Wow, Phoenix is a big city, 517 square miles they've taken in per their
website...making it 5th largest city in a sort of "official way", but as with
most numbers, they are subject to interpretation and fudgery. What exactly does
that 5th ranking mean? They don't say, probably by official people within the
official city limits, because it's so large.
A much more realistic measure is MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) which
ranks Phoenix as the 12th largest metro with 4.2M peeps.
Phoenix/Mesa/Scottsdale it includes which some would argue with.
(interestingly, DC metro pop is larger, #9 at 5.3M but that includes Arlington
and friends). (I might be looking at some older data)
This is how the broadcast advertising world ranks city sizes and it makes
sense, it's not by the population in the official city limits, it's the pop of
the entire contiguous area. I explain the concept this way: if you're telling
someone on a plane where you live, what city do you say? (i don't say
"Galloway, Ohio" I say "Columbus" although I'm not officially in Columbus).
Billions of dollars a year are spent in broadcast based on these numbers and
generally when you hear "NYC is the largest city in the US" it's based on MSA
population numbers.
Yes, as you can imagine, there has to be somewhere to make the actual line and
people get into some serious pissing matches on what defines the MSA (or
several other ways to measure) as there are millions of ad dollars at stake.
I was on a sub-board for the Columbus convention/visitors bureau years ago and
their sales people touted 'Columbus is the 7th largest city in the US'. I of
course (as i obviously can't shut up here) questioned this, as you live and die
in radio by what market you're in (and Columbus is market 31 or 32 depending on
the latest census data and if you include Puerto Rico). Turns out someone there
had figured out that by LAND AREA WITHIN THE CITY LIMITS Columbus was a top ten
market. Uh, right. They removed that stat...but looking, I see they're claiming
it's the 11th largest now on their website, and have their stats all mixed and
matched (wrongly).
http://www.experiencecolumbus.com/media-columbus-facts.cfmThey too don't say
how that is measured, but that's really lame of them, complete BS.
Okay, off my pet-peeve box, but Arbitron has some pretty good training and when
you live and die by a .1 change in your quarterly ratings, you start to really
pay attention to numbers ;)
fwiw, looks like Grand Junction ranks about 261st (moving up in the rankings)
Ross "Stats Nazi" Kuhns
Columbus, Ohio Market 32ish
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Phoenix shop?
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 17:38:44 -0700
Well, it’s physically bigger than LA!
Also, it’s the 5th largest metro population and
the second fastest growing metro area at 30% or so.
Having lived most of my life in the DC area, Phoenix seems
endless (and, at times, bottomless).
To drive from Apache Junction to Glendale can easily take two
hours, even in clear traffic, and it’s a straight shot on major highway.
- Jeff Abrams
- [email protected]
- www.mazdamaniac.com
From: Ross Kuhns
[mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 3:14 PM
To: [email protected]; miata powerlist
Subject: RE: Phoenix shop?
Phoenix is huge? Seems like a normal/average sized city every time I've been
there.
Tokyo last year, now that was a big city...
Ross
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