We are consistently plagued with online news and travel articles that rank cities purely based on their statistics and without regard to nuance.  Doing so may seem innocent but easily lends itself to misconceptions.  Articles ranking America’s “biggest cities,” “fastest growing cities,” or “upcoming cities,” and so forth can be misleading when statistics are pulled without considering how different states incorporate and define cities.  If we allow cities to be defined merely by matters of statute and local administration, then our popular understanding of cities lies substantially at the mercy of oblivious pop journalists who greatly influence public perception.  This is why planners should define an urbanist definition for “city.”

Why We Must Define Cities Differently –

Our understanding of what constitutes a city should form the foundation of our work as urban planners.  Continued failure to do so will doom us to remain within our current urban landscapes that are often littered with disjointed or barely noticeable development strategies.  In other words, if we can’t define the type of environment we are working towards, we’ll never get there.  Worst still, without a workable, urbanist definition for city, planners may find themselves at the whims of interests groups and regulatory agencies that do not consider urban life in their lines of business.  The results will not be desired by most. 

The Current Definition –

Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines city as “an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village.”  Though this definition speaks to the prominence of the city, it doesn’t lend much else to our understanding.  Instead, many observers are left to piece together their definition of the city from the writings of reporters who merely restate statistics on incorporated population totals or federal designations of metropolitan statistical areas.  By these standards, cities such as Houston, Phoenix, Dallas, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, and a select few others are usually included on lists that focus on the country’s biggest cities.  However, to keen observers, these places may not feel as though they embody our stereotype of the city as much as some other, albeit jurisdictionally smaller, cities such as Boston, Providence, Hartford, or Baltimore.  Such observations suggests that the unmistakable variations in the overall urbanity of cities means that they cannot be defined by jurisdictional statistics alone. 

Urban Life –

The planner’s definition for city should encompass the idea of urban life.  There is a clear and noticeable difference between a place with urban life and somewhere without.  For most, places with urban life are warm and friendly while those devoid of humans are austere and even scary.  Urban life comprises many activities that should be ordinary within city neighborhoods.  This includes people walking on the sidewalks, playing games in the park, hanging out at sidewalk restaurants, sitting on stoops, or performing various neighborhood jobs like delivering mail or fixing street amenities.  Automobiles can and should play a role in urban life albeit a minimized one that lies in balance with other activities.  Despite what advances in transportation may come, urban life will always reside on the human scale.  Just as we can tell when a place is filled with urban life, we can see one without. 

Rural areas are often beautiful in many ways but signs of urban life are usually not present.  People exist but most of their activities revolve around tending to their own properties.  In suburban areas, properties are also tended either by individual owners or service companies.  Although some forms of active human life can be found throughout the suburbs and rural areas, it is rarely connected to the street, sidewalk, or some other element of the public domain.  Essentially, suburbs and rural areas are not devoid of humans, they are simply devoid of humans interacting within public spaces.  Such distinction is suggestive that an urbanist definition of city should capture those environments that are likely to yield high levels of human activity taking place within the public realms of our streets, sidewalks, parks, and promenades. 

Component Definitions –

Defining the city as a place that offers and presents urban life suggests the need to define the urbanized lifestyle.  It is fair to suggest that the urbanized lifestyle and the urban neighborhood go hand-in-hand.  To enhance our understanding of the urbanized neighborhood, I also attempt to define the suburban and rural environments so as to distinguish their characteristics from those common to what we’ll come to consider as cities. 

Urbanized Lifestyle

In the urbanized neighborhood, it is normal to complete errands by walking.  Buildings are oriented to the sidewalk and keeping sidewalks in good shape and free of obstructions is a part of the social code of conduct.  People can also get around by a variety of transportation options in addition to walking.  This is because public transit, like sidewalks, is also prioritized above the private automobile.  The necessities and amenities needed for daily life are available within a twenty minute commute from home, and most residents can conduct all routine activities without traveling beyond four miles.  Residents’ favorable views on the continued concentration of development enables this convenience as they see the benefits of urban density as outweighing the potential drawbacks.  The public realm provides the medium to sustain life. 

Suburbanized Lifestyle

The suburbanized environment employs the automobile to create a landscape of privatization.  Individuals without cars are considered unsuitable.  When a person who normally possesses a car finds themselves without one they become reliant on other individuals or private services.  All establishments are spread out on large tracts of land, and it is common for people to travel up to 20 miles to conduct errands or reach their job.  Parking lots are everywhere and businesses or homes without them are considered problematic.  Policies and design decisions that marginalize or entirely outlaw the functional pedestrian are commonplace and considered appropriate.  Nearly all land is privately owned and accessible only through the use of a vehicle effectively creating a socio-economic litmus test to determine who can patronize establishments.  Life is sustained through one’s ability to participate in the private medium.  

