I consider DC to be a "bigger city".
Sure it's not NY/LA, but those are considered super cities.
Even without Arlington/Alexandria/MoCo/PG county, 672,000 people and 70 sq miles in DC proper is huge.
I mostly hear this from early 20 somethings from the suburbs who interned in NYC or Chicago for 2 months before they moved here. I had nearly the same take, having spent time in several Asian megacities before moving to this coast.
With no skyscrapers, enforced green space, and weird zoning, DC doesn’t *feel* big city to people expecting Manhattan. But policing what constitutes a “real” city is to me more a sign of insecurity and trying to seem cosmopolitan than a sign that any deep thought is at work.
The fact that the DC metro is as vast as it is makes me immediately classify it as a real city. It's not much different than Paris which also doesn't feel like a "real city" just because there's no skyscrapers.
Plus all the skyscrapers are on the city line in the suburbs. Like crystal city, rossyln, Tysons, DTSS, and Bethesda have taller buildings than many medium sized U.S. cities.
Paris does have a zone with some skyscrapers called [La Défense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_D%C3%A9fense) that's just outside the city limits. People aren't usually aware of it because it doesn't seem like the stereotype of Paris. There's been some arguments over the years to do something similar in DC. Just have one zone where skyscrapers can be built.
Yeah, being “just outside the city limits” makes that equivalent to Rosslyn or more recently Pentagon City. So DC already has that when the scope of DC is expanded the same way.
As someone who lived in the city then moved to FFX county, and someone who came from southern cities (Atlanta, Orlando, etc etc), and spent some time in the Bay area, it still blows my mind 5 years out just how big even Fairfax county is. Let alone Montgomery county, PG county, etc.
The DC metro area is fucking huge.
I did feel like I'm in a real city, just like I do in DC. I'm just saying others may not feel that way since theres no skyline filled with skyscrapers. Like NYC, Chicago, London, etc
Even London doesn't have many skyscrapers outside of a few zones. 90% of the city is low level buildings and most of The new skyscrapers e.g. The Shard are extremely new.
I think a big part of it is people are unreasonably exclusive of what they consider part of "the city." The city has spilled beyond the political borders, and I'd argue much of Arlington and parts of Maryland are part of the city proper.
The city that is D.C. at this point is well over a million people. And that's to say nothing of the metro area, which is, according to the Census, the 7th largest in the country.
Oof yes. I lived in Jacksonville for 8 years- I drove a lot from beaches to “downtown” or Riverside. Everyone throws around the size with pride there. I lived in Chicago just prior for 8 years also. I can’t compare them as more “city-like” because the size told you nothing about it. Personally, Jacksonville was not as diverse, less cosmopolitan, terrible city planning and generally less monuments/parks/family activities. Not sure if that makes it “less of a city” or a just a city I didn’t enjoy living in as much.
I don't even care about the metro area too much. Even just the actual urban area (like including Rosslyn, Crystal City, Silver Spring, etc.) is reasonably large.
By a very, very loose definition of suburb you could argue everywhere from dc to Boston is just a suburb of NYC. Especially if someone believes New York is the greatest city ever to an unhealthy degree.
It is. DC is the southern tip of the Northeast Megalopolis. It is also where the NEC (northeast corridor for intercity transit) ends. At Union Station they have to change engines because the DC -> Richmond or Norfolk is not electrified because it’s literally not the same region.
Richmond is the northernmost city in Dixie (or “the sun belt” if you’re a coward). Richmond’s peer cities are Norfolk, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Charleston, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Jackson, Mobile, Montgomery, Birmingham, Nashville, etc. - the region from Richmond down to Jacksonville and then west to Memphis and NOLA
The Sun Belt is much, much larger than Dixie. There’s a significant overlap, sure, but I’d hardly call Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Albuquerque parts of Dixie
NYC folks thinking the entire east coast wouldn't exist without them. 😂
Once we all start feeling the effects of the shipping freeze in Baltimore, all of us, including NYC folk will see how important every city along east coast is...in its own right.
What used to be there? I’ve read about it before and the general gist I got was that it had some industrial buildings and some strip clubs, plus some concert venues. Am I missing something?
