Metro Detroit now smaller than Phoenix?

[iheartthed]

Geeze... people reading this drivel again... if you take the size of some of these vast areas for some metro areas... you can add Port Huron/Sarnia, And all of Windsor's Essex County and Toledo & environs into the mix... that gives you at least another 2 million... on top of this count here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_o...tistical_Areas

PA is 90 minutes away from NYC... if you account for everywhere within 90 minutes of Detroit... you include all of the Toledo area and large parts of Canada, which somehow never count on USA stats... but do on world Stats.

Lists... a waste of even discussing them... my 2 favorites...
1) Higgins Lake is the 6th most beautiful in the world.
2) the number of the being among the 6 largest cathedrals in the world in Europe numbers at least 20.

Why waste our time on regurgitating this same old stuff every year...

What does any of that have to do with Metro Detroit's declining prominence?

[brizee]

No, but a very, very persuasive Marcus Garvey would be a godsend.

A few more Nat Turners and John Browns would have produced a much more civil and polite USA.

[Gistok]

IMO that would be an even sillier way to do it. Cities aren't the same size, and don't have the same size commuting belt.
I mean, I could say Lansing is bigger than Detroit, because using your methodology, there are more people with a 90 minute drive.

Are you saying that people from Canada don't commute to Detroit to work and vice versa... that's not what my niece [[DMC) says?? Seems like a large number of folks working there are from Canada... so one has to take statistics with a grain of salt... especially since we're one of the busiest border crossings in the world... it ain't all just tourists and truck drivers.

Also I bet a lot more Canadians work in metro Detroit [[per capita) than people from PA in NYC. Also I know of many people from Saginaw, Lapeer and Port Huron who work at the GM Tech Center...

[Bham1982]

Are you saying that people from Canada don't commute to Detroit to work and vice versa
Also I bet a lot more Canadians work in metro Detroit [[per capita) than people from PA in NYC. Also I know of many people from Saginaw, Lapeer and Port Huron who work at the GM Tech Center..

I would bet the opposite. I definitely think there's a higher proportion of Pennsylvanians in the NY MSA commuting within the NY MSA as compared to Essex County residents commuting here. And, in any case, it doesn't really matter, because Essex County [[or the one PA county in the NY MSA or two in the NY CSA) don't have much population to make a difference. We're talking 50,000 residents in Pike County, PA, compared to 20+ million in the overall MSA.

[Cliffy]

yeah, they are only going to experience perpetual water shortages, it is # 10 and rising on the list of dangerous cities, top 25 for metro areas, has one of the highest levels of citizen complaints against its police department in the country

People keep talking about the water shortages and how we have all this water but Phoenix has one of the cheapest water rates in the country and my water bill is threw the roof. I still can't figure that out... What good is all this water when I pay over $100 a month.

[Gistok]

IMO that would be an even sillier way to do it. Cities aren't the same size, and don't have the same size commuting belt.
I mean, I could say Lansing is bigger than Detroit, because using your methodology, there are more people with a 90 minute drive.

No my point is that Windsor is NOT at all used as part of the Detroit commuting belt [[right there that's an anomaly)... so the results are skewed against us. Amost 10% of the metro area doesn't even count in the statistics, and yet a lot of people living in Windsor do commute to the Detroit area. Whether or not they are from Canada really shouldn't count against our local stats... and yet they do...

[Cincinnati_Kid]

Hermod, I already made Detroit instantly a better place the second I departed. Black Detroit population is now -1, including my vote! But wait, an entire family of my cousins moved to Arizona, so that's -4. The first of our kin moved around 1915, and with the exception of one uncle, our family did not make 100 years in the city of Detroit.

Not sure what else you want us to do... we get it, we know, you want us gone! We are leaving... yes, I know, you wanted us gone like 40-50 years ago, but mobility = money + education in the postmodern era. It took us a while. Cut us a break.

While I don't think those of us who are native-born Black Detroiters will exactly walk into the river anytime soon, as the jobs dry up, people will be forced to migrate elsewhere to find employment. I held on as long as I could, and now have a Grand Scheme to spend 1/3 of the year, starting in 2014, working in the D. But most of those who leave will be gone, and their kids will know nothing of the city by the straits, save for perhaps a vague affection for Tigers baseball.

But I'm not sure that folks back home should care about metro population size. I'm in a bigger metro now, and as they say more people, "mo' money, mo' problems." The difference is that the problems here don't really get the national attention that problems in Detroit receive.

And where is it that you are presently residing if you don't mind me asking English? I haven't seen you post on here recently, so there's my answer.