Rural Lifestyle

Within the rural environment, people get around by driving.  The automobile is symbolic of life and those seen walking are in trouble at best or downright suspect.  Traveling distances of 20-to-30 miles in order to carry out routine activities is not only common but necessary for many errands.  Continuous exposure to the countryside encourages a lifestyle that synchronizes with natural phenomena and cycles.  Life is sustained through private means. 

An Attempt to Define “City”

Based on the aforementioned components, here is my attempt to create a planner’s definition for the concept of a city.

A city is a collection of urbanized neighborhoods oriented around and affiliating with a central space producing a shared identity.  In the urbanized neighborhood, it is normal to complete errands by walking.  Buildings are oriented to the sidewalk and keeping sidewalks in good shape and free of obstructions is a part of the social code of conduct.  People can also get around by a variety of transportation options in addition to walking.  This is because public transit, like sidewalks, is also prioritized above the private automobile.  The necessities and amenities needed for daily life are available within a twenty minute commute from home, and most residents can conduct all routine activities without traveling beyond four miles.  The public realm provides the medium to sustain life.  The central space and shared identity of the city is that area considered by the inhabitants of its urban neighborhoods to be their overall hub of culture, commerce, visitation, and expression. 

Any urbanized neighborhood within an inhabited region not affiliating with the central space and identity of the principal or “big” city belongs, in fact, to another separate city.  This might be the case of a sizable outer borough or commuter town located within a large urban region.  For example, Tacoma versus Seattle in Washington State where Tacoma is a part of the Seattle region but recognized by the inhabitants of its urban neighborhoods as having a central or common identity distinct from that of Seattle. 

Finding Out Who’s Big (methodology) –

To test out this revised concept of city, I created an analysis to approximate the size of notable American cities.  Population data from the 2020 American Community Survey (ACS) was matched with Census Tract identification numbers for 35 U.S. states containing a total of 80 notable cities.  Selected cities mostly encompassed known “big” cities but also included a fair number of mid-sized and even small ones to test the analysis among regions of varying sizes.  A notable exception was made for New York City, which, given its massive geographic size and multi-nodal development pattern, was included twice – once for Midtown Manhattan and again for Downtown Brooklyn. 

A GIS point feature was mapped in the approximate center of each city’s downtown district.  For cities with downtowns located immediately off coastlines, some relief was provided by placing the point feature at the edge of the downtown area opposite the waterbody rather than on the most central part of the downtown district.  Next, a three-mile buffer feature was created around each point.  A distance of three miles was chosen because it aligns well with our revised definition of city.  Each three-mile buffer creates a circle encompassing 28.27 square miles.   

Census Tract population data was summarized within the three-mile buffer features to produce an estimate of the urbanized population living in each city.  In some of the smaller regions, this methodology likely captured close-in suburbs, and for some of the larger ones a substantial amount, if not even a majority, of the urbanized population was left out.  However, the intention behind this method was to create an approximation of the relative differences in urbanized populations between cities rather than to accurately estimate the total urbanized population of each city.  Therefore, my analysis is based on the assumption that most cities have a monocentric development pattern and that the existence of densely urbanized neighborhoods more than three miles from the downtown core would not be decisive.

Who’s Actually A Big Deal Map

Telling Results –

Though the premise of my analysis was basic, the results have actually changed the way I think about certain cities. 

The Dominance of New York City –

To begin, there is New York, and honestly, not much else.  New York City is truly dominant in its urbanized population.  No wonder why many people say New York City is a place like nowhere else.  Back in 2014, I visited a friend who was living in NYC at the time.  Despite his humble beginnings, my friend had become a world traveler by his late-twenties.  Having lived in Copenhagen for a year and having travelled to some of the great cities of Asia, I was surprised when my friend said to me that he’d seen nothing like New York City.  It looks like the figures agree.  The population contained within the buffer features centered on Midtown and Downtown Brooklyn dwarf all other cities.  They both have more than twice the population of the next biggest city. 