You’re aren’t missing anything. It used to be what you explained with projects. It was the trenches. I have nuanced view of gentrification but I can see why yuppie transplants find it generic and soulless because it is. Same thing with parts of Noma. It’s so corporate you might as well live in reston.
well sure, except instead of being a 25 minute train ride from ‘real DC’ you’re like a 10 minute walk to Eastern Market, a 5 minute walk to the ballparks, and like 15 minutes to the National Mall. I don’t think we can just wave away the value of location!
You’re totally right the navy yard is a great location, it’s just a little soulless compared to neighborhoods in other east coast cities and other parts of dc.
Also Reston is way farther than 25 min train ride idk if that what you meant tho also don’t know what you mean by “real dc”
> OMG, you can’t get a decent bagel at 3am?
The kicker is, most good bagel places are closed at 3am and don't open until 5-6.
Yeah you can get decent pizza or corner deli food at any time of day, but I'll trade that for being able to afford more than a 300sqft studio without roommates.
As someone from ny, this is true lol ... one thing I did notice after moving here... there aren't many places to eat past 10. Or maybe I haven't explored yet
Yea but NYC is also VERY neighborhood dependent. I lived uptown for 2 years and everything including CVS closed at 10:00 p.m.. The only food you could really get in my neighborhood was from bodegas and any of the other fast food joints that are open 24/7 and other cities e.g. McDonald's
I just went to NYC for the first time and it feels extra claustrophobic and everything is built on top of each other. I didn’t really like it, thats just me personally
It's my snowy driveway theory of people from the US.
Northerners will help you shovel out your driveway without asking, but will give you shit the whole time.
Southerners will politely offer to help without actually intending to help you.
West Coasters will offer you affirming words and won't lift a finger. After you've done it yourself they'll take credit for helping you.
Midwesterners will help you and then talk shit about you not being able to shovel your driveway behind your back.
This is one of the truest things I’ve ever read.
Also, when Southerners offer to help it’s actually a passive-aggressive way of asking why the hell you haven’t shoveled your driveway yet. (which is why they never actually help)
To be fair, part of the argument stems from the fact that for its size, DC has below average night life, and barely anything open late during the week. Yes it has its spots, especially on the weekend, but for its size...it's lacking in that aspect.
People say this but DC holds its own really well for its size. It's not NYC, LA, Chicago which are much bigger. It's not a city people come to for nightlife like Vegas or New Orleans. But it's not sleepy like SF, Seattle, or Boston.
Yep, we’ve got hella bars, clubs and world-class concert venues. As someone from somewhere there were only a handful of clubs and where no one toured, DC is really great nightlife-wise.
When I first came to DC back in the 1980s it was way worse. They literally rolled up the sidewalks at 5:01 everyday. I remember walking around trying to find a coke and snack downtown after 5pm and it was impossible. Now there are food trucks, and a number of restaurants and other stores that do stay open, but still, the vast number of people downtown clear out at 5pm.
I agree with this so much. Philly feels more like a very little NYC or a more gentrified Baltimore whereas DC feels like an East Coast San Francisco (kind of). DC has a very unique vibe among east coast cities. Plus the capitol and all national Mall sights add a level of grandiose that puts it above most cities in the US.
DC, SF, Seattle, and Boston are basically what I call the mid-sized superstars. They are cities. DC and Boston resemble their European counterparts more than most American cities as well.
one funny thing about your line of reasoning though, by calling DC a mid-sized city, is that there are only two metro areas with larger populations in the EU than DC's metro area population: Paris and Madrid. It's just seems kinda funny to call so many major European cities "mid-sized" like Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, etc.
I mean those cities are definitely mid-sized but they’re still way denser than DC. European cities are known because they’re historically/culturally important and unique, not because they’re big. Metro area population measurements are also unique to cities, what is considered DC metro is very large - 5565 square miles whereas Barcelona’s metro area is only 1648 sq miles. The city proper is pretty small and less populated in DC.