[old guy]

I spent over an hour in a fed ex shipping office last monday trying to ship a couple packages to Phoenix. They had so many new zip codes that hadn't even been issued to them yet, they couldn't figure it out. It's growing at a rapid pace. I lived there once, nice weather, wouldn't ever want to go back there. The crime rate, mostly burglary was unbelievable.

[Richard]

People keep talking about the water shortages and how we have all this water but Phoenix has one of the cheapest water rates in the country and my water bill is threw the roof. I still can't figure that out... What good is all this water when I pay over $100 a month.

Because I am on septic my water bill is $6 per month.

It is odd you have one group wanting to move closer into the urban core [[myself included) then you have the other group that loves sprawl.Until gas goes up anyways.Miles and miles of cookie cutter stamped out strip malls and trac homes.

All so somebody can make a tv special telling us that we pay $800 a year sitting in traffic.I guess the further out we go the less chance that the zombies can get us.

[Honky Tonk]

All so somebody can make a tv special telling us that we pay $800 a year sitting in traffic.I guess the further out we go the less chance that the zombies can get us.

I once went to an after work party @ Middlebelt & Something out in Bloomfield Something. It literally took an hour and 20 minutes of bumper to bumper traffic to get there. The owner of the home said "you get used to it". Pass. As far as zombies, the further out I go, the more of them I run into.

[iheartthed]

Also I bet a lot more Canadians work in metro Detroit [[per capita) than people from PA in NYC. Also I know of many people from Saginaw, Lapeer and Port Huron who work at the GM Tech Center...

I doubt it. There are commuter bus lines that run from Manhattan to the Poconos. A friend of mine [[former coworker) commuted from Allentown, PA to Manhattan daily for two years.

[Gistok]

Whatever... metro Windsor's 400,000 people should be counted in Detroit's count since there are commuters between the two...

[iheartthed]

Whatever... metro Windsor's 400,000 people should be counted in Detroit's count since there are commuters between the two...

Okay. Then add Tijuana's 1.3M to San Diego's 3.1M and Detroit's still #14.

[Gistok]

iheartthed.... you're taking apples and oranges to try to prove your point... MSA Phoenix has 16,573 square miles... MSA Detroit has 4,296 square miles... almost 1/4 of what Phoenix has... and guess what... we're surrounded by other MSA's... so part of the equation doesn't really fit the bill here. Phoenix is not hemmed in by other MSA's so they can grow by leaps and bounds... while Detroit's is hemmed in by Flint, Saginaw, Ann Arbor and Toledo.

Detroit's CSA [[which includes Flint, and Ann Arbor [[plus Monroe County, not covered by the MSA)... we have a population of 5.2 million in just over 5,800 square miles... still only 1/3 of Phoenix's MSA.

Phoenix doesn't even have a CSA! There are no nearby MSA's to combine it with!!

In that regards Detroit is #11... and if you add in metro Windsor... it almost makes us #10 at 5.6 million.

So you need to take the statistics that you are given and make sense of them. Statistics are a funny thing... they don't always give us a true picture of the scenario of things!

[iheartthed]

iheartthed.... you're taking apples and oranges to try to prove your point... MSA Phoenix has 16,573 square miles... MSA Detroit has 4,296 square miles... almost 1/4 of what Phoenix has... and guess what... we're surrounded by other MSA's... so part of the equation doesn't really fit the bill here. Phoenix is not hemmed in by other MSA's so they can grow by leaps and bounds... while Detroit's is hemmed in by Flint, Saginaw, Ann Arbor and Toledo.

Detroit's CSA [[which includes Flint, and Ann Arbor [[plus Monroe County, not covered by the MSA)... we have a population of 5.2 million in just over 5,800 square miles... still only 1/3 of Phoenix's MSA.

Phoenix doesn't even have a CSA! There are no nearby MSA's to combine it with!!

In that regards Detroit is #11... and if you add in metro Windsor... it almost makes us #10 at 5.6 million.

So you need to take the statistics that you are given and make sense of them. Statistics are a funny thing... they don't always give us a true picture of the scenario of things!

The point you are either 1) ignoring or 2) failing to understand is that Metro Detroit has fallen even in relation to cities with similar limitations. This means that the core of the Detroit metropolitan area has not kept growing at a pace sufficient enough to retain top 5, top 10 and barely top 15 status. Talking about MSAs vs CSAs is irrelevant to the discussion.

