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Old Posted Oct 15, 2015, 8:08 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2010
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cash Money Samuels View Post
Salt Lake City is in possibly the most beautiful location in the world for a major city. Also the city is in a empty space where few large cities are found in the US(from Eastern WA,OR,and CA to MN and East CO). I would love if it could grow to have an impressive skyline as well. St. Louis has only built 2 modest sized skyscrapers in the past decade, i would love to see more growth there to compliment the Arch. I always want Chicago to continue making world beating skyscrapers but I fear that era may be ending. The two thousand footers that have been proposed in Chicago are taking forever to be confirmed and funded. Lastly I'd love to see Albuquerque take off for many of the same reasons for SLC.
Chicago is in an interesting situation, it has shrunk significantly since 1950 (like Detroit) but much less catastrophically, the Metro continues to grow moderately but the city itself is stagnant in the years its not shrinking.

Luckily that means Chicago can still have lots of downtown growth for business even as its population declines. Although It looks like it will continue to grow fairly slowly (as it looses a lot of people to the west and South) it will continue to slip in ranking to other faster growing areas like Houston and DC.

Really if you want a good measure of how "big" a city really is you need to look at the Metro areas.

San Francisco isn't a big city population wise, but its the center of a major metropolitan area of like 8 million people (if you include San Jose)

Phoenix is the 6th largest city in the country with 1.5 million (nearly double San Francisco) , but in a metro of only 4.4 million so in "real terms" its like 12 or 13 in importance.

As for my own choice; as an AZ native I would like to see one of our northern cities grow preferably

Flagstaff:


Great Scenery with awesome summers, can be very snowy in the winter. On the I 40 close to Vegas, Phoenix, LA, ABQ and Salt Lake. Its in a national forest though which I think makes it harder to grow.

Or Prescott:



Gorgeous little town, not quite as foesty as Flag but the surrounding hills are forested. The weather is much milder than Phoenix, Tucson or Flagstaff with cooler summers than the desert but warmer winters than the Mountains.

Prescott is actually growing rapidly and has a lot more room to grow than Flag. Historically it was the territory seat for some time. It never made sense to me that Flagstaff or Prescott didn't grow like Phoenix and Tucson is but it makes more sense when you realize that the major river watersheds in the state are in the deserts, which is why they are the center for agriculture and then eventually population.

Despite the hot weather its actually more suitable for large because of the water access.
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