigger in size, with less admin overlapping, a more reasonable tax base and better urban policies.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Yuri

In my view, there are no “bloated cities” issue, but a “tiny city” one. It would be preferable if US cities were much bigger in size, with less admin overlapping, a more reasonable tax base and better urban policies.

Agreed. I think if most cities had their way, they would 'pull a Houston' and annex everything they could around them to pull in that extra tax base. My neighborhood was annexed in the late 90's which mean a huge chunk of middle class voters now paying Houston taxes.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Yuri

In my view, there are no “bloated cities” issue, but a “tiny city” one. It would be preferable if US cities were much bigger in size, with less admin overlapping, a more reasonable tax base and better urban policies.

I agree. The U.S. is fairly unique in blocking the central cities from annexing urbanized areas surrounding it. Many metros end up either delegating their urban planning to the state or becoming planning nightmares because of it.

[Yuri]

Most countries have all their territory occupied by a "city" or an analogous. In Brazil, for instance, there are only 3 tiers of administration: Union, State and Municipality (City), which is also a federated entity.

For comparison, there a 5,500 municipalities in Brazil for 3,000 counties and 25,000 cities (?) in the US. Brazil is just a bit larger than the contiguous 48-states. Needless to say, except for a few dozen municipalities, most of them are covered by rural areas with an urban spot in the middle.

With a bigger size, I believe US cities could have dealt with the White Flight much better and the bitter political division between city and suburbs would have less practical effects. It would be "only" a classist thing, with less impact on actual policies.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Yuri;9643046[B

]Most countries have all their territory occupied by a "city" or an analogous.[/B] In Brazil, for instance, there are only 3 tiers of administration: Union, State and Municipality (City), which is also a federated entity.

For comparison, there a 5,500 municipalities in Brazil for 3,000 counties and 25,000 cities (?) in the US. Brazil is just a bit larger than the contiguous 48-states. Needless to say, except for a few dozen municipalities, most of them are covered by rural areas with an urban spot in the middle.

With a bigger size, I believe US cities could have dealt with the White Flight much better and the bitter political division between city and suburbs would have less practical effects. It would be "only" a classist thing, with less impact on actual policies.

That's how it is in some states' e.g. New York where everyone lives in an incorporated area; city, village or town. Here in Texas, you either live in a city or you live in an unincorporated area where the county handles everything.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Most countries have all their territory occupied by a "city" or an analogous. In Brazil, for instance, there are only 3 tiers of administration: Union, State and Municipality (City), which is also a federated entity.

For comparison, there a 5,500 municipalities in Brazil for 3,000 counties and 25,000 cities (?) in the US. Brazil is just a bit larger than the contiguous 48-states. Needless to say, except for a few dozen municipalities, most of them are covered by rural areas with an urban spot in the middle.

With a bigger size, I believe US cities could have dealt with the White Flight much better and the bitter political division between city and suburbs would have less practical effects. It would be "only" a classist thing, with less impact on actual policies.

Are cities created by the national government or the state government in Brazil? In the U.S., cities are creations of the state, but most states typically delegate a lot of authority to the city after it is incorporated. In many states the small suburbs incorporated as a city (or similar) have the same local powers as the big city. It's also hard to force incorporated cities to combine with other cities because of the amount of power delegated to them.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Yuri

In my view, there are no “bloated cities” issue, but a “tiny city” one. It would be preferable if US cities were much bigger in size, with less admin overlapping, a more reasonable tax base and better urban policies.

newer cities are (ie., columbus in ohio). older are not (cinci and cle).

so what do you know? us cities are not so black and white.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by JManc

That's how it is in some states' e.g. New York where everyone lives in an incorporated area; city, village or town. Here in Texas, you either live in a city or you live in an unincorporated area where the county handles everything.

Massachusetts too, right? Brazilian municipalities are like that: they occupy the whole territory, but they're overall bigger. Closer in size to US counties.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Are cities created by the national government or the state government in Brazil? In the U.S., cities are creations of the state, but most states typically delegate a lot of authority to the city after it is incorporated. In many states the small suburbs incorporated as a city (or similar) have the same local powers as the big city. It's also hard to force incorporated cities to combine with other cities because of the amount of power delegated to them.

