4 ms·
America: A Nation of Small Towns (2020)
- 082349872349872 4y ago> On the other hand, only 4.0% (780) of all cities had a population of 50,000 or more in 2019, yet nearly 39% of the U.S. population (127.8 million) live in those cities.
- KiranRao0 4y agoDoes anyone have a comparison to other nations?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throw0101c 4y agoOther interesting facts on US population distribution/location: > In the U.S., 127 million people live in coastal counties. That’s as much as the entire population of Japan. If they were their own nation, the coastal counties of the U.S. would rank third in the world in gross domestic product, beaten only by China and the U.S. as a whole. The outsize U.S. marine economy is fueled by tourism and recreation, offshore energy, shipbuilding, and aquaculture, to name just a few. * https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html > Roughly two-thirds of the United States' population lives within the 100-mile zone—that is, within 100 miles of a U.S. land or coastal border. That's about 200 million people. * https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone
- 988747 4y agoI have different take on this: even big American cities have this thing called "suburbs", which give them all a small town feel. Americans have an obsession with living in single family homes, apartment are considered the dwellings of the poor. The only real city in the US is New York :)
- mr90210 4y agoThat’s a perk when you live in a massive country. I live in an apartment in some country in Europe, and I certainly dislike hearing my noisy neighbors with their noisy dogs. ;) Yeah, I wouldn’t live in an apartment if I had the money to afford a house.
- granshaw 4y agoChicago. Chicago is a real city too.
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoNew York is a city enveloped by cities. Chicago bleeds straight into its suburbs. That makes the former America’s only rival to e.g. London or Tokyo.
- tptacek 4y agoChicago and London have pretty similar urban/suburban gradients.
- zokier 4y agoSo roughly third lives in "big" cities (50+k pop), third in small cities and towns, and a third in non-incorporated place. Even knowing that US is rural, that last figure is still somewhat surprising.
- missingcolours 4y agoOf course, some of those unincorporated areas can be fairly urban, e.g. East LA[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Los_Angeles,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Los_Angeles,_California
- Lammy 4y agoMy favorite example: almost the entirety of the Las Vegas Strip (everything south of the Stratosphere) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise,_Nevada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise,_Nevada
- thejteam 4y agoSo I technically live in a "metropolitan area" with a 100k+ population. Somebody got really creative with boundary lines, supposedly to help with procuring federal dollars. I step outside in the morning to the sound of cows moo-ing. A few years ago our street had more chicken than people (until a fox figured out our street had more chickens than people). Occasionally I stop to let wild turkeys cross the road. So even "big" areas can be quite rural.
- rayiner 4y agoI’m in the Baltimore Annapolis metro area. That’s a fair characterization of where I live—five minutes east and I’m at a Target and Whole Foods. But five minutes west and I’m at horse farms. If you keep going toward Baltimore from where I am you go about 15 miles through farms before you hit a CDP or any meaningful size. And Maryland is one of the densest states in the country!
- refurb 4y agoThis. Depending on local rules there can be an incentive for a smaller town to join a larger city or stay separate. My understanding LA is massive because the city had water rights and if small towns wanted access, they had to join. Then you can go to other cities that are small by population (SF is 1M) but it’s surrounded by smaller cities towns that combined dwarf it in population. Then you’ve got “small towns” in CT that are practically touch each other into one massive suburban area but are defined as small cities/towns with tens of thousands in population.
- ecommerceguy 4y agoI have to question how accurate the 2020 Census is..?
- ecommerceguy 4y agoFor the downvoters, probably deep state far left anti american globalists beaurcrats, the Census themselves admitted to a deeply flawed count. Even a google search reveals this.: https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/census-bureau-admits-overcounting-7-blue-states-just-1-red-state https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/censu... https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3494167-southern-states-suffered-census-undercounts-bureau-says/ https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3494167-southern-st...
- rayiner 4y agoThe Census definitions of “urban” and “rural” are pretty amusing. They count “urban clusters” above 2,500 people as urban and not rural. So Sibley Iowa, where my wife went to high school, doesn’t count as “rural” because it has 2,860 people. Even though colloquially almost everyone would consider all of northwest Iowa to be “rural as fuck” and the nearest real city, Sioux Falls South Dakota, is 70 miles away.
- dahfizz 4y agoYeah, in the article they call a town with between 5,000 and 10,000 a "mid sized city". Completely ridiculous, IMO. People read misleading statistics that XX% of the population is urban, but that doesn't reflect reality.
- ryukafalz 4y agoJust took a look around Sibley on Street View and, distance from major cities aside, it definitely has a pretty urban form in some places. The commercial strip on 9th street would look right at home in the inner-ring suburbs near me, and I even spotted a concrete-protected paved bike path on 2nd (honestly impressed, we don't have any of those here). Certainly it's no city, but it's closer to one than a lot of rural places I've seen.