Saturday, April 28, 2007

What cities are suburban, downtown or neighborhood cities?

I would say the best example of a suburban city I have seen would
be Kansas City, Missouri. Yes, they have the country club plaza and are improving their downtown they are still very suburban. I believe Kansas City is about 450,000 people with-in 300 square miles so the city itself has very low population density. Ive heard Kansas City is a great place if you like tons of space though. Omaha is another very suburban city with only 850,000 people in the metro the city sprawls for at least 20 miles from downtown, what are they up to now 220th street. Alot of times suburban cities have vibrant suburbs but very few happening areas in the city itself. Colorado Springs also is a very suburban city not even 600,000 people in the metro area and it sprawls 30 miles along Interstate 25 mostly with commercial big box retailers and strip-malls with at least a dozen chinese restaurants on every major throughfare.


I would say a neighborhoods kind of city is Columbus, Ohio. Downtown as of 2003 when I was there was not their strong suit at all. All the activity was in its many vibrant urban neighborhoods. Short North has at least 70 art galleries and many, many restaurants and bars. The brewery district with bars, The german village with its great architecture, Grandview Heights commercial strip, The many many people always walking along High Street near OSU.
Columbus I dont think the city of sprawl nearly as much as people would wanna
convince, for a metropolitan area the population of Indianapolis it seems smaller in land area. Pittsburgh and St. Louis I would also put in this category.

Downtown city: I would say Indianapolis is a "downtown city" they keep the downtown looking good with tons of stuff around and the 4 storey mall. But once your in the neighborhoods you can tell they have pretty much put all the cities chips in the downtown area. Other downtown cities would be Denver, Des Moines and Madison (along that strip between the lakes)>

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