"Houston-ize" your city

[Steely Dan]

^yeah, at nearly 500 sq. miles, san antonio is another municipal land monster.

in fact, all 5 of the texas big boys "land" in the top 20 of the largest land area municipalities >100K people in the nation.

1. Anchorage - 1,706.8 sq mi (doesn't really count as the vast majority of it is literal mountain wilderness)
2. Jacksonville - 747.3 sq mi
   
3. Houston - 640.4 sq mi
4. Oklahoma City - 606.2 sq mi
5. Phoenix - 518.0 sq mi
   
   
6. San Antonio - 498.8 sq mi
7. Nashville - 475.8 sq mi
8. Los Angeles - 469.5 sq mi
9. Buckeye (AZ) - 393.0 sq mi
10. Indianapolis - 361.6 sq mi
    
    
11. Fort Worth - 342.9 sq mi
    
12. Dallas - 339.6 sq mi
13. Chesapeake (VA) - 338.5 sq mi
14. San Diego - 325.9 sq mi
15. Louisville - 324.9 sq mi
    
    
16. Austin - 319.9 sq mi
17. Kansas City - 314.7 sq mi
18. Charlotte - 308.3 sq mi
19. Augusta (GA) - 302.3 sq mi
20. New York - 300.5 sq mi

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._by_population




side note, it's interesting how damn close dallas and fort worth are in terms of land area.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

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.

Yeah, but those were also the four of the five most populated cities in the country in 1950. Back then, same as now, land area was a factor in population ordering.

Los Angeles was the outlier in 1950 since it by far had the largest land area of any major city, but was only #4 by population. L.A. was also the only top 10 to have a population density less than 11k ppsm in 1950. And, of those 10 cities, it was the only one to have continuously posted population growth in every census from 1950 - 2020.

New York had the second largest land area, and every other city's order roughly correlated to land area (Detroit and Philly were flipped, but they're roughly the same size by land area). NYC and L.A. are also the only major cities from 1950 to have a larger population in 2020 than it did in 1950.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yeah, but those were also the four of the five most populated cities in the country in 1950. Back then, same as now, land area was a factor in population ordering.

yes, totally.

detroit is not a terribly big land area city today (of cities >100K, it's #52 on that score nationally).

but back in the golden age of the legacy cities, it was certainly one of the biggest boys at the table. that's all i was trying to point out.

and being that mrnyc is originally from a legacy city (cleveland) and currently lives in another one (NYC), i thought that might've been coloring his perspective that "detroit is already a large city area-wise".

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

side note, it's interesting how damn close dallas and fort worth are in terms of land area.

Ditto for their counties. Same size.

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

US municipal boundaries differ a lot from Brazilian or Europeans. Those usually have a much bigger slice of the metro region (or all of it in many cases) and most of them have rural parts inside it.

In Brazil, for instance, every single piece of land belongs to a municipality (like the counties in the US) and we have only three tiers of administration: Union, States/Federal District and Municipalities.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

side note, it's interesting how damn close dallas and fort worth are in terms of land area.

Interesting as well is that Houston's area is almost twice that of Dallas's and yet their "population densities" are nearly identical. Houston's being just slightly lower than that of Dallas. I put population density in quotation marks because real density cannot be measured by dividing total population by total area. A more accurate measure is pop. density by zip code.

[BnaBreaker]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^yeah, at nearly 500 sq. miles, san antonio is another municipal land monster.

in fact, all 5 of the texas big boys "land" in the top 20 of the largest land area municipalities >100K people in the nation.

1. Anchorage - 1,706.8 sq mi (doesn't really count as the vast majority of it is literal mountain wilderness)
2. Jacksonville - 747.3 sq mi
   
3. Houston - 640.4 sq mi
4. Oklahoma City - 606.2 sq mi
5. Phoenix - 518.0 sq mi
   
   
6. San Antonio - 498.8 sq mi
7. Nashville - 475.8 sq mi
8. Los Angeles - 469.5 sq mi
9. Buckeye (AZ) - 393.0 sq mi
10. Indianapolis - 361.6 sq mi
    
    
11. Fort Worth - 342.9 sq mi
    
12. Dallas - 339.6 sq mi
13. Chesapeake (VA) - 338.5 sq mi
14. San Diego - 325.9 sq mi
15. Louisville - 324.9 sq mi
    
    
16. Austin - 319.9 sq mi
17. Kansas City - 314.7 sq mi
18. Charlotte - 308.3 sq mi
19. Augusta (GA) - 302.3 sq mi
20. New York - 300.5 sq mi

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._by_population




side note, it's interesting how damn close dallas and fort worth are in terms of land area.

