Tag Archives: metropolitan areas

Teams from the biggest metropolitan areas doing well in MLB’s first half

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The first half of the Major League Baseball season is almost over. And big market teams are leading the way:

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Of the top 10 teams in playoff position, seven teams come from the top seven North American markets by population figures, according to the Census Bureau and Canada population sources. They are, 1) the New York Yankees and New York Mets, 2) Los Angeles Dodgers, 3) Chicago Cubs, 5) Houston Astros, 6) Toronto Blue Jays and 7) Philadelphia Phillies.

The three other teams in the top 10? Detroit, Tampa, and Milwaukee. According to one source, they rank as the #17, #24, and #outside of the top 50 most populous metropolitan regions.

A few other thoughts about this list:

  1. Mexico City is the largest North American market. Of course, MLB only has teams in the US and Canada (one team).
  2. Missing teams from the other largest markets: Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Miami.
  3. Metropolitan population may not compare exactly with market size. This listing of MLB market sizes has a slightly different order.
  4. All seven teams in the big markets play in stadiums in their city (not in the suburbs).
  5. The argument in baseball tends to go that the teams in the largest markets have the most money to spend. This could be connected to local media deals (the LA Dodgers with the biggest) or perhaps owners from certain places having funds or lots of fans attending games in certain places.
  6. But having money does not necessarily guarantee being in a bigger market or winning a World Series. One analysis:

Since 1995, 48% of the champions and 38% of the contestants in the World Series have had top 5 payrolls. 93% of the champions and 83% of the contestants have been in the top half of payroll. Only two low-payroll teams have won it all — the 2002 Anaheim Angels and the 2003 Florida Marlins. It has been two decades since that has happened.

The list of losing World Series teams in the bottom half of payroll for the season includes the 2007 Rockies, 2008 and 2020 Rays, 2010 Rangers, 2014 Royals, 2015 Mets, 2016 Indians, and 2023 Diamondbacks.

Almost all new American jobs in recent decades in urban areas

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Urban areas in the United States – cities and suburbs – contain over 80% of residents in the country. Yet, new job growth happens even at even higher rates in these areas:

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Meanwhile, researchers at Cornell University estimate that 94% of the nation’s job growth since 2000 happened in urban counties.

Many would not be surprised to hear that cities are job centers. Whether thinking about offices, industry, or service sectors, cities are often viewed as centers of innovation and economic activity.

But, one of the lesser known aspects of suburban growth in the United States is the amount of jobs in the suburbs. As part of a complex suburbia where suburbs are more than bedroom suburbs dependent on urban centers, suburbs are full of work and business activity. When I wrote the Oxford Bibliographies entry on Suburbanism, I made sure to include “Economic Activity in the Suburbs” as one of the sections.

It sounds like this also means that rural areas are not experiencing much job growth. The job growth is not close to the percent of Americans who live in rural areas. Without seeing historical data, it is hard to know whether this is a big change from the past or whether this has been the case for a long time. At the same time, it is hard to imagine that many rural areas can thrive when they experience little new job growth.

Dallas-Fort Worth metro area predicted to pass Chicago area in population in roughly a decade

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Which American metropolitan areas are poised for large population gains in the coming years? One prediction says Dallas-Fort Worth will soon be the third largest metro area:

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Dallas-Fort Worth is one of the country’s fastest growing metropolitan areas…

Business expansion and relocations are fueling the Dallas region’s growth, putting it on track to overtake the Chicago area and become the third-most-populous metro within the decade…

Dallas-Fort Worth is on track to be the only U.S. metropolitan area to house two cities with populations over 1 million in the next five years, as people and companies seek profit, opportunity and room to grow.

The population shift to the Sunbelt continues.

As for Chicago, it was passed by Toronto in population, Houston might pass it soon, and Dallas-Fort Worth pass the metropolitan area population. How far will the city and metropolitan area be down lists in a few decades?

Cities and metropolitan areas rise and fall in population over time. Chicago was once smaller than St. Louis than shot past it with the latter losing a lot of population in the 1900s. Where will the new boom cities be?

Suburban municipalities to take own actions regarding COVID-19?

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As different government bodies look to act in response to the spread of COVID-19, I was struck by the number of large cities and states that are acting (including the state in which I live). At the same time, I wonder: how are suburban communities responding?

A few thoughts:

-Many suburban communities have limited capabilities and cannot do a whole lot. They may have limited budgets, a relatively small number of employees, and not much power to compel action. Still, decisions to close public spaces – such as libraries, city/village/town halls, community centers – matter to the everyday lives of lots of people.

