"Houston-ize" your city

[KDD]

What the heck, I'm doing the Lehigh Valley

Allentown-125,000
Salisbury Township-13,000
South Whitehall Township-18,000
Whitehall Township-27,000
Coplay-3,000
Catasaqua-6,000
Bethlehem-75,000
Fountain Hill- 4,000
Hellertown, 4,000
Bethlehem Township-23,000
Palmer Township, 20,000
Wilson- 8,000
Easton-28,000
Forks Township-15,000

"Houstonized" Allentown- 369,000

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

My point was that comparing a 1,300 km² section of "Miami" to a 2,000 km² section of "Dallas" is quite apples to oranges.

Those aren't remotely close to the same things.

Miami minus two tracts then: 2,689,628 within 1,646 km² (636 sq mi). The map: https://www.citypopulation.de/en/usa/metromiami/

[Steely Dan]

That's still a far cry from your "Dallas" definition of over 2,000 km².

You've calculated a whole lot of populations for places, but you haven't come close to a standard geographic size to hold all cities to, which was the whole point of this thread:

To stick to 640 sq. miles as closely as you reasonably can, and then calculate the population in those 640 sq. miles.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

That's still a far cry from your "Dallas" definition of over 2,000 km².

You've calculated a whole lot of populations for places, but you haven't come close to a standard geographic size to.hold all cities to, which was the whole point of this thread:

To stick to 640 sq. miles as closely as you reasonably
can and then calculate the population in those 640 sq. miles.

Too much work. I give up.

For Dallas, I took away two more tracts on the southeastern corner and another four in the southwestern: 2,575,816 within 1,947 km².

[Yuri]

Canada:

Toronto plus five regional municipalities: 5,356,263 inh. in 1,776 km²

Montreal plus five regional municipalities: 3,350,006 inh. in 1,740 km²

Vancouver minus some communities: 2,654,475 inh. in 1,747 km²

And Australia:

Sydney 24 LGAs: 3,729,810 inh. in 1,600 km²

Melbourne 23 LGAs: 3,550,768 inh. in 1,863 km²

[Shawn]

A Houstonized Boston would include 59 continuous municipalities across 638.7 sq miles of Eastern Massachusetts, with a 2020 population of 2,906,311.

You can Philadelphiaize Boston into 21 continuous municipalities across 142.8 sq miles, all inside the I-95 / 128 belt, with a 2020 population of 1,774,711.

If anyone wants to see the actual lists, let me know.

[Shawn]

I just realized municipal Houston is more than half the size of the State of Rhode Island (1,214 sq miles).

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Houston is more than double NYC's land area, so the city would need another 340 sq miles to "Houstonize". NYC could only add about two of those counties and stay under the Houston area. But almost any way you cut it, there would be about 2 million people added to NYC's total, which is about the total population of Houston lol. I would go with adding Nassau and Hudson, though:

Houston = 640 sq miles
NYC + Nassau + Hudson = 631 sq miles

Houston = 2.3 million
NYC + Nassau + Hudson = 10.9 million

Nassau would take from Queens the title of NYC's largest borough by land area.

wait, so you’re saying people can’t live in water?

yes only 300sq mi of land around here, my bad i added water lol.

but anyway, yours is as good a comparison as any.

wait, come to think of it, there are some houseboat people, or at least casually i have seen it looks like it. upon some google mooglin i see its illegal here, but the recent article below estimates a few hundred people scattered around, so that’s interesting. winter must be especially brutal tho:

https://bettersailing.com/living-on-...nas-costs-etc/

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Shawn

I just realized municipal Houston is more than half the size of the State of Rhode Island (1,214 sq miles).

rhode island, always the whipping boi for these kind of things.

and lets don’t even jacksonville (747.30 sq mi.).

i dk whats odder tho, giant land mass cities or tiny rhode island?

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

My point was that comparing a 1,300 km² section of "Miami" to a 2,000 km² section of "Dallas" is quite apples to oranges.

Those aren't remotely close to the same things.

The Miami area is just compact. To get to 2000 square miles you would probably have to include up to Palm Beach or something. Even the numbers he is using is bloating Miami a bit as he is including empty farmland in the SW. Miami has an Urban Development Boundary (pretty easy to see when you look at Miami on a map) that is only 1088 square kilometers and includes almost all of the 2.7 million population.
The white parts of this map: https://www.google.com/maps/@25.7458....2850673,11.5z

[Steely Dan]

^ the miami UA was listed as being 1,238.6 sq. miles back in 2010, so there is surely a way to carve out a houston-sized 640 sq. mile chunk out of that. you just have to keep following the urban development northward up into broward county.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ the miami UA was listed as being 1,238.6 sq. miles back in 2010, so there is surely a way to carve out a houston-sized 640 sq. mile chink out of that. you just have to keep following the urban development northward up into broward county.

