Tue, 17 Feb 2009
Second-largest cities
A while back I was in the local coffee shop and mentioned that my wife
had been born in Rochester, New York. "Ah," said the server. "The
third-largest city in New York." Really? I would not have guessed
that. (She was right, by the way.) As a native of the first-largest
city in New York, the one they named the state after, I have spent
very little time thinking about the lesser cities of New York. I
have, of course, heard that there are some. But I have hardly any
idea what they are called, or where they are.
It appears that the
second-largest city in New York state is some place called (get this)
"Buffalo". Okay, whatever. But that got me wondering if New York was
the state with the greatest disparity between its largest and
second-largest city.
Since I had the census data lying around from a related project (and a
good thing too, since the Census Bureau website moved the file) I
decided to find out.
The answer is no. New York state has only one major city, since its next-largest settlement is Buffalo, with 1.1 million people. (Estimated, as of 2006.) But the second-largest city in Illinois is Peoria, which is actually the punchline of jokes. (Not merely because of its small size; compare Dubuque, Iowa, a joke, with Davenport, Iowa, not a joke.) The population of Peoria is around 370,000, less than one twenty-fifth that of Chicago.
But if you want to count weird exceptions, Rhode Island has everyone else beat. You cannot compare the sizes of the largest and second-largest cities in Rhode Island at all. Rhode Island is so small that it has only one city, Seriously. No, stop laughing! Rhode Island is no laughing matter.
The Articles of Confederation required unanimous consent to amend, and Rhode Island kept screwing everyone else up, by withholding consent, so the rest of the states had to junk the Articles in favor of the current United States Constitution. Rhode Island refused to ratify the new Constitution, insisting to the very end that the other states had no right to secede from the Confederation, until well after all of the other twelve had done it, and they finally realized that the future of their teeny one-state Confederation as an enclave of the United States of America was rather iffy. Even then, their vote to join the United States went 34–32.
But I digress.
Actually, for many years I have said that you can impress a Rhode Islander by asking where they live, and then—regardless of what they say—remarking "Oh, that's near Providence, isn't it?" They are always pleased. "Yes, that's right!" The census data proves that this is guaranteed to work. (Unless they live in Providence, of course.)
Here's a joke for mathematicians. Q: What is Rhode Island? A: The topological closure of Providence.
Okay, I am finally done ragging on Rhode Island.
Here is the complete data, ordered by size disparity. I wasn't sure whether to put Rhode Island at the top or the bottom, so I listed it twice, just like in the Senate.
| State | Largest city and its Population | Second-largest city and its population | Quotient | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rhode Island | Providence-New Bedford-Fall River | 1,612,989 | — | |||
| Illinois | Chicago-Naperville-Joliet | 9,505,748 | Peoria | 370,194 | 25 | .68 |
| New York | New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island | 18,818,536 | Buffalo-Niagara Falls | 1,137,520 | 16 | .54 |
| Minnesota | Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington | 3,175,041 | Duluth | 274,244 | 11 | .58 |
| Maryland | Baltimore-Towson | 2,658,405 | Hagerstown-Martinsburg | 257,619 | 10 | .32 |
| Georgia | Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta | 5,138,223 | Augusta-Richmond County | 523,249 | 9 | .82 |
| Washington | Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue | 3,263,497 | Spokane | 446,706 | 7 | .31 |
| Michigan | Detroit-Warren-Livonia | 4,468,966 | Grand Rapids-Wyoming | 774,084 | 5 | .77 |
| Massachusetts | Boston-Cambridge-Quincy | 4,455,217 | Worcester | 784,992 | 5 | .68 |
| Oregon | Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton | 2,137,565 | Salem | 384,600 | 5 | .56 |
| Hawaii | Honolulu | 909,863 | Hilo | 171,191 | 5 | .31 |
| Nevada | Las Vegas-Paradise | 1,777,539 | Reno-Sparks | 400,560 | 4 | .44 |