-Yet, some bigger suburbs in the United States are as large as small big cities. Their actions can be very consequential and they have more budget room to address issues. At this point, the news has primarily focused on the biggest cities in the United States but this matters for numerous other communities over 100,000 people (to use an arbitrary cut-off point for a larger community).

–Americans tend to like local control and government but at the speed that a virus can spread and across political boundaries, individual actions across hundreds of American suburbs might not add up to much. Hence, people look to the state and federal level to mobilize resources and direct action.

-What is the role of metropolitan regions in all of this? The City of Chicago can act and affect millions of residents and workers but there are roughly seven million more people in the region. Counties can act and affect more residents. But, then the next level of action regarding COVID-19 seems to be at the state level. Are metropolitan regions working together or is the general lack of metropolitan cooperation revealed again in a time of crisis?

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“Top Three Religious Traditions in Major Metropolitan Areas”

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Data from the 2014 American Values Atlas compiled by PRRI shows the top three religious traditions in a number of large American metro areas:

Top-Three-Religions-by-City

Here are some of the takeaways according to PRRI:

 

  • Urban areas attract the unaffiliated; the religiously unaffiliated are among the top three religious groups in every metro area polled.
  • Catholics also love cities; Catholicism is among the top three religious groups for nearly every metro area—only Nashville, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Atlanta don’t have Catholics among the top three.
  • Atlanta is the only metro area that doesn’t have Catholics, the religiously unaffiliated, or white evangelical Protestants in the number one slot; that prize goes to black Protestants.
  • Nashville has the largest percentage of one singular religious group: nearly four in ten (38 percent) residents identify as white evangelical Protestant.

Related to these takeaways, two things stuck out most to me looking at this data:

  1. The relative evenness of major religious traditions (and unaffiliated) in major cities. Few large regions have one religious tradition that comprises of more than 33% of the population. This suggests a lot of pluralism at the metropolitan region level.
  2. The pattern does not hold in every case but the leading cities for having the percent of different religious traditions tend to fall into certain regions: Catholics in the Northeast and Midwest, unaffiliated in the West, white evangelical Protestant in the Bible Belt and Midwest.

Put these two factors together and it would be fascinating to consider how the experience of religiosity differs across metropolitan regions. For example, a comparison across traditions such as between Nashville (dominated by white evangelicals) and Portland (dominated by the unaffiliated) could be interesting as would regional differences within the same leading tradition such as between Miami and Milwaukee. If metropolitan regions could be considered fields of religious activity, how might they differ in significant ways?

 

How close to San Francisco does a house have to be to be considered “in San Francisco”?

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The short answer: closer than north of Oakland on the east side of San Francisco Bay.

The current edition of Brother vs. Brother on HGTV features two homes undergoing renovation in the Bay Area. However, they are located in the suburbs of El Sobrante and Pinole, respectively a 45 minute and one hour drive from San Francisco. This is similar to a post from years back when I wrote about Procure Proton Therapy claiming a “close to downtown Chicago” location with their Warrenville facility. Can the show truly claim to be about houses in San Francisco?

I would say no for three primary reasons:

  1. The location is just too far away from San Francisco to claim it is in the city. One could visit San Francisco from these locations but the show is not about San Francisco; it is about suburban housing. This is particularly noticeable in each episode with the size of the homes, the price of the homes, and the property each house sits on.
  2. This is not just about being relatively far our from the big city; the homes are also beyond Oakland. The Bay Area is a unique one in that there are three major cities within a relatively short distance from each other: San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. The largest in population is San Jose, the 11th largest city in the country, followed by San Francisco at 13th, and Oakland at 45th. Even though San Jose is closest to Silicon Valley, San Francisco is the most prestigious city with Oakland trailing both. If these suburban homes are to be connected to a big city, Oakland would technically be more accurate.
  3. Many suburbanites rarely make it into the big city if they do not work there or have business that regularly takes them there. They may still identify with the big city in the region, especially when talking with people from other parts of the country or world who have little knowledge of little communities but know certain big cities. Yet, their day-to-day experience is markedly different from that of a San Francisco resident.

I know the marketing is driving this. “Brother vs. Brother: San Francisco” is a lot more exciting than “Brother vs. Brother: Bay Area Suburbs.” Still, the consistent shots of San Francisco is a bit much when these are suburban homes that could fit in many regions across the United States.

 

When gentrifiers are pushed out of Brooklyn to places like New Jersey

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Gentrifying doesn’t last forever: when the big money arrives, gentrifiers in places like Brooklyn have to move on.