Los Angeles Deserves Some Respect –

Our image of an endless landscape of gross urban sprawl should be tempered by the facts when we picture Los Angeles.  The City of Angels boosts the largest urbanized population outside of New York City by a healthy measure.  Seldomly known and recognized, Los Angeles once had what may have been America’s most extensive streetcar network.  Streetcar networks were known for being centered on walkable urban grids as most commuters in those days walked to and from the nearest streetcar stop.  Streetcar stops themselves were typically seen as prime locations for higher density developments and the walkable street grids of the early streetcar suburbs were highly adaptable for urbanization.  The results from my analysis suggest that Los Angeles capitalizes well on the urbanization opportunities presented by the areas built off its historic streetcar network. 

Benjamin Franklin’s Old Haunts –

Rounding out the top five by coming in fourth and fifth are Philadelphia and Boston respectively.  Philadelphia being the city that made our great national founder and Boston being the place of his birth.  Both are among America’s most historic and densely settled cities.  Central Philadelphia is home to America’s oldest continually inhabited street (Alfred’s Alley) and both cities host many residential blocks where those traveling by automobile need not apply.  Though both cities got into skyscrapers late in the game, they do a good job showing that such shiny buildings don’t really matter as great density can be achieved with structures built on a much more human scale. 

The Top Ten Cities in the U.S. –

Five of America’s largest cities are located in the northeast, three are in California, and the other two are Chicago and Miami.  By our revised definition of city, Texas does not even boost one within the top twenty.  Coming in just below San Francisco, Chicago is ranked seventh in the U.S. at best.  Although the city boost one of the most impressive skylines, it could do much more at all scales, particularly the human, to increase the residential population in its central core.  Hemmed in by the Everglades, Miami cracks the top ten coming in ninth and stands alone as the only southern city to be among America’s top twenty cities.  Finally, San Jose might offer another surprise coming in tenth overall. 

Sunbelt Cities –

Much has been written about the rise of Sunbelt cities over the past twenty years.  Although I may dismiss much of the South’s economic growth as the region catching up to the rest of the country after generations of struggles following the Civil War, recent growth can be attributed to much more than merely the advent of air conditioning.  There is no doubt that the South contains some of the country’s largest inhabited regions and economies.  But what remains of the urban experience in many of those cities appears to be quite minimal.  By our definition, New Orleans is the second largest city in the South and ranks ahead of Atlanta, Houston, Austin, and even Dallas.  In fact, Houston’s urbanized size ranks below that of Rochester, New York.  Despite their immense size, the great settlements of the Sunbelt do not possess the urbanized environments necessary to constitute “big” cities. 

An Altered Understanding of Cities –

My analysis revealed that San Antonio, a city with more than 1,400,000 residents in its official jurisdiction of 500 square miles, is just barely larger than Pittsburgh.  San Antonio has a urbanized population of around 150,567 within its three mile radius while Pittsburgh has 147,989 in its corresponding area.  Pittsburgh, despite once being an industrial powerhouse, has seen its urbanized population fall so much that it is only a little larger than Allentown, Pennsylvania (141,004).  One interpretation of this observation, I assume, is that the urban experience, when viewed in terms of population, is about as opportune in Pittsburgh as it is in San Antonio despite that the latter being much larger by jurisdiction. 

A seemingly small community such as Grand Rapids, Michigan, may offer a comparable urban experience to that of Columbus, Ohio.  Once again, Columbus is a much larger city on paper than Grand Rapids.  However, Grand Rapids contains about as many people living within a three mile distance of its downtown as Columbus (137,793 versus 138,269).  One could argue that a “big” city such as Columbus carries burdens that smaller ones like Grand Rapids do not face.  It is likely that Columbus has to house a state capitol campus, freeway loop, large institutions, expansive offices, warehouses, stadiums, and other functions within a three-mile radius of its downtown.  However, to counter this argument, I suggest that the more powerful market forces supplied by Columbus’s larger economy should be capable of generating stronger land use demands and thus the greater utilization of residential areas that do exist within its central areas. 

Another example of a “big” city delivering weak population numbers in its central neighborhoods can be observed in the comparison between Cincinnati, Ohio and Eugene, Oregon.  Cincinnati is considered to be the first city in the United States whose layout and design was the product of purely American influence.  Though Cincinnati has many opportunities to increase residential density, much of its central areas are scared with freeways and its downtown is both office heavy and packed with stadiums.  Many of the areas lying beyond its freeway loops located opposite of its downtown and core neighborhoods are suffering from the disinvestment that often comes with a lack of connection to the rest of the city.  Despite its size and legacy, Cincinnati contains just over 10,000 more people residing in its central neighborhoods than Eugene, Oregon – being essentially a mere college town. 

