The largest cities in the U.S. (2009)

[huskeroadgeek]

I guess by some of the best defintions of a suburb, Virginia Beach still would be considered a suburb: low-denisty development and primarily residential. We may always think of suburbs as necessarily being smaller than the "main city", but I guess there is nothing in the definition that makes that a necessity. There are even some main cities that resemble suburbs themselves-I've heard Fresno, CA described as one large suburb, and having been there before, there is some truth to it-it has an unusually small urban core for the size of the city and most of the city stretches out for miles in low-density development. Fresno also has only one city-Clovis that could really be considered a suburb of it.

[yanksfan6129]

Ultimately, I think, it's irrelevant to determine exactly what places count as "suburbs" in the Hampton Roads area precisely because, as was previously mentioned, there are many urban cores. Even Virginia Beach has a downtown, judging from Google Earth.

[Chris]

It's also dependent on the local administrative boundaries. In most urban areas, the suburban population exceeds the urban city proper population (sometimes by many times).

That said, most urban cores are also mainly suburban outside the central district. For example Phoenix, Dallas or San Diego.

[froggie]

Speaking as someone who lives here, Virginia Beach is most certainly a suburb.

Speaking as someone who lived *IN* Virginia Beach for 3.5 years, I would agree.  The only possible exception would be the Oceanfront, which has largely been developed for a century now.

I can't think of a single area of the city that was only recently developed.

Some of the areas along the eastern part of Ocean View Ave (US 60), towards where Ocean View becomes Shore Dr, were torn down and empty for many years until they started getting (re?)developed over the past 5-10 years.

And aside from that exception, you won't.  In part because of the "nature of development" of Hampton Roads you alluded to later.  Both Chesapeake and modern-day Virginia Beach were created in 1963 in no small part to counter Norfolk's annexation and expansion.  Residents of then-Norfolk County, and then-Princess Anne County preferred creating their own independent city over being annexed by Norfolk.  And the then-existing town of South Norfolk voted to become part of Chesapeake.

So Norfolk has pretty much remained the same as far as land size and development for close to 50 years.

Due to the whole nature of development in Hampton Roads, however, it's not really a good example to use of typical city structure. There are 7 urban cores in the region.

Concur.

Trust me, that would make some locals happy too!   Sure would me.

That's only because you live on the Peninsula, not the Southside...

Now that I think about it, there was a proposal in the mid-90s to consolidate all of Harrison County, MS. The new city (can't remember the name) would've made it the largest city in Mississippi (this was at least a decade before Katrina).

Definitely the largest in land area.  At the time of the proposal, though, Jackson was still slightly more populated than Harrison County.  That has changed since the 2000 census...even with Hurricane Katrina, Harrison County is more popluated, based on Census Estimates.

[Scott5114]

What is the benefit of having so many suburbs? Is there anything to be gained from Lenexa, Shawnee, and Leawood existing independent of Olathe and Overland Park? Seems like redundancy in government to me.

[TheStranger]

What is the benefit of having so many suburbs? Is there anything to be gained from Lenexa, Shawnee, and Leawood existing independent of Olathe and Overland Park? Seems like redundancy in government to me.

I know in metro Sacramento, several of the suburbs basically incorporated for the purposes of retaining local tax revenue from regionally-oriented businesses like malls and car dealerships, I want to say Citrus Heights did exactly that, and Arden is looking to do to the same should it incorporate.

Some of the LA-area suburbs incorporated to resist Los Angeles's annexation policies in the early part of the 20th century (when LA was taking advantage of its Owens Valley water supply to expand outward from the downtown core), while others incorpoated specifically to protect local businesses (the cities that were founded as dairy communities i.e. La Palma/Cerritos, or today's cities of Industry and Commerce).

[agentsteel53]

What is the benefit of having so many suburbs? Is there anything to be gained from Lenexa, Shawnee, and Leawood existing independent of Olathe and Overland Park? Seems like redundancy in government to me.

more specifically, is there any benefit to having all of those existing independently of Kansas City?