Not saying it's not still a large area for this amount of people, but nearly all of Nashville's 700K-ish people are in about 290 square miles of that total above. The remainder is wilderness or water. My point is, it's a bit of a different situation from a city like Houston, which basically is just sprawling outward, then annexing that sprawl.

This is about six miles northwest of downtown Nashville, technically part of Nashville:

[Yuri]

Houstonizing Brazilian cities:

São Paulo plus six neighbouring municipalities: 14,026,695 inh. in 1,703 km²

Rio de Janeiro plus several neighbouring municipalities: 8,746,081 inh. in 1,800 km²

Belo Horizonte plus several neighbouring municipalities: 4,582,225 inh. in 1,705 km²

Recife plus several neighbouring municipalities: 3,692,517 inh. in 1,703 km²

Salvador plus five neighbouring municipalities: 3,646,558 inh. in 1,759 km²

Fortaleza plus five neighbouring municipalities: 3,212,073 inh. in 1,724 km²

Porto Alegre plus several neighbouring municipalities: 2,929,025 inh. in 1,617 km²

Curitiba plus three neighbouring municipalities: 2,476,502 inh. in 1,669 km²

Goiânia plus four neighbouring municipalities: 2,226,304 inh. in 1,622 km²

Campinas plus several neighbouring municipalities: 2,069,990 inh. in 1,620 km²

Brasília several divisions inside Distrito Federal: 1,858,137 inh. in 1,752 km²

Londrina Londrina minus rural districts plus three neighbouring municipalities: 781,479 inh. in 1,803 km²

[Yuri]

The most populated "Houstons" so far:

São Paulo: 14,026,695 inh. in 1,703 km²
New York: 10,912,261 inh. in 1,833 km²
London: 9,430,533 inh. in 1,735 km²

Asian ones will exceed those by a large margin.

[JManc]

I've been to Anchorage a few times and much of it does indeed looks like this:

Turnagain Arm by ConfusedWithACamera, on Flickr

Flat Top Mountain by ConfusedWithACamera, on Flickr

Originally Posted by BnaBreaker

Not saying it's not still a large area for this amount of people, but nearly all of Nashville's 700K-ish people are in about 290 square miles of that total above. The remainder is wilderness or water. My point is, it's a bit of a different situation from a city like Houston, which basically is just sprawling outward, then annexing that sprawl.

Isn't Nashville merged with Davidson county? I feel like results of city county mergers are apples and oranges to traditional city limit boundaries.

[BnaBreaker]

Originally Posted by JManc

Isn't Nashville merged with Davidson county? I feel like results of city county mergers are apples and oranges to traditional city limit boundaries.

Yeah, and that's kind of my point. If Nashville had just annexed as it developed it would probably be around 290-300 square miles right now, and it's not like it merging with the county really has resulted in a population count today that is drastically different than what it would be if it had used more traditional annexation methods. Not saying the city-county thing is better or worse, just different, and an apples and oranges situation to a city like Houston for the purposes of this thread.

[TWAK]

California City is 203 square miles with 14,100 people. Fully developed, who knows how many people it could hold?

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by BnaBreaker

Not saying it's not still a large area for this amount of people, but nearly all of Nashville's 700K-ish people are in about 290 square miles of that total above. The remainder is wilderness or water. My point is, it's a bit of a different situation from a city like Houston, which basically is just sprawling outward, then annexing that sprawl.

This is about six miles northwest of downtown Nashville, technically part of Nashville:

This is the same thing for Austin, where probably 95% of the population lives in about 300 square miles, as there are a number of preserves.

[mrnyc]

^ i do see a few loveshack houses down in the holler there.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

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.

yes that is exactly where i was coming from. also just anecdotal on the ground too vs eastern cities or like nearby toledo (80 sq mi.), which is similar area size to other ohio cities like cle and cinci (75) or its red-headed stepsister level legacy type cities as we call them vs the three c's, dayton (56) and akron (62).

