Detroit has over 5 million people in its metro. It's not going to be abandoned anytime soon...

4,296,250 not 5,000,000.

One thing to keep in mind is land area.

Detroit has 138 square miles of land area, Jacksonville has 767, and Austin has 651. If you compare them to Wayne County which includes Detroit and covers 614 square miles of land area you have a better comparison. Wayne County has 1.8 million people - still substantially bigger than either Jacksonville or Austin.

Detroit CSA is 5.2 million.

All the growing cities have huge land areas compared to the USA's older cities. The "new" cities feel more like suburbs than cities.

Denver did add over 45,000 people to it's small 153.3 sq mi land area (a third of which is fully occupied by it's massive 53 sq mi Denver International Airport -- which was land purchased and added to Denver in 1989). That leaves Denver with ~100.3 sq mi of usable/populated land. So there are a few exceptions. Not all the growing cities are sprawling with huge land areas. I guess being established in 1859, makes Denver neither an old or new city. It has qualities of both.

From Wikipedia:

Yeah but who knows what percent of the land is developed or what is zoned for non-residental use. City populations determine the size of a city not land area and there are no astericks. Jacksonville and Austin are now bigger cities than Detroit. It would have been an unfathomable idea 30 years ago.

Long Beach has what 400 some thousand. LA county has 10,000,000 which is still substantially bigger than Detroit. What the hell does this have to do with comparing Detroit and Long Beach directly?

Austin does not cover 651 square miles. I don't know where that number came from, but it is incorrect. The city of Austin covers roughly 250 square miles, much of what is still undeveloped land. The majority of Austinites live in an area of 100 to 150 square miles.

The wikipedia page cites Austin in km squared (which is 651.4) instead of miles squared for some reason. Anyway, you are right.

Austin is really NOT a typical sunbelt city in this regard. Yes, it is a larger city by land if you simply cite the land area statistics, but this ignores the political reality. Austin has annexed large swaths of land in the typically underdeveloped western hills in order to SAVE the pristine hills from the over-development that would occur if they were left unincorporated or annexed into one of the surrounding suburban communities like Cedar Park or Dripping Springs instead.

Think of it like Denver's airport. Should that huge swath (roughly a third of Denver's land mass) count against its density? It makes the city seem, from the outside, as if it is largely sprawl... but we all know Denver is not sprawl. Should the same principle apply to Austin? I think so. Austin does have its more suburban areas, but this is like every city. A larger portion of its population lives in the dense urban core than any other city in Texas and probably most other cities in the south (barring Miami, New Orleans, and Charlotte).

The free-floating ring of suburban sprawl orbiting Detroit has not been sufficient to prevent a 60% rate of abandonment since 1950 and 25% rate of abandonment since just 2000. What about the status quo do you expect to work differently in the future?

A combined statistical area is not the same thing as a metropolitan statistical area. The reference was metropolitan, therefore they were wrong.

Dude you just tripled the size of Austin! So you are going to make a statement that Detroit has (so and so) using sq miles, and then make a statement saying Austin has (so and so) using KM and not miles and yet not clarify that you using kms for Austin and not miles? Really? Could you try any harder to screw numbers for the obvious intention of making a city like Austin that is 250 miles look like it is over 650 miles. Talk about screwed up use of numbers and statistics to try to falsely show another city in a bad light.

Let's not get worked up, it was probably just a simple mistake.

Detroit's metro area is huge and really hasn't lost much. Obviously Austin will never reach the same level of importance or size of such a major metro or city. But seaskyfan post trying to say Austin is over 600 sq miles by using kms really bugged me has me wanting to post the historical data on the two cities.

Hmmm... I'm seeing a pattern seaskyfan. Can you see it too? When my grandfather moved here there was only 50,000 people and now we are bigger than Detroit!

Opps. To late. :P

But it declined all the same, during a time when the nation grew about 10%. Any way you slice it, the pie is smaller.

That's not obvious at all.

Whoever said 100 square miles is a small area for a city...it is not! That is actually a pretty large footprint for a mid sized city, average at best...that is the is basically the square mileage of Minneapolis and St. Paul combined(population 670,000 together). I am pretty sure Denver has open land within it's city limits...some of which was turned into suburban style development over the past decade...along with the land that was left to fill when the airport moved. All of that Denver growth was not in the core of the city, so don't try to make it sound like that:) I am sure an impressive enough amount of it was though, with all the nice new developments.

Actually, a quick look at google maps shows tons of new suburban style development along I 70 towards the airport, that is within Denver's city limits. This is the kind of situation(and what that other poster was talking about I think) that benefits these large(sq mileage) cities growth. Along with densifying the core of the city, they can count on these suburban type areas to grow and increase the population(and tax base of course).

Growth is harder to accomplish for these cities that have been totally developed for decades...any growth has to come from redevelopment and building density while keeping all of the neighborhoods stable at the same time. Some small land area cities have done well, like Miami or Boston, or even DC.

My mistake - as someone else mentioned the Wikipedia entry for Austin lists KM first instead of miles (unusual for American cities).

Not too late to switch to decaf. :)

He said "metro" which is a generic term meaning the general area around a city. Both CSA and MSA are federal definitions that measure the relative size of cities. I don't think he's wrong.

I have to say looking at the CSA numbers Chicago did remarkably bad this decade...I mean Minny a metro some 1/3 its size added nearly as many people.