Adelaidea
In the context of the prospect of visiting Australia, were it not for my Uncle David and Mary Ann living in Adelaide, I would likely never give that city a second thought. I did always dream of Australia being a place I would visit someday, but of course Sydney, being the largest city there, was always the only city on my list. In all likelihood, I would have only gone to Sydney, and maybe Melbourne as an added bonus. Shobhit and I barely added two nights in Melbourne as part of our now-planned trek between Sydney and Adelaide.
But, as things stand now, I have become weirdly obsessed with Adelaide, and in particular how it compares to U.S. cities of similar size, just to give me some contextualization and expectation in regards to the urban experience there. And there are two reasons for this, the second totally tied into the first. And the first reason is, of course, that my uncle lives there, which has ignited an interest in the city that I would never have otherwise—I had a nearly identical reaction to the news earlier this year that I would be visiting Syracuse, New York, which I would never otherwise have developed any interest in either. And the second reason is that, more than once, Mary Ann has sort of "warned" me not to expect Adelaide to be a huge city, and particularly that it's not at all as big as Seattle.
So, I have spent weeks now coming up with ways to contextualize the size of Adelaide, which is difficult to do because of the radically different way Australia draws its city boundaries. If you look at any list of official populations of Australian cities, those population figures are always metropolitan populations. In Adelaide's case, it's 1.3 million. Compare that to Seattle, which has a metropolitan population of 3.9 million people—which, it must be noted, folds in the populations of other relatively major cities including Bellevue, Everett, and even Tacoma (which is itself the third-largest city in the state).
Seattle proper, though, has a currently estimated population of 744,955. There is no one-to-one comparison to make with the "city itself" when it comes to Adelaide, because it's just like all Australian cities: they have so-called "City of Adelaide," which essentially covers only the central business district and is 6 square miles with a population of 24,794. All other so-called "local government areas" then surround it and fan out from it in the greater Adelaide region. It would be as though the "City of Seattle" consisted only of downtown, and then the surrounding neighborhoods were where the boundaries of what we think of as "suburbs" began.
Until another idea occurred to me yesterday, this meant that the only way I could come up with comparable sized American cities was to regard their metropolitan populations. This still makes sense, really, as because of these very differences that can vary widely around the world in terms of how city boundaries are defined, any global "city size" comparison always lists metropolitan population anyway. If you look up, say, the largest cities in the United States, they are all ranked by population within city limits: 8.4 million for New York City; 3.9 million for Los Angeles; 2.7 million for Chicago, etc. But, if you look up "world's largest cities," they tend to be listed by metropolitan population: New York (#10) is 18.5 million; Los Angeles (#21) is 12.3 million; Chicago (#38) is 8.7 million. (Side note: this is the first time ever that I am realizing metropolitan Chicago is of comparable population to New York City proper.)
Thus, if Adelaide's official and metropolitan population is 1.3 million, what are the comparable sized cities in the U.S.? I found these four:
(43rd-largest in the U.S.) Memphis, Tennessee: 1,350,620
44. Richmond, Virginia: 1,306,172
45. Louisville, Kentucky: 1,297,310
46. New Orleans, Louisiana: 1,270,399
(Adelaide is fifth-largest in Australia.)
So really, the most one-to-one population comparison to Adelaide in the U.S. is Memphis. I always regarded Memphis as just as much a "major city" as I do Seattle, although clearly Seattle has been growing much more rapidly and our metropolitan population is well more than twice the size; this is where comparisons get muddied again, though, because the population of Memphis proper is 650,618—which is obviously much closer to the size of Seattle than when comparing metro populations. And really, this does mean when it comes to things like city governments and administrations—mayor, city council, police and fire departments, etc—Memphis is responsible for a comparable number of people. Well, to a degree: there is also the fact that Memphis clearly has a far smaller suburban population, which also means a whole lot fewer commuters and commuter patterns in and out of the city, and thus on any given day there would be a fair number more people who happen to be in the city of Seattle than in the city of Memphis, as opposed to people who specifically live in it. By that measure, that once again makes Memphis a lot more comparable to Adelaide.