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Los Angeles was the outlier in 1950 since it by far had the largest land area of any major city, but was only #4 by population. L.A. was also the only top 10 to have a population density less than 11k ppsm in 1950.

and the average density of the largest land area municpalities today has kinda inverted itself.

as of 2020, there are 87 municipalties in the US >100K people that have more than 100 sq. miles of land area. only 3 of them have an average density >10,000 ppsm: NYC, chicago, and philly.

and of the other 84, only 2 even have average densities between 5,000 - 10,000 ppsm: LA and San Jose.

denver, las vegas, detroit, portland, and fresno are close with average densites >4,500 ppsm. the other 77 are all <4,500 ppsm.

today, a large land area city proper almost always means a relatively low average population density, with a handful of legacy city hold-outs.

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

yes that is exactly where i was coming from. also just anecdotal on the ground too vs eastern cities or like nearby toledo (80 sq mi.), which is similar area size to other ohio cities like cle and cinci (75) or its red-headed stepsister level legacy type cities as we call them vs the three c's, dayton (56) and akron (62).

Toledo (and Milwaukee) are examples of an intriguing "in-between" case: industrial legacy cities that still grew significantly in land area post-war, annexing would-be suburban areas.

1950 land areas in square miles:
Cincinnati, 75.1
Cleveland, 75.0
Milwaukee, 50.0
Columbus, 39.4
Toledo, 38.3

1970 land areas:
Columbus, 134.6
Milwaukee, 95.0
Toledo, 81.2
Cincinnati, 78.1
Cleveland, 75.9

Those annexation bursts are how Milwaukee peaks in 1960 and Toledo peaks in 1970, after their Rust Belt brethren.

[Steely Dan]

^ good call, milwaukee and toledo really do occupy an "in-between" space, not fully pre-war legacy city with their municpal limits, and yet not fully post-war annexation land monster either, as they got cut-off relatively early in that process.

unlike milwaukee and toledo, cities like columbus just kept going after 1970, because they could. today, thanks to round after round of further subrban annexation, columbus is 220 sq. miles (nearly the land area of chicago), and it may not even be done yet for all i know. whereas milwaukee and toledo have been "locked" in their municipal limits since 1960 (milwaukee) and 1970 (toledo), respectively.

[Doady]

Even though they they are smaller than Houston, better examples of out of countrol boundaries and misleading populations for cities might be Calgary or Winnipeg, municipalities that cover most of the developed land in the metropolitan area.

City of Calgary had a population of 1,239,220 in 2016 and Winnipeg had 705,244. Seems impressive right? That's until you realize the metropolitan area of Calgary only had a population of 1,392,609 in 2016 and Winnipeg had 778,489. Not impressive at all.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by BnaBreaker

Yeah, and that's kind of my point. If Nashville had just annexed as it developed it would probably be around 290-300 square miles right now, and it's not like it merging with the county really has resulted in a population count today that is drastically different than what it would be if it had used more traditional annexation methods. Not saying the city-county thing is better or worse, just different, and an apples and oranges situation to a city like Houston for the purposes of this thread.

None of it really does matter though; Houston with 650 s/miles, SF with 50 or Nashville merging with a county...it all averages out the same when we look at metro areas. Houston city limits encompass suburbs that otherwise independent entities; my house is in a suburb annexed in the 90's.

Which sucks because the house was not built to Houston codes and now the city requires any electrical/ plumbing work to incorporate codes which means a $1200 toilet install.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ good call, milwaukee and toledo really do occupy an "in-between" space, not fully pre-war legacy city with their municpal limits, and yet not fully post-war annexation land monster either, as they got cut-off relatively early in that process.

unlike milwaukee and toledo, cities like columbus just kept going after 1970, because they could. today, thanks to round after round of further subrban annexation, columbus is 220 sq. miles (nearly the land area of chicago), and it may not even be done yet for all i know. whereas milwaukee and toledo have been "locked" in their municipal limits since 1960 (milwaukee) and 1970 (toledo), respectively.

columbus is definitely not done. they own water rights, so to grow you have to annex. cleveland gave their water rights away long ago when it didnt seem to matter at the time. so short sighted. and thats the yin snd yang of those cities in a nutshell. columbus can control its region whereas cleveland is just one among a bunch of tiny suburban fiefdoms all duplicating municipal services and wasting resources. don’t get me started!