I don't think it would be fair. Houston, for instance, doesn't/didn't necessarily choose the densest tracts of land to annex.

I'd keep everything inside Miami-Dade. Leave Broward to a Houstonized Fort Lauderdale.

------------------------------------------

Houstonizing Britain:

London and four neighbouring districts: 9,430,533 inh. in 1,735 km²

Birmingham: 3,339,917 inh. in 1,659 km²

Manchester: 3,240,225 inh. in 1,735 km²

Leeds-Bradford: 2,298,495 inh. in 1,779 km²

Liverpool-Blackpool: 2,220,567 inh. in 1,735 km²

Glasgow: 1,787,400 inh. in 1,827 km²

Newcastle: 1,654,722 inh. in 1,670 km²

Sheffield: 1,622,200 inh. in 1,894 km²

Nottingham-Derby: 1,539,559 inh. in 1,662 km²

Cardiff: 1,309,824 inh. in 1,709 km²

Bristol: 1,286,516 inh. in 1,788 km²

Leicester: 1,015,727 inh. in 1,675 km²

Edinburgh: 912,490 inh. in 1,724 km²

Belfast: 794,824 inh. in 1,665 km²

[PhillyRising]

I tried this once with Philly and yes you would pretty much just add in all of Delaware County then chop off parts of Eastern Montgomery and Lower Bucks County. You might get get a sliver of Chester County but then it's eastern half would become the inner ring suburbs. Philadelphia would have more people than Houston for sure.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by PhillyRising

Philadelphia would have more people than Houston for sure.

without question.

a "houston-ized" philly would have well over a million people more than the city of houston.




Anyway, here's a "houston-ized" detroit:





land area of yellow townships: 643.7 sq. miles

population of yellow townships: 2,448,112


So at like for like sizes, "Detroit" is still a little bit bigger than the city of Houston.

[mrnyc]

^ whoa now that one freaks me out. detroit is already a large city area-wise, at least in my mind. like 150 sq mi i think. anyway that one really drills in houston's size to me.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

^ whoa now that one freaks me out. detroit is already a large city area-wise, at least in my mind. like 150 sq mi i think. anyway that one really drills in houston's size to me.

Detroit isn't really that large. It has a land area of 139 square miles, but that was below the average of 160 sq mi for the 10 largest cities in 1950. It was a little above the median of 108 sq mi, but not by much.

The 10 largest U.S. cities today collectively have a far bigger footprint than the 10 biggest cities in the mid-20th century. The average today is 364 square miles and the median is 333 sq miles. This is a grossly under appreciated factor in why 2/3rds of the Northeast and Midwest industrial cities dropped off the list of largest municipalities in the late 20th century.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Detroit isn't really that large. It has a land area of 139 square miles, but that was below the average of 160 sq mi for the 10 largest cities in 1950. It was a little above the median of 108 sq mi, but not by much.

The 10 largest U.S. cities today collectively have a far bigger footprint than the 10 biggest cities in the mid-20th century. The average today is 364 square miles and the median is 333 sq miles. This is a grossly under appreciated factor in why 2/3rds of the Northeast and Midwest industrial cities dropped off the list of largest municipalities in the late 20th century.

Also, the total population in the 10 largest cities in 1950 was 21,729,384. The population of the 10 largest cities in 2020 was 26,105,017. So the population of the 10 largest only increased by 20% in 70 years, but the land area increased by 128% over the same time.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Shawn

I just realized municipal Houston is more than half the size of the State of Rhode Island (1,214 sq miles).

Yeah. Rhode Island is wicked small. I loved being able to drive into Mass for groceries (tax rate lower) and then be able to hop over to CT in about 45 minutes.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Detroit isn't really that large.

Within the national context of 2022, no, Detroit is not an especially large land area city by municipal limits, but in terms of legacy cities of the north (bos-wash + rustbelt + Midwest) that haven't post-war annexed or unigov'ed themselves to super-size (like Columbus or Indy), Detroit is actually the 3rd largest in land area after only NYC and Chicago, with Philly right on its heels in 4th place.

I believe those are the only 4 legacy cities of the north that are over 100 sq. miles in size, so Detroit is a bit standout-ish for its physical size within that finer-grained context.

[bilbao58]

A better example than Houston is San Antonio. This (see photo) is officially larger than Dallas, yet its entire metro population is only slightly larger than the population of Houston proper.


Downtown San Antonio on Flickr