[Cl4rity]

Well, of course it's going to come as a big shock coming from Boston, because I don't consider Boston to be a "big city." I was born and raised in Los Angeles, I lived in San Francisco for a while, and now I live in New York City--Brooklyn, specifically. Much of what you said applies to New York, too.

I don't agree with the weather thing. I've been to Boston where it was 60 during the day and in the low 30s at night, and San Francisco will never, ever get as cold as Boston does during the winter. Hell, it doesn't even really snow in SF except for a few weird flukes in the past.

Rent, cost of living, etc. is the same in NYC, too, which is fast becoming a startup city.

[muzzamike]

I find it interesting that Boston often gets the rub of being a "small city". It certainly is when compared to New York or LA, but when looking at the metro area it's on par with San Francisco: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistica...

Not that there's anything wrong with being a small city!

[mtalantikite]

I think it's because most people don't really consider the metropolitan area to have anything to do with the city itself. For New York, parts of Jersey and Connecticut count as the metropolitan area, but you'd never say New York and mean New Haven.

With that in mind, Boston is 600k or so people, which is tiny in city terms.

[ghc]

That has nothing to do with the actual size of Boston. That's a political artifact more than anything else, as neighborhoods around Boston didn't want to get annexed around the turn of the century. Boston's continuous urban population, which includes Cambridge, Brookline, etc. is over 4 million.

Having lived in Atlanta, Boston is a much bigger city despite Atlanta having a population of 4 million within it's proper city limits. That's why you never use city population over metro area or continuous urban population statistics to determine actual city size.

[mtalantikite]

4 million? That seems like a lot. As a New Yorker formally from Boston, I tend to think of the city as the places that the subway can get you. Coming from wikipedia:

Boston: 625,087 Cambridge: 105,162 Brookline: 58,732 Somerville: 75,754 Newton: 85,146 Chelsea: 35,177 Revere: 51,755

Which is 1,036,813. Any others I'm missing?

[ghc]

Actually, there's quite a few, if you you by what you get get to via the subway. That means Everett, Braintree, Quincy, Newton, Medford and several others.

But there's a more systematic way city size is measured: MSA and CSA. Boston's MSA ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston-Cambridge-Quincy,_MA-NH_... ) is 4.5 million, with 4 million being defined as "urban" population. These are all places served by MBTA (which claims to serve 5 million).

Now, the main issue in the way you're looking at it is that those of us from the northeast have an entirely different view of what "urban" is. There are places in the center of Atlanta that have laughable density compared to any northern city, and the Atlanta subway system serves maybe half a million people. And yet Atlanta has a metro population of 5 million with an urban population of 4 million. The threshold for urban is very low compared to what we're used to.

The truth is that the vast majority of American cities feel like they're mostly suburban sprawl. Yes, Boston is dwarfed in size by NYC, LA and Chicago, but Boston is also roughly the same size as SF, DC and Miami. And no matter what the statistics of city-limits population say, it's has more people and is more densely populated than most other cities in the country, including San Diego, Minneapolis, Charlotte, Detroit and Seattle.

As I recall, it's the 5th largest CSA, 10th largest MSA and 4th most densely populated city in the country.

[mtalantikite]

Yeah, it probably has to do with what we consider urban, or feel to be urban.

The MSA for New York includes places no one would ever consider parts of NYC -- if I'm out on long island or in connecticut I'm not in the city. Just like if you're out in the Boston suburbs you're not really in Boston/Cambridge.

If it really is technically 4 million that's cool, but when I'm in Boston it doesn't feel like a city of 4 million. Just like NYC doesn't feel like a city of 19 million, even if that's what its MSA is.

Boston feels like a small place, just like SF. Nothing wrong with that, it just is what it is.

[goblue]

Doesn't make much of a difference for the Boston/Bay Area comparison, but I think the combined statistical areas are more indicative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Combined_Statistical_Ar...

[Cl4rity]

For the record, I love Boston. It's so peaceful and quiet there on non-game days! Ha! And it is a thousand times cleaner than New York City.