[BTinSF]

Originally Posted by Marcu

The biggest metros

Here are the nation's largest metropolitan areas — regions centered on one or more cities of at least 50,000 people.

Metro area 2000 pop. 2006 pop. Pct. chg. Metro area 2000 pop. 2006 pop. Pct. chg.

New York 18,323,382 18,818,536 2.7% Boston 4,392,340 4,455,217 1.4%

Los Angeles 12,365,619 12,950,129 4.7% San Francisco-Oakland 4,123,742 4,180,027 1.4%

Chicago 9,098,615 9,505,748 4.5% Phoenix 3,251,876 4,039,182 24.2%

Dallas-Fort Worth 5,161,518 6,003,967 16.3% Riverside, Calif. 3,254,821 4,026,135 23.7%

Philadelphia 5,687,141 5,826,742 2.5% Seattle-Tacoma 3,043,885 3,263,497 7.2%

Houston 4,715,402 5,539,949 17.5% Minneapolis-St. Paul 2,968,817 3,175,041 6.9%

Miami-Dade 5,007,988 5,463,857 9.1% San Diego 2,813,833 2,941,454 4.5%

Washington 4,796,180 5,290,400 10.3% St. Louis 2,698,672 2,796,368 3.6%

Atlanta 4,248,012 5,138,223 21.0% Tampa-St. Petersburg 2,396,013 2,697,731 12.6%

Detroit 4,452,557 4,468,966 0.4%

Here we go again. These are so arbitrary. To someone who lives here, "San Francisco-Oakland" means absolutely nothing. Where is the biggest city (population-wise) around the Bay: San Jose. It's in a different metro area according to the government, but when I turn on my NBC Evening News in downtown SF, guess where it comes from: San Jose. A large chunk of commuters working in downtown SF live in bedroom towns on the peninsula--not part of "San Francisco-Oakland". Much of the business conducted in San Francisco highrises is dependent on Silicon Valley: different metro. BART is planning to extend itself to San Jose and CalTrain already goes there: Where else does commuter rail cover two distinct metros? A proper Bay Area metro would have something like 5.5 million I think and fall somewhere among Philadelphia, Houston and Miami.

By the way, regarding Atlanta's weather: The best part of it, really, is the pleasure it gives me when I turn on my TV in August, windows open and the temp a pleasant 70 or so, and watch the talking head bable on about the latest east coast heat wave (which, with global warming and all, will likely get more frequent).