| Idaho | Boise City-Nampa | 567,640 | Coeur d'Alene | 131,507 | 4 | .32 |
| Arizona | Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale | 4,039,182 | Tucson | 946,362 | 4 | .27 |
| New Mexico | Albuquerque | 816,811 | Las Cruces | 193,888 | 4 | .21 |
| Alaska | Anchorage | 359,180 | Fairbanks | 86,754 | 4 | .14 |
| Indiana | Indianapolis-Carmel | 1,666,032 | Fort Wayne | 408,071 | 4 | .08 |
| Colorado | Denver-Aurora | 2,408,750 | Colorado Springs | 599,127 | 4 | .02 |
| Maine | Portland-South Portland-Biddeford | 513,667 | Bangor | 147,180 | 3 | .49 |
| Vermont | Burlington-South Burlington | 206,007 | Rutland | 63,641 | 3 | .24 |
| California | Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana | 12,950,129 | San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont | 4,180,027 | 3 | .10 |
| Nebraska | Omaha-Council Bluffs | 822,549 | Lincoln | 283,970 | 2 | .90 |
| Kentucky | Louisville-Jefferson County | 1,222,216 | Lexington-Fayette | 436,684 | 2 | .80 |
| Wisconsin | Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis | 1,509,981 | Madison | 543,022 | 2 | .78 |
| Alabama | Birmingham-Hoover | 1,100,019 | Mobile | 404,157 | 2 | .72 |
| Kansas | Wichita | 592,126 | Topeka | 228,894 | 2 | .59 |
| Pennsylvania | Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington | 5,826,742 | Pittsburgh | 2,370,776 | 2 | .46 |
| New Hampshire | Manchester-Nashua | 402,789 | Lebanon | 172,429 | 2 | .34 |
| Mississippi | Jackson | 529,456 | Gulfport-Biloxi | 227,904 | 2 | .32 |
| Utah | Salt Lake City | 1,067,722 | Ogden-Clearfield | 497,640 | 2 | .15 |
| Florida | Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach | 5,463,857 | Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater | 2,697,731 | 2 | .03 |
| North Dakota | Fargo | 187,001 | Bismarck | 101,138 | 1 | .85 |
| South Dakota | Sioux Falls | 212,911 | Rapid City | 118,763 | 1 | .79 |
| North Carolina | Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord | 1,583,016 | Raleigh-Cary | 994,551 | 1 | .59 |
| Arkansas | Little Rock-North Little Rock | 652,834 | Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers | 420,876 | 1 | .55 |
| Montana | Billings | 148,116 | Missoula | 101,417 | 1 | .46 |
| Missouri | St. Louis | 2,796,368 | Kansas City | 1,967,405 | 1 | .42 |
| Iowa | Des Moines-West Des Moines | 534,230 | Davenport-Moline-Rock Island | 377,291 | 1 | .42 |
| Virginia | Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News | 1,649,457 | Richmond | 1,194,008 | 1 | .38 |
| New Jersey | Trenton-Ewing | 367,605 | Atlantic City | 271,620 | 1 | .35 |
| Louisiana | New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner | 1,024,678 | Baton Rouge | 766,514 | 1 | .34 |
| Connecticut | Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford | 1,188,841 | Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk | 900,440 | 1 | .32 |
| Oklahoma | Oklahoma City | 1,172,339 | Tulsa | 897,752 | 1 | .31 |
| Delaware | Seaford | 180,288 | Dover | 147,601 | 1 | .22 |
| Wyoming | Cheyenne | 85,384 | Casper | 70,401 | 1 | .21 |
| South Carolina | Columbia | 703,771 | Charleston-North Charleston | 603,178 | 1 | .17 |
| Tennessee | Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro | 1,455,097 | Memphis | 1,274,704 | 1 | .14 |
| Texas | Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington | 6,003,967 | Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown | 5,539,949 | 1 | .08 |
| West Virginia | Charleston | 305,526 | Huntington-Ashland | 285,475 | 1 | .07 |
| Ohio | Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor | 2,114,155 | Cincinnati-Middletown | 2,104,218 | 1 | .00 |
| Rhode Island | Providence-New Bedford-Fall River | 1,612,989 | — | |||
Some of this data is rather odd because of the way the census bureau aggregates cities. For example, the largest city in New Jersey is Newark. But Newark is counted as part of the New York City metropolitan area, so doesn't count separately. If it did, New Jersey's quotient would be 5.86 instead of 1.35. I should probably rerun the data without the aggregation. But you get oddities that way also.
I also made a scatter plot. The x-axis is the population of the largest city, and the y-axis is the population of the second-largest city. Both axes are log-scale:
I gratefully acknowledge the gift of Tim McKenzie. Thank you!
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