Whoaccio
Senior Member
But that's not what this whole thread is about. It's meaningless to talk about arbitrary historic municipal boundaries when you're trying to examine economic activity. A company headquartered in Pasadena or Beverly Hills is clearly part of the Los Angeles economy, a company in Redmond is clearly part of Seattle and a company in Irving is clearly a part of Dallas/Fort Worth. For that matter, a company in Mississauga is clearly part of Toronto's economic area. Houston is only high on that list because its historical municipality comprises more of the metro area. Is Calgary actually bigger than Vancouver? Is Louisville bigger than Miami or Minneapolis?
As far as US cities are concerned, it doesn't actually make all that much difference. No matter what level you look at American cities, the same patterns appear. Metropolitan Areas like Atlanta-Sandy Spring-Marietta, Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, Dallas-Ft Worth-Arlington or the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale lead the US by just as wide a margin in terms of job creation and population growth. (wiki). Even if you look at the state level a roughly similar, if more pixelated, picture appears. States like Texas and Arizona have been gaining population while states like New York, Illinois, New Jersey and, recently, California are losing population. You can argue about what the best level is to measure this trend, but it's obvious at just about every level.
I'd also add that Houston makes up less of its metropolitan area than Toronto makes up of the GTA. Greater Houston is about the size of Rwanda, which is partially why I am reluctant to consider it a discrete city.
I guess one way to look at it is that the Florida (Richard) approach to growth is one route, attracting people through diversity and urbanity and edginess, while the Florida (state) approach is another, attracting people with wide open space, plentiful jobs, lots of parking, and a nice climate.
Well, the one problem I would point out statistically in all of this is the Richard Florida approach certainly makes distinctions within metropolitan areas. Mississauga is not Toronto in his books, nor is Burnaby Vancouver. To that end it's difficult to treat metropolitan areas as discrete units. With a few exceptions though, metropolitan areas like SanFran-Oakland-Freemont or Boston-Cambridge-Quincy have had quite low growth rates, most of which occurred in the outlying suburbs which typically wouldn't be considered Floridian.
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