As children, we knew our city was the fourth largest and that it would always be that way. Then in 1990 something awful happened-Houston moved ahead of us. Still, we could take solace in the fact that our metropolitan area was number 4 and Houston only got ahead by swallowing up a bunch of suburbs. Now that the Census 2010 verdict is in we are number 5 on all counts and just barely hanging on. These maps from the Philadelphia Inquirer illustrate our angst.
Dallas? Are they counting by number of parking spaces?
Using county based metropolitan areas creates some size anomalies and makes the maps look a bit goofy. Riverside? Why do they even get their own metropolitan area? It looks like they're including San Bernardino county also, making for one huge skyscraper that is mostly desert.
The north facing perspective also means losing San Francisco and Baltimore behind their larger "neighbors" but if you flipped it around you'd lose San Diego so something had to give. Of course all of this seems pretty insignificant when compared with the largest cities in the world. A little perspective goes a long way.
Using county based metropolitan areas creates some size anomalies and makes the maps look a bit goofy. Riverside? Why do they even get their own metropolitan area? It looks like they're including San Bernardino county also, making for one huge skyscraper that is mostly desert.
The north facing perspective also means losing San Francisco and Baltimore behind their larger "neighbors" but if you flipped it around you'd lose San Diego so something had to give. Of course all of this seems pretty insignificant when compared with the largest cities in the world. A little perspective goes a long way.
1 comment:
We're number 23!
Which is weird. We were number 32 a few decades back.
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