Philadelphia is just as "hemmed in" by other MSAs as Detroit but managed to maintain 6th place when at one point not long ago it was roughly the same size as Metro Detroit. Boston, another similarly "hemmed in" metro, was smaller than Detroit in 1950 and today is larger than Metro Detroit.

[313WX]

Philadelphia is just as "hemmed in" by other MSAs as Detroit but managed to maintain 6th place when at one point not long ago it was roughly the same size as Metro Detroit. Boston, another similarly "hemmed in" metro, was smaller than Detroit in 1950 and today is larger than Metro Detroit.

That's because everyone in Philadelphia and Boston actually commute into Philadelphia and Boston proper for work, versus the commuting clusterfuck we have in Detroit.

[Gistok]

That's because everyone in Philadelphia and Boston actually commute into Philadelphia and Boston proper for work, versus the commuting clusterfuck we have in Detroit.

I won't speak for Philly... but Route 128 is the eastern Silicon Valley ring road around Boston... so I would hardly call that commuting into Boston Proper. In that respect Boston is more like Detroit... with LOTS of jobs in the suburbs... although granted they do have more downtown jobs as well...

[Bham1982]

Boston and Philly are both much more centralized than Metro Detroit, but they're also both very sprawling. It's a prettier sprawl, and they don't really Macomb Township-type areas [[treeless plains with endless tickey-tack houses), but you still have vast sprawl.

[Gistok]

Rather than rehash arguments... here's an existing thread that already has put some things into perspectives... such as having a MSA of only 3,900 sq. miles... how other cities have them 2-8 times the size of Detroit's... so however you want to rationalize it... this puts it into perspective...

http://www.city-data.com/forum/city-...same-land.html

[English]

A few more Nat Turners and John Browns would have produced a much more civil and polite USA.

Or a single William Wilberforce. Race relations in the UK and the former Commonwealth are magnitudes better than they are in the United States.

Whenever someone tells me how much more polite [[read: "better behaved") Blacks from Jamaica or Barbados or some other former British territory are, I point out that manumission over a generation or two vs. a bloody Civil War/Jim Crow/Civil Rights over a 100 year period covers it all. Blacks from the former French Caribbean colonies were freed a generation before English manumission. And those from Africa were never really chattel slaves at all, at least, not the ones with the education and wherewithal to immigrate.

In the UK, former slaveholders received financial compensation from the Crown and although not all was roses, peaches, and candy, it was a darn sight better than the mess of things the United States made, for all our talk of "freedom," "liberty," and "equality."

Oh well. Wishing for the United States to follow England's lead on the slavery question is sort of like wishing they'd just sent us back to Africa in 1865... crying over spilled milk. A visionary nation would have figured this out by now, but we haven't been that since the mid-20th century. Now, we're just reactive, and knee-jerk, and treading water. Is it any wonder that we're a nation in decline?

[English]

That's because everyone in Philadelphia and Boston actually commute into Philadelphia and Boston proper for work, versus the commuting clusterfuck we have in Detroit.

Philly makes you wish you didn't have a car. Back home, auto travel is the most convenient way to go, but now that I'm here my vehicle just seems like a big albatross around my neck. I chose a place in NW Philly last year because it reminded me of home [[much more green space in Mt. Airy/Germantown/Chestnut Hill) but now, I'm trying my best to move into Center City or University City either this summer or next. The auto commute isn't fun at all, parking is exorbitant, and the PPA [[Philadelphia Parking Authority) makes Detroit's meter maids look like the Tooth Fairy. People here are more afraid of the PPA than the police.

Last year, SEPTA was rated the #1 mass transit system in the country:
http://articles.philly.com/2013-02-2...lou-gambaccini

Philly was rated the #1 place in the country for a bike commute:
http://www.uwishunu.com/2011/05/phil...ta-in-the-u-s/

The maddening thing is that the ONLY major difference between here and Detroit is that Philly is part of the East Coast megalopolis... and the weather is slightly [[very slightly) warmer. The racial demographics of Philly aren't that dissimilar to where Detroit was in the 1970s... it's a very black/white city, with Latinos favoring New Jersey, but otherwise, sticking to a few neighborhoods.

But this is no paradise. Conservative Philadelphia magazine has just sparked a regional race conflict with their feature article "Being White in Philly" --

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/white-philly/

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/w...-Part-Two.html

White and black Philly residents then proceeded to have a free-for-all about this. Some of the debate reminded me of home, with people screaming at each other online, but there were prominent white people who came out against it. And Mayor Nutter, who reminds me of a Philly version of Dennis Archer for some reason [[the white business community loves him, while the black community has mixed feelings), has just issued a complaint to the Human Rights Commission, which surprised me and a lot of other people:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20...e_article.html

So what does Philadelphia magazine do? My prediction as a 35 year old Detroiter was "they're going to say f--- you, Mayor Nutter" since that's what the local media I've known all my life promotes... division, divide, white vs. black, city vs. suburbs. But no, they're going to have a summit on race:

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/d...on-Monday.html

I've only been here for 7 months. But my first impressions are this:

The biggest difference between here and home is that the reactions to crime and race issues are the exact opposite of what I was used to as the status quo.

