Not that anyone is still looking at this thread, but since I looked up some statistics out of curiosity: I think Portland, Oregon, not counting the part of the

Not that anyone is still looking at this thread, but since I looked up some statistics out of curiosity: I think Portland, Oregon, not counting the part of the metro area in Washington, might be a decent comparison. Dublin city is a bit smaller in population but also quite a bit smaller in size. Oregon is a bit less than the population of RoI and Oregon + Idaho a bit less than the whole island (although much larger in area; Ireland is more like the size of the panhandle of Idaho). Also, Ireland (the island) is about the size and population of Tennessee and the Nashville metro area looks similar to the Dublin metro area (Greater Dublin on Wikipedia that looks closer to what is considered metro area in the US). The city of Nashville is larger in population but much larger in area (even compared to Portland).