Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus
My benchmark was 2 million in the urbanized area.
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As of 2018 2.5 million of continuous urbanized area, 2.6 counting the fringe cities to the North and South and in the Mountains. The unique geography creates quite distinct and easily recognizable urban boundaries, much easier to recognize than in other places in the country. Whereas most us cities fade into rural areas and become continuously sparser, the Wasatch front's developed areas end abruptly at the base of a mountain or the edge of a lake. It truly is a nearly 100 mile long continuous stretch of "city." If you're road tripping from LA to Yellowstone and get caught there around 4-7pm, you're looking at 80 or so miles of rush hour traffic, stop and go in many places.
The MSA designation is ridiculous. Half the people that commute to downtown SLC for work come from a different metropolitan area, despite being 5 miles away from downtown. Cities that are a few miles from downtown are not part of the MSA, yet cities that are hundreds away are. Tens of thousands of people commute between the northern end of the Provo MSA and the southern end of the Salt Lake MSA. There is no vast empty space between the three areas/valleys, they are simply lines drawn right through the urban fabric.
From nearly every standpoint SLC gets overlooked so quickly and so often for being a tiny city of less than 200,000, or a small metro of 1 million. When in reality its greater continuous urban area is 2.5+ million, and has an economic engine larger than most cities its size. It's continuously lumped with city groupings such as Tuscon, Omaha, Norfolk, Birmingham, Tulsa, etc. When in reality it has the same population and similar economic heft as the MSA's of Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Cleveland, Baltimore, or St. Louis. SLC missed out on the annexation and absorption of surrounding communities that most US cities experienced in the 20th century, which is why it's actual core city is still so small. Look at Indianapolis, its core city constitutes nearly half of it's metro, whereas SLC is about 8% of the total population.
Anyways sorry for the rant, it's just disappointing to see when SLC gets discounted because of misleading statistics. It really is becoming quite a problem when trying to attract businesses, increasing tourism, overall economic growth, and for countless other facets.