By many measures, Jeff Huston and his wife, Lisa Medvedik-Huston, arrived late to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They weren’t among the first waves of artists and hipsters in the early-to-mid ’90s to cross the East River in search of cheaper, grittier confines. When they rented a spacious, duplex loft two blocks from the Bedford Avenue subway stop in 2007, they found a safe neighborhood already dotted with clothing boutiques and wine shops. The height of the real estate boom was approaching, and condos were rising along both the waterfront and McCarren Park…

And last year, when they were ready to buy, the couple quickly realized they had been priced out. “I can’t tell you how many listings said, ‘cash only,’ ” said Mr. Huston, whose real estate search included everything from $500,000 apartments to $900,000 fixer-upper rowhouses and took him from Williamsburg to Bedford-Stuyvesant. “That was a wake-up call.”…

And so the Hustons bid farewell to Brooklyn. In October, they spent $550,000 on a 2,000-square-foot loft in a converted suitcase factory in Jersey City Heights, a section of Jersey City that overlooks Hoboken. “We weren’t sure there was anyone like us in the neighborhood,” he said. Then a Brooklyn-style coffee shop arrived. “The line down the street was all people like us. We could have been in Williamsburg. It was all, like, expats.”…

Many have tried in earnest to stay in Brooklyn, squeezing into smaller spaces or heading deeper into the borough in search of affordability. But there comes a point when that hourlong commute becomes difficult to justify, and the realization strikes that a house with a yard in Maplewood, N.J., can be had for about the same price as a condo in Midwood.

Gentrification tends to draw attention – whether from existing residents who see problems in new residents moving in or from people celebrating the revival of a neighborhood – but this is a reminder that neighborhoods can go through numerous cycles. In this case, Brooklyn’s real estate is on a continued upward swing due to a lack of inventory and high prices in nearby Manhattan. But, even that upward swing is not guaranteed and is contingent on future social and economic changes.

It would also be interesting to track what happens to these ex-pats from Brooklyn. These changes to Brooklyn have the potential to transform numerous other communities, like the “hipsturbia” north of New York City. Opinions and studies about gentrification tend to focus on a defined geographic location but this limits seeing the true big impact gentrification can have across a metropolitan region.

Economic output of American metro areas rival that of foreign countries

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One interesting indicator of the economic power of American metropolitan areas is how they match up with the output of foreign countries:

The greater New York metro, far and away America’s largest and richest, is projected to produce $1.4 trillion dollars in GMP in 2014. This makes it about the same size as Australia, equivalent the world’s 12th largest economy.

L.A., projected to account for almost $830 billion in GMP, has a larger economy than that of the Netherlands, and would therefore number among the world’s top 20 economies.

Chicago, with more than $610 billion in GMP, is about the same size as Switzerland and significantly bigger than Sweden…

And even far smaller metros can outpace some substantial national economies. With $180 billion in GMP, Denver’s economy is comparable to that of the entire country of New Zealand. Even Anchorage, Alaska, projected to produce nearly $30 billion in GMP, is about the same size as Latvia.

It strikes me that this is also a pretty fascinating look at America’s economic power overall. If each of these metropolitan areas could be their own city-states, having them all in one country is quite a feat. Of course, if they were split up, this could change their economic output. In fact, it would be interesting to play a what if game with that very question: which would US metros would thrive as independent states and which would falter?

Census Bureau official: Chicago now 5th biggest city in North America

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Following on new from a little while back, the US Census Bureau has officially confirmed that Toronto is now larger than Chicago:

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, our city is home to 2.71 million people to Toronto’s 2.79 million in 2012.

Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles top the list.

Chicago is still one of the top 10 largest cities in North America, and the population did increase by more than 11,000 residents between 2010 and 2011. And we lead the nation in the category of cities that have experienced population growth downtown over the last decade, with an increase of more than 37,000 residents within 2 miles of City Hall, according to Chicago magazine.

Not a big difference at this point but Chicago is unlikely to get much closer in population compared to Los Angeles anytime soon, Toronto may continue to grow, Washington D.C. is growing in influence, and Houston is a ways behind Chicago but has been growing at a rapid pace in recent decades. Maybe this means Chicagoans should be a little worried about their status as a global city?

One area where Chicago does not have to worry: it is still securely ahead of Toronto in terms of its metropolitan area population. The Chicago metro area has over 9 million people while the Toronto metro area has over 5.5 million (2011 figures). Additionally, Chicago has over 2.5 million more than the next biggest US MSA, Dallas.

Show your knowledge of US metro areas with the US Census “Population Bracketology”

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Even the United States Census Bureau is getting into brackets and bracketology. Go here to play “Population Bracketology” which shows your knowledge of the population of metropolitan areas in the United States.

Yes, it should be easy to select the winner. But, I like that a lot of the initial pairings matched Sunbelt versus Rust Belt cities. Some of these were hard to choose. On the other hand, the Los Angeles-New York City matchup in the first round knocked out a contender…