Signs of Hope for Legacy Cities –

There are some signs of hope for older cities.  Buffalo, New York, though often treated as a the butt of jokes for its long standing decline, boosts a larger central population than Charlotte, North Carolina.  This means, in fact, by way of our revised definition for city, Buffalo is larger than Charlotte.  Actually, Buffalo stands above many cities including Indianapolis, Orlando, Phoenix, Detroit, St. Louis, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Cleveland, and Memphis.  From my analysis alone, I would suggest that there is more urban life occurring in Buffalo than any of those much larger cities.  But how can a city that everyone jokes about as a dying place still have a larger urban population than some of America’s most up-and-coming cities? 

Common Perceptions, Likely Deceptions –

With signs of hope also came more discouraging findings.  For example, Erie, Pennsylvania contains a larger urbanized population than Detroit, Michigan.  Erie contains 90,456 residents within three-miles of its downtown whereas Detroit has only 85,645.  Before moving out east, I considered the idea of settling in Detroit based on recent media hype and discussions about its revitalization.  I thought that doing so would get me in on the ground floor of a place that was rising up.  However, it’s tough to sell the idea that your “big” city is revitalizing when it houses fewer people in its central neighborhoods than a place most people don’t know exist.  Had I moved to Detroit, I would have likely faced the same two lifestyle options that an unfortunate number of American cities offer their inhabitants.  One being the central city with a small town population and limited offerings and the other comprising an auto-dependent and faceless suburbia. 

Big City: By Jurisdiction Only –

When statistics on the official populations of cities are discussed, I have always found it to be frustrating that nuances of municipal incorporation practices are often ignored.  With an official population total of 887,642, Indianapolis, Indiana is among the larger cities in the country.  However, according my study, its urbanized population sits at about 98,764.  By comparison, San Francisco has an official population that sits below that of Indianapolis at 873,965 while boosting an urbanized population more than four times greater at 407,649.  Indianapolis carries its 887,642 people within a jurisdiction comprising 362 square miles of available land compared to San Francisco’s 47.  In fact, Indianapolis’s land area is larger than that of New York City and San Francisco combined.  When these figures are compared, one must concede that because Indianapolis has far less population within its urbanized neighborhoods, it is unfair to consider it as comparable in size to San Francisco.

The Small Big Cities –

If one is looking for the urban experience in America, they better choose their city wisely.  Most urban dwellers want a neighborhood with nice amenities, vibrant streets, nearby shops and businesses, and the ability to run errands without having to leave one’s neighborhood and travel across town.  Unfortunately, many “big” American cities don’t offer this experience on a desirable scale.  From my cursory study, Cleveland, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, St. Louis, Detroit, and Phoenix all have lower population totals in their central areas than Salem, Oregon – being essentially a small town with a largely suburban character.  The absence of the urban experience in the United States likely means that most consumers have entirely evaded any substantive experience of the urban lifestyle.  This may usher the question of how planners can possibly succeed at revitalizing cities in a country where most people have never truly lived in one.

Repurposing Cities –

Many of the challenges we face could be greatly alleviated if our cities were in healthy condition.  Consumers waste years of their lives in traffic, spend too much on limited housing options, fail to get enough exercise, struggle to find community, and are continuously exposed to subtle environmental hazards.  The efficiencies delivered by urban life can provide tired and true solutions to many of these problems.  When people are empowered to tackle life’s obligations released from the burdens of the automobile, they are presented the gifts of more time, money, and relaxation.  Urban neighborhoods can provide the fabric needed to make our errands simpler, more efficient, and less stressful.  But many people don’t realize this fact.  That is why we must bring back our cities and reintroduce the urbanized lifestyle to consumers. 

Our cities can’t just be places for special events, office buildings, sports stadiums, low income housing projects, bland public spaces, big infrastructure, and parking lots.  Instead, they must be filled with vibrant neighborhoods full of activities taking place in the public domain.  Cities need to offer urban neighborhoods delivering the density required to sustain the services and amenities that support daily life.  It’s time to think in new and innovative ways to cultivate urbanized neighborhoods.  Perhaps, most cities can start by repurposing their downtowns to function as urban neighborhoods centered around transit hubs rather than serving to cluster the large scale ceremonial, institutional, and entertainment spaces that cater to those residing elsewhere.  It’s time to start acting like a city again.