They're also created by states but all the specifications for their creation is inside Brazilian Federal Constitution, so there's not much room for states to decide much. They merely vote for creation. And in the past 20 years, there were only 10 or so new municipalities in Brazil. Creation of new ones are pretty much frozen.

But unlike happens in the US, they're not considered "mere creatures of the state" as they're regarded as a federated entity.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

newer cities are (ie., columbus in ohio). older are not (cinci and cle).

so what do you know? us cities are not so black and white.

I obviously said in general. We're right now inside a thread talking about bloated cities as oddities.

[summersm343]

Phoenix and Jacksonville for sure.

Just visited Columbus, Ohio for the first time. Very nice mid-sized city but it's population is DEFINITELY over bloated due to it's land size.

Some other cities that seem a little over bloated in their city proper population VS. their metropolitan area population:

San Antonio
Austin
Indianapolis

[Northern Light]

Originally Posted by Yuri

I obviously said in general. We're right now inside a thread talking about bloated cities as oddities.

I think Yuri is entirely on point.

Lets take a look at a couple of comparisons, I'll use the Canadian Province of Ontario on one side.

Population: 14.5 M

Area: 1,076,000km2 ( 415,598 square miles)

Number of Municipal Governments: 444

****

U.S. State of Georgia:

Population:10.52M

Area: 59, 425 miles square

Number of Municipal Governments: 535 (not including counties)

U.S. State of Michigan:

Population: 10,077,000

Area: 96,717 miles square

Number of Municipal Governments: 1,773 (all inclusive)

***

For the record, that last one is nuts!

[eschaton]

There are basically five setups for core cities in the U.S.

Highly Incorporated States: Nearly every (or in some cases every) bit of land not in a city is incorporated within a town. This makes expansion of cities pretty nearly impossible, as towns will only merge with cities if the population of the town votes in favor, which never happens any longer. This is the primary reason why if you look at a map of any of the New England states, all of the cities (except for Boston and maybe Providence) are about the same size in land area as towns. New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania suffer from this to a lesser extent. The good side of this is you end up with "sensible" boundaries, but it leads to a high level of municipal fragmentation.

Landlocked: This is a common configuration in older (read Rust Belt) areas of the Midwest, where the old survey township system was technically unincorporated, but in practice in the late 19th/early 20th century, more and more surrounding communities independently incorporated until a city was surrounded by "suburban cities" - which could not be merged in without the expressed support of the local population.

Sprawled: In a lot of areas with unincorporated county land, a core city is allowed to annex property as long as the owner okays it, with no local vote allowed. This leads to really weird "patchwork" expansion of cities, which often offer access to municipal services like water to help foster new development. These cities end up with often crazy borders, with lots of tiny enclaves of "non-city" relatively deep inside, and weird tentacles extending far into undeveloped land. This is common in the Sun Belt, but it can also be seen in newer Midwestern cities (Columbus, Kansas City, Madison, etc).

City-County Merger: A growing move in the modern era in the South/West is to consolidate city and county government. This has taken place in Jacksonville, FL, Louisville, KY, Indianapolis, IN, and Nashville, TN among other places. Somewhat confusingly, in these cases there is often one or more independent suburbs which retain self-government within the city-county. These tend to be cities which look big on paper, but don't feel that large, since most of the land area is comprised of former "suburbs."

Independent Cities: This is a special case where cities are not part of any county. This includes NYC (which technically covers five counties), San Francisco, St. Louis, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Denver. Oh, and every single city in Virginia. This happened by one of two ways - either through an early and complete consolidation between the city and the county (so that the whole city is urbanized) or through a breakoff of the cities from the counties. Unlike the city-counties mentioned above, they don't tend to "feel smaller" than the topline population suggests.

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by BnaBreaker

You couldn't just google this? Are you just starting a thread to start a thread?

Eh, it's an excuse for everybody to post city limits . Who's gonna do Chicago???

Sacramento should actually be bigger but the annexation process is ridiculous, complicated, and slow in California.
City of Sacramento