Incidentally, I was compelled to list four cities and not just Memphis above, because of where New Orleans ranks. New Orleans has long been perceived as a "major city" well comparable to the likes of Seattle, but it must also be noted that their population dropped dramatically after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. With the 2000 census, New Orleans proper had a population of 484,674; it was down to 343,829 in 2010 and its current estimate is 391,006. And as for its metropolitan population, it was 1.34 million in 2000 and then 1.88 million in 2010. So, two decades ago and before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans were nearly as much of a 1:1 comparison to Adelaide as Memphis is now, and greater New Orleans would still have all the same infrastructure built for 1.3 million people. So that's why I wanted both Memphis and New Orleans included in that comparative list, and I also included Richmond and Louisville because they are the only two cities ranked between them in the U.S. metropolitan rankings.
But! A new idea occurred to me yesterday, and I did the research this morning to bear it out, as a way to compare the urban areas of Seattle and Adelaide. Seattle proper has a land area of 83.94 square miles, in which its population of 744,955 people reside. What if I just calculated the total combined populations of "City of Adelaide" and the "suburbs" immediately surrounding it? I figured that would come to a relatively comparable amount of land area, and I was right.
So these are the Adelaide inner "cities," starting with City of Adelaide and then listing its immediate "suburbs" clockwise from the northwest:
City of Adelaide: 6 square miles / population 24,794 / density 4,132 per sq mi
City of Charles Sturt: 20.1 square miles / population 117,382 / density 5,840 per sq mi
City of Port Adelaide Enfield: 36.3 square miles / population 126,120 / density 3,474 per sq mi
City of Prospect: 3 square miles / population 20,527 / density 6,842 per sq mi
Town of Walkerville: 1.4 square miles /population 7,550 / density 5,393 per sq mi
City of Norwood, Mayneham & St Peters: 5.8 square miles / population 35,362 / density 6,097 per sq mi
City of Burnside: 10.6 square miles / population 43,911 / density 4,143 per sq mi
City of Unley: 5.5 square miles/ population 39,145 / density 7,117 per sq mi
City of West Torrens: 14.3 square miles / population 60,105 / density 4,203 per sq mi
total square mileage: 103
combined population of this area: 474,896
density of this area: 4,611 per sq mi
So! Starting from Adelaide's central business district and fanning out to an area comparable of that to Seattle, this so-called "city population" is actually closer to 475,000. Which U.S. cities are most comparable to that? This gets yet even more interesting: Miami proper is 470,914; Colorado Springs, CO is 472,688. But! Anyone in their right mind would still regard Miami as far bigger than Colorado Springs—Miam's metropolitan population is 6.1 million (significantly larger even than Seattle), whereas Colorado Springs, which hardly has any suburbs to speak of, is only roughly 739,000.
So that gets right back to how the most sensible and accurate figures to compare by would be metropolitan populations. I'm still glad I did this exercise, because it gives more of a sense of how much of "a city" Adelaide must feel like—which is to say, probably not like either Memphis or Colorado Springs, but something in the middle. Like Memphis or New Orleans. However you look at it, I totally expect that Adelaide will be all the "big city" I need it to be.
And Sydney and Melbourne both have metro populations right around five million, which is comparable to both Boston (if much more dense) and Phoenix (if much more spread out, and given all the space there is in Australia, I would expect them to be more spread out).
Just one more side note! I also just learned that, although Adelaide is Australia's fifth-most populous city, it actually has the country's thid-highest population density. Of course, that's coming from an article about how Australia's cities overall have among the lowest population densities in the world.
So, what else, then? Not much! I made veggie burgers for dinner last night, plus a side of spring rolls for Shobhit. He asked why I didn't make myself any spring rolls, and I said, "Because I'm trying to lose weight, Shobhit!" I've actually done quite well so far this week and my weight has been slightly but steadily declining since the massive consumption I did over the weekend. It's amazing how quickly weight gain can happen, in just a couple of days, that can take a week or two to undo.
We found the online screeners for the SAG Awards that had not come in the physical mail, and I had Shobhit log into his account on my iPad and then I screen-mirrored it so we could watch on the TV. This took a few minutes to figure out and I had to download two different apps to make it happen, but I managed that pretty quickly, all things considered.
And then we watched A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. About three quarters of the way through, Shobhit said, "I like this movie, a lot." I said, "I do too." I almost forgot how much I was charmed by it; the movie has a strange mix of both charm and melancholy. I still found it kind of ironic that Shobhit should like it so much, though—he could learn a lesson or two from Fred Rogers, who was almost defiantly friendly, kind and compassionate. Shobhit's go-to attitude, in sharp contrast, is "idiots get what they deserve." Can you imagine which of those attitudes leads to a happy and fulfilling life?
[posted 12:36 pm]