From my point of view, white Philly residents are a bit like white New Yorkers in NYC of the 1970s and 1980s. My white baby boomer friends in my field talk about being mugged back then in the Big Apple as if it was a Fact of Life, in this disaffected "sh*t happens" tone. But it didn't make them abandon New York. Same here in Philly. Part of the reason is pricing and geography [[the East Coast megalopolis is constrained by the Appalachian mountains and its subchains, you can only sprawl so far), part of it is because the commutes here are so awful [[no way would I consider a move out to the 'burbs; people think I live in the boondocks and I'm still in the city), and part of it is because there's just a different mentality.

As a result, Philly's population continues to rise:

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/...lowTwt_PHBrand

Detroit's biggest issue isn't race or crime, from this vantage point. Everyone has race and crime issues. What's killing us is transit and quality of life. People think I'm crazy to have a car. No one here believes me when I say that Detroit doesn't have viable mass transit. One brother, a train conductor, actually told me I was pulling his leg.

Really, I think that "proximity to everything" is what's caused Philly to gain population this decade for the first time in 50 years. NYC is totally commutable. I'll never forget the first time I did the Megabus trip a week after I moved here. In about the time it takes to get from downtown Detroit to Lansing, we went from Philly's 30th Street Station to seeing the NYC skyline. I've met several people who commute to NYC for work. Rent in Philly is half the price and the cost of living is cheaper [[although magnitudes higher than in Detroit, which hasn't been pleasant). You can also get to DC in 2-3 hours by train or by bus... it's not as easy of a commute, but it's doable. Boston is 4 hours by train. There's nothing that Detroit can do about that, until/unless the feds decide that every region deserves the same regional rail they enjoy in the East.

But to listen to Philadelphians, their city is the crappiest place ever, and filled with problems, etc. There is a very blue collar "swag" that natives have, no matter what their racial background. It's really quite endearing because they remind me of Detroiters.

[English]

One more thing. The lead story on yesterday's evening news was about a roach-infested bus traveling from AC [[Atlantic City) to NYC:

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/...198495281.html

Do you seriously think that people in NYC/NJ/Philly are going to go out and buy cars because of that? Not going to happen.

Now imagine if the story were about a bus traveling from Detroit to Ann Arbor that was roach infested. Exactly. We'd never heard the end of it.

[canuck]

Tee-hee, love the story about the "Roach Coach", English; in the spirit of "Welcome Back Cotter" Welcome back to Detroityes Mademoiselle English! I am surely not the only one wondering about your disappearance from these threads into the newfound reality of Philadelphia.

Let us hope for the better and think that Detroit's urban fabric including mass transit can become more amenable to walkable, bikeable streets.

[iheartthed]

Detroit's biggest issue isn't race or crime, from this vantage point. Everyone has race and crime issues. What's killing us is transit and quality of life. People think I'm crazy to have a car. No one here believes me when I say that Detroit doesn't have viable mass transit. One brother, a train conductor, actually told me I was pulling his leg.

I know what you mean. I've been saying this for years on this forum and I get the exact opposite reaction here. Detroiters have a hard time believing that doing something as simple as investing in a mass transit system could dramatically affect abandonment and decay of a city. Non-Detroiters have a hard time believing that a major city [[outside of LA) could exist without a transit system.

[nain rouge]

Cleveland has had "Rapid Transit" for a long time [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cl...ransit_map.svg), and yet the city has declined almost as badly as Detroit. Maybe - maybe - if Detroit had developed it's own light rail, it would have stemmed the tide of decay a bit, but you'd still basically see the same end result.

Cleveland's transit system is about the same as the systems that were seriously proposed for Detroit around the time they began building the freeways. You weren't ever going to get New York City-style transit with all the single-family homes dominating the city.

To truly reverse Detroit's fortunes, we need a better economy. Detroit lost its way because of the social divisiveness of unions and racism and the promise of modernism [[why deal with legacy costs when you can build cheap utopias in the suburbs?), which created an undesirable business environment within the city limits. Public transit was a secondary issue in all of this.