[yanksfan6129]

What is the benefit of having so many suburbs? Is there anything to be gained from Lenexa, Shawnee, and Leawood existing independent of Olathe and Overland Park? Seems like redundancy in government to me.

more specifically, is there any benefit to having all of those existing independently of Kansas City?

Well now you're getting into the very specific of why suburbs exist...in fact, why places incorporate in the first place. The simple answer is, places want to be able to localize services, ostensibly in the name of better quality for local residents. For example, people in my suburban town pay higher property taxes in order to fund better schools.

[agentsteel53]

Well now you're getting into the very specific of why suburbs exist...in fact, why places incorporate in the first place. The simple answer is, places want to be able to localize services, ostensibly in the name of better quality for local residents. For example, people in my suburban town pay higher property taxes in order to fund better schools.

in that case, five suburbs are just as good as three.  Lenexa wants to be separate from Kansas City and Olathe. 

that said, San Diego (as one example) is a very sprawling city with a lot of implicit suburbs - say, La Jolla, that are very different from downtown, but somehow are not their own incorporated communities.

[TheStranger]

that said, San Diego (as one example) is a very sprawling city with a lot of implicit suburbs - say, La Jolla, that are very different from downtown, but somehow are not their own incorporated communities.

La Jolla has its own zip code and can use "La Jolla, CA" postal addresses - the ONLY part of San Diego that has this distinction!

However, the area has been part of the incorporated city of San Diego since the 1850s.  It's slightly different from the prevalence of suburban names within the City of Los Angeles (most of which were former independent communities) i.e. San Pedro, Van Nuys, Hollywood, etc.

[agentsteel53]

La Jolla has its own zip code and can use "La Jolla, CA" postal addresses - the ONLY part of San Diego that has this distinction!

here I thought other neighborhoods could do this too.  For example, I used to live in Pacific Beach and when I gave my zip code (92109) to various websites, they auto-completed it to "Pacific Beach, CA" as opposed to "San Diego, CA".  (Hell, some websites claimed ambiguity and asked me if I meant San Diego 92109 or Pacific Beach 92109!)

[TheStranger]

La Jolla has its own zip code and can use "La Jolla, CA" postal addresses - the ONLY part of San Diego that has this distinction!

here I thought other neighborhoods could do this too.  For example, I used to live in Pacific Beach and when I gave my zip code (92109) to various websites, they auto-completed it to "Pacific Beach, CA" as opposed to "San Diego, CA".  (Hell, some websites claimed ambiguity and asked me if I meant San Diego 92109 or Pacific Beach 92109!)

You know, I'm not sure, Wiki claims La Jolla is the only one but then I keep thinking San Ysidro does this as well.

[Chris]

I guess most suburbanites don't feel like paying taxes for the big city problems.

[TheStranger]

I guess most suburbanites don't feel like paying taxes for the big city problems.

And consequently, this is why certain cities have tried hard to annex their surrounding counties, with some level of success in the midwest/South (Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Louisville, Nashville).

[huskeroadgeek]

that said, San Diego (as one example) is a very sprawling city with a lot of implicit suburbs - say, La Jolla, that are very different from downtown, but somehow are not their own incorporated communities.

La Jolla has its own zip code and can use "La Jolla, CA" postal addresses - the ONLY part of San Diego that has this distinction!

However, the area has been part of the incorporated city of San Diego since the 1850s.  It's slightly different from the prevalence of suburban names within the City of Los Angeles (most of which were former independent communities) i.e. San Pedro, Van Nuys, Hollywood, etc.

