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by showerst 5620 days ago
This is a great infographic idea, but the census 'incorporated city' boundaries/populations is not that good of a data set for this use case.

Metropolitan statistical areas would've been a more reasonable choice here, since in many cities the city proper (as defined by incorporated bounds) is either vastly under or vastly over-priced compared to where people actually live, not to mention throwing off the relative populations.

As an aside, the way my map renders, Baltimore is north of New York =P. Great job though, and kudos to your developers for not using flash =)

1 comments

The difference between metropolitan statistical areas and cities is particularly noticeable with respect to Miami.

The city itself is only the 42nd largest in the country (population 450K) but the MSA (which includes Fort Lauderdale and many suburbs) is the country's 7th-largest (population 5M+).

Similar situation for DC. The city proper has 600K, but the DC metro area (the parts of VA and MD near DC) has about 5.4M.