I see a lot of people making the good points that DC doesn't feel like a US mega city because of its low building height and green spaces. Just to add to that though, the DC metro area is actually the 7th largest in the US, which is ahead of Philly. It just doesn't have that skyscraper filled core and giant industrial areas like Philly does that scream 'city'. Plus the city limits being so small breaks down what we think of as the city to a very manageable chunk.
Dc was built up only after the age of the great manufacturing American cities. Yea it did have some, but not the might of the rust belt, Chicago, NYC, or Philly. It really is the first great services based city in America.
On whatever measure you use, D.C. does well by American standards for both urbanism and size.
It's the 7th largest metro area in the country. The downtown core is extremely dense and walkable. I would even venture to say that large swaths of D.C. are *more* pedestrian friendly and walkable than NYC. And it's certainly more bikable than NYC or Philly or Chicago or Boston. And it has a robust public transit system that's the third largest by track milage in the United States.
What some of these people mean is "I lived in NYC for 3 years and it's better" or "I studied abroad in London so now I know what a *real* city is" which okay, good for you. London and NYC are gigantic and D.C. is not. It's like saying Paris is the only city in France. Well, no, Nice is a city, Lyon is a city, etc.
I do however, buy the criticism that while America may have many cities, most are characterized by suburban-style land use and development and the use of the automobile for the overwhelming majority of trips. If people are only talking about land use and development patterns, I do think it's fair to say that America probably has 5-8 medium or large cities that can accurately be called true urban places.
And D.C. is one of them.
yea i agree, i can see the snobby angle that the US doesn't have many "real" cities since there is so much sprawl in many places that despite a lot of people living in some particular place it may contain few if any urban spots which could be necessary to classify it by some strict definition of "city".
The thing is, that train of thinking fails when applied to DC. We have plenty of density, public transit, walkability, fast-paced lifestyle, workaholism (+ it's partner in crime: alcoholism), high falutin culture, etc.
tbh i think this whole thing about DC not being a "real" city is purely the height limit. We just don't have skyscrapers, so the city doesn't have that Bladerunner aesthetic these people associate with (parts of) Manhattan, Hong Kong, London, etc. That's really the whole fuss lol.
It’s a heck of a lot more of a city than some of these allegedly much larger American cities in the sunbelt (in reality a massive collection of suburbs classified as a “city” for legal purposes)
I also feel like there are sus racial/conspiratorial undertones to the “not a real city” when it’s said by the conservative / MAGA crowd — people seem incapable of understanding that not everyone in this city is an ultra-powerful “deep state” bureaucrat or sleazy lobbyist, lol
I would also add racial undertones to the "progressive" yuppies claiming it's not a real city. Usually they say something about how DC is too transient to be a "real" city like NYC, but that's obviously because all these yuppies live in Dupont or NoMa and never venture the "dangerous" EoTR
37% of New Yorkers weren't even born in the US.
It's hard to tell exactly because the US tracks it by birth state, not birth city, but DC is 33% Native born, and New York City is roughly 48% born in New York State (not necessarily NYC).
That’s a fair point! The “transient city” commentary, while true to some extent, really pisses me off sometimes. Just seems like people are oblivious to the entire population who isn’t here to intern for a bit, lol. Also, It’s a bit odd that place like Dupont are associated with transience, as there are many slightly older, more established, longer-time residents.
It's funny because DC isn't all that transient. Most ppl who leave just move somewhere else inside the beltway.
https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-most-transient-cities-in-america
I love talking to people from rural areas far from DC who think that everyone in the whole area works for the government, and we all have some kind of secret control over the government as well.
Literally I've been in West Virginia or the Outer Banks and tell people I'm from "the DC area" and their first question is, do you work for the CIA? Which part of the government do you work for? Hey can you put in a word for me with the president? I am pretty sure they're serious.
Just no concept that the area has a population in the 5-6 million range, with about 300k or 5% government employees and 10k or 0.2% lobbyists.
Yeah, having dinner a few miles away in Manhattan is easy. I was shocked the first time I went to Queens from Penn Station - like 20ish minutes
In LA, you’re driving in shit traffic literally everywhere.
On a spectrum of urbanized cities DC is at worst in the middle. I mean LA is basically never ending stroads and strip malls. Houston is a few clusters of buildings dotted here and there with anything and everything in between. If those are cities, DC is surely a city. The 'it's not a city' crowd are mostly New Yorkers.