The postal service uses different boundaries that don't follow city boundaries. There are many neighborhoods in Los Angeles that retain their own postal addresses too-like all 3 of the ones mentioned here plus others. The postal service occasionally will even create a pseudo-city just for the purposes of postal addresses. The many suburbs of Kansas City in Johnson County-discussed above comes up here too. The suburbs in northern Johnson County, including part(but not all) of Overland Park are collectively designated by the postal service as "Shawnee Mission, KS". The name has some other uses too-it's the name of a lake, a park, a major road(Shwnee Mission Parkway) and a school district(all the high schools in the area are named Shawnee Mission with a directional designation). But it is not a separate city and nobody would ever say they are from Shawnee Mission, KS, although occasionally someone unfamiliar with the situation will use this designation as the hometown of a person or business in the area.

[florida]

Well now you're getting into the very specific of why suburbs exist...in fact, why places incorporate in the first place. The simple answer is, places want to be able to localize services, ostensibly in the name of better quality for local residents. For example, people in my suburban town pay higher property taxes in order to fund better schools.

That's what is going on here in Orlando. Residents of the east side do feel like they are not getting enough when it comes to services so there is sporadic talk of them incorporating.....they do have their own free "community newspaper" The East Orlando Sun If they did incorporate, that area would automatically become the second largest city in Orange County.

[Brandon]

What is the benefit of having so many suburbs? Is there anything to be gained from Lenexa, Shawnee, and Leawood existing independent of Olathe and Overland Park? Seems like redundancy in government to me.

more specifically, is there any benefit to having all of those existing independently of Kansas City?

Well now you're getting into the very specific of why suburbs exist...in fact, why places incorporate in the first place. The simple answer is, places want to be able to localize services, ostensibly in the name of better quality for local residents. For example, people in my suburban town pay higher property taxes in order to fund better schools.

Some suburbs are like that.  Others got their start as completely separate towns and cities from the main city.  For example, a fair percentage of Chicago suburbs started as farm towns along the railroad tracks.  Suburbs such as Downers Grove, Hinsdale, Elmhurst, Wheaton, etc, got their start as rail stops for farmers.  Others started due to the proximity to a river such as Naperville, Plainfield, Aurora, Joliet, etc.  Very few of Chicago's suburbs got their start as auto suburbs such as Bolingbrook, Homer Glen, etc.

It's rather interesting to look at a map of Chicagoland and note how most development is still concentrated along the rail lines with suburbs growing perpendicular to the rail lines.

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

Well now you're getting into the very specific of why suburbs exist...in fact, why places incorporate in the first place. The simple answer is, places want to be able to localize services, ostensibly in the name of better quality for local residents. For example, people in my suburban town pay higher property taxes in order to fund better schools.

in that case, five suburbs are just as good as three.  Lenexa wants to be separate from Kansas City and Olathe.  

Same reason we have 50 states. Same reason there are all those countries in Europe. More feifdoms so people can think they are in charge of their lives instead of being part of the "nameless mass in the city."
That and De Facto segregration. Black folks cause property values to drop.  (I am being sarcastic there. I do NOT support that philosophy)

[golden eagle]

Well now you're getting into the very specific of why suburbs exist...in fact, why places incorporate in the first place. The simple answer is, places want to be able to localize services, ostensibly in the name of better quality for local residents. For example, people in my suburban town pay higher property taxes in order to fund better schools.

in that case, five suburbs are just as good as three.  Lenexa wants to be separate from Kansas City and Olathe.  

Same reason we have 50 states. Same reason there are all those countries in Europe. More feifdoms so people can think they are in charge of their lives instead of being part of the "nameless mass in the city."
That and De Facto segregration. Black folks cause property values to drop.  (I am being sarcastic there. I do NOT support that philosophy)

Good on that last sentence because you were gonna have a fight on your hands.

[agentsteel53]

oh, white folks cause property values to drop too.  ever hear of a company called Goldman Sachs?

[J N Winkler]

What is the benefit of having so many suburbs? Is there anything to be gained from Lenexa, Shawnee, and Leawood existing independent of Olathe and Overland Park? Seems like redundancy in government to me.

It can, but in practice I think the biggest problem is lack of coordination in land use planning (which can lead to sprawl).  Small suburbs often try to keep their overhead on public services small by economizing on administrative facilities, sometimes even to the point of failing to maintain records in a professional way.  The Kansas City Star reported years ago that the city clerk of Countryside, Kansas (with a population of about 150 people) kept the city records in his garage.  Years ago I received a parking ticket from the City of Santa Monica, California, and the return address on the ticket was in Tustin.  "City Hall" in many suburbs (including Surprise, Arizona) is a small storefront in a strip shopping center.

Edit:  Additionally, especially in the Midwest, many smaller cities have infrastructure work on their street systems planned, designed, and supervised by the state DOT through its local assistance program rather than through their own engineering staffs or through consultants they retain.  A substantial proportion of KDOT's lettings in any given month, for example, is local assistance work of this kind.

[TheStranger]

Small suburbs often try to keep their overhead on public services small by economizing on administrative facilities

One notable form of this in California is the use of county services post-incorporation, as noted here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_city

[Stephane Dumas]

That and De Facto segregration. Black folks cause property values to drop.  (I am being sarcastic there. I do NOT support that philosophy)

Good on that last sentence because you were gonna have a fight on your hands.

I just hope, I won't have a fight in my hands either if I mention black flight, there was a Dallas-Morning News article from June about it at http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/060610dnmetblackflight.1bffbc6.html
due to the public school system and in Detroit due to crime and the city council, from this article from the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748704292004575230532248715858.html

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

oh, white folks cause property values to drop too. 

They're called rednecks.

[J N Winkler]

There are many factors that influence property values and I would say that racial prejudice, or more commonly the expectation of racial prejudice within the real estate marketplace, is of diminishing importance.  Demographers used to observe a "block-busting" effect where, for example, a given city block would remain white until a certain percentage of blacks moved in, and then whites would flee and the block would become completely black within a short period of time.  But in this day and age, I don't think you would observe this effect in neighborhoods where houses are affordable only to middle-class professionals (whether they are white or black).  Other concerns that are very common for house buyers are transiency, the age profile of the neighborhood, the obligations imposed by homeowners' associations in post-1980 developments, etc.  Taking a few examples:

*  Many homebuyers don't want to be in a neighborhood which has a lot of elderly people.  That often implies that houses will be sold, carelessly and in a hurry, when the elderly owners have to move into care homes, and the buyer could very well be (say) a Vietnamese immigrant who wants to use the property to house 16 people, or run a laundry.

*  Other homebuyers don't want to be in a neighborhood, even an affluent one with plenty of families with children, where changes in ownership are frequent.  "Flipping" of houses works against social bonding and promotes anomie, and the children can easily grow up into tearaway teenagers who engage in vandalism and petty theft.

*  Quite a few homebuyers don't want to be in subdivisions which have apartment buildings or other types of rental housing which, for reasons of market position, tends to be characterized by short lets.  That kind of housing is typically associated with rootless people who live month to month, sometimes paycheck to paycheck, have no interest in building equity in land let alone social capital, and bring in all sorts of problems ranging from drugs to weapons.

*  For reasons which Wikipedia says are indirect consequences of the Clean Water Act, it is almost impossible to buy into a new residential housing development without also becoming a member of a homeowner's association.  Such associations are covered by the law of contract and since most states have been slow to regulate the provisions that can be included, they are often turned into platforms for building totalitarian microstates.  Years ago I made several trips to a mostly-built-out subdivision to check out one of the last unbuilt plots of land.  My car was elderly but not, at that time, visibly decrepit.  Nevertheless residents in one house stopped in the middle of the street as I was parking on one of my visits, and very conspicuously wrote down my license plate number.

These are, of course, all sorts of communities and neighborhoods where these prejudices don't hold.  And, let us be frank, prejudices are what they are.  But they are very hard to get rid of because people in general feel they give them a strategic advantage, and reduce decision-making costs, in what in the USA is a very complex and often frightening real-estate marketplace requiring significant commitments of money and social capital.