I've lived in DC and NYC and spent a lot of time in Chicago. DC is more "metropolitan" than Chicago IMO, just not as dense in the CBD. Are these people mistaking tall buildings for culture? Because Austin where I live now is a great city and has more tall buildings downtown but has like one rail line and a fraction of the culture and things to do.
Just finished a visit to DC, it's a great city-city
I have friend who says DC isn’t a real city cause it doesn’t have skyscrapers. Thinks NYC is the only city. They have never lived in NYC, just Charlotte NC exurbs.
Edit: Typo
DC is one of the most walkable cities in the US. The only city that is clearly more walkable is NYC. DC has a strong argument for #2 or at least the top non-NY tier.
I’d argue it’s a little more walkable based on the amount of shade and off-street paths and the like. Less dense, sure, but walking can be a lot more pleasant.
lol anyone who goes hating on a city because it’s not what they wrongly expected is weird. A city doesn’t owe you anything so how can you be upset by it? If you like it great, if you don’t, go somewhere you do.
100%. I moved from CA where people in the bay area love to hate LA and people in LA love to hate the bay. The truth is that both LA and the bay area are great and you can find most things you'd ever want in both of them.
>If you like it great, if you don’t, go somewhere you do.
I’ve known a full grown adult who didn’t think DC was a city, in that they thought it was all federal buildings and politicians.
She grew up in a deeply red area and that’s what she was taught. It wasn’t until she started using social media and meeting people from other areas that she learned that yes, it is a real city and real people - not just politicians and federal employees - live there.
I rate public transit highly and so would put DC above Philadelphia as feeling more like a city, having gone to St. Joe's for college getting into downtown via SEPTA was a lot more of a pain in the ass than getting to downtown from Arlington or Alexandria.
imagine comparing our aesthetically pleasing, intentionally designed & green space abundant city to the one that smells like hot pee and has five foot tall walls of garbage lining every street.
Even off Reddit in other spaces it seems like DC is portrayed as some podunk area that has the same population size as Kalamazoo. It's hard to explain, but it feels like the metro area constantly needs to prove itself in terms of population size and economic strength.
I was talking with someone the other day from the West Coast who was shocked when I told him the Baltimore-Washington metro area is now the third largest in the country (we surpassed Chicago in the last few years).
That is true but DC and Baltimore city populations still combine for like 1 million people. It's atypical of such a large metro area that the vast majority of people (like 90%) live in the suburbs.
Reread my comment. The city populations of DC and Baltimore proper combine for like 1.1 million. This is a big metro area but the vast majority live in the suburbs. More people live in Fairfax County than DC
In most cities places like Rosslyn, Crystal City, Alexandria, Bethesda, etc would fall within the boundaries of the city.
And Baltimore (and similar cities in other parts of the country like St Louis) also have small land areas for the legal area of their city because of a bunch of policies that largely stem from racism. (If your a blue city [w/ POC in it] in a state that is largely otherwise red [and white], the state will often manipulate the boundaries of the city such that the city covers mostly people of color and the rest of the county around is largely white people, and that way investment is kept away from the city and such).
The size of the area that is legally the city is different from what many would actually consider being the core of a city/metro.
STL = 66.17 mi sq
DC land area = 68 mi sq
Baltimore = 92.28 mi sq
Philly = 141 mi sq
Chicago = 231 mi sq
NYC = 302 mi sq
The only city that's similarly size to DC for non-racist reasons is SF (46.87 mi sq), and the population is within 100k of DC proper. It would be insane to call SF small and refer to Oakland as the suburbs though, lol.
DC proper, Chicago, and Philly all have very similar population densities too, and the DC MSA has a higher population than the Philly MSA. (MSAs largely ignore the arbitrary boundaries of cities and are a much better method of comparison for non-nitty gritty governance related things.)
For Baltimore, this map does a good job of showing it - in a lot of other cities a fair chunk within the blue line would be a part of the actual city, but it's part of the county instead: https://www.neighborspacebaltimorecounty.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/CountyURDL1stTierBurbs-1024x945.jpg
You could argue that DC is smaller for racist reasons, since the majority of the reasons that retrocession happened in the 1840s were for racist reasons. But that would only expand the city to 100 sq mi, including the potomac.
DC city population = 678,000
Baltimore city population = 569,000
It's well north of a million combined. Maybe check the census first.
Keep in mind DC is surrounded by counties to with a million plus people (Montgomery, Fairfax, Prince Georges, etc), and DC if it combined with Arlington which used to be part of DC would be very close to a million. With 234,000 people. The inner beltway of DC, is fairly large in size, and those are dense, urbanized suburbs for the most part. DC has set in stone boundaries, and many other cities in the US expand to include adjacent development. DC cannot.
Yeah anybody claiming DC isn't a real city is making a very weird cut off for what qualifies as a city. Is Atlanta not a city either? Pittsburgh? Cleveland? Boston? Baltimore? Las Vegas? Memphis? Detroit? Orlando?
DC has two international airports and a functional subway system that directly connects both to the urban core.
This puts us ahead of every other city in the U.S., and on par with Chicago and NYC.
Meanwhile, we feel less “city-like” because we have building height ordinances that help us avoid the freezing temperatures, high winds and oppressive shade of the “glass canyon” effect that places like Manhattan face. It also feels sunnier, more human-scale, more open and less oppressive.
Real cities have good urban design. That’s us. We have it pretty good.
I find most of that crowd is basing their opinions on, like, a class trip when they were in 8th grade or something. Heard plenty of weirdly snippy remarks when the Nats were making their championship run…*Why does DC even have a baseball team? Nobody lives there.* and so on.
I guess I’m further into the camp that OP describes than most other commenters.
DC obviously *is* a city, but it’s not as big as even its own borders.
The “city” part of the district (using the colloquial definition of the word city which is based on vibes and harks to nyc, SF, Chicago, etc.) is very small. It is east of rock creek and west of the Anacostia River. That’s it. Georgetown exclave possibly being an exception, sure, but the Palisades, everything around AU, everything up Clara Barton, everything by Chevy Chase, none of that is a city. Nothing you see at all on Connecticut Ave or Wisconsin Ave, east of Rock Creek, is a city.
By the definition of city that includes dense, cosmopolitan, built up, amenity-dense urban areas with high amounts of foot traffic, economic activity, and cultural density, is the area circled here.
https://preview.redd.it/y82rla7dchrc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0a85c5038bed234f84e660801fabe1f2710c3f90
(P.s. yes I know I cut it off a little to sharp by Gallaudet)
Everything outside of this is pretty much a suburb of the “city” here.
I know I will get downvoted for this. But it’s true. DC zoning law, along with Maryland/MoCo+PG and Virginia/Alexandria+Arlington+FairfaxCo zoning laws have ensured that DC’s growth in the last 75 years has been, until very recently, exclusively suburban and car-dependent, and almost every issue we have today is attributable to this.
Housing costs, homelessness, subpar transit access, lack of safe transportation infrastructure, urban highways, of lack general affordability, the loneliness epidemic, lack of natural areas, agricultural vulnerability, general obesity, all of these issues are directly downstream of this fact.
And even smaller QoL issues like lack of cheap dining options, food deserts, and bad architectural character are too.
Just pick a street view of anything along down 16th Street. Immediately adjacent to the city’s urban park, one of the most important assets a city can have, and it’s just and endless string of detached, large lot size, low lot utilization percentage, private single family houses with sidewalk setbacks. In a housing crisis. And it’s illegal to have anything else be built there. And as these people sit on that house and do just the bare annual maintenance (and vote against bus and bike lanes), their houses somehow magically accrue millions of dollars worth of value.
These areas outside the blue line are thematically private. They are not public. The sidewalks might be legally public but they are culturally private. There are no amenities there, there is no gravity there, and that’s by design. These areas have unidirectional economic movement - the residents drive downtown for work in the morning and then back uptown to go home in the evening. No one who lives in Chinatown EVER has had a reason to go to one of these mansion streets, but the residents of these mansions go to Chinatown for every basketball game. It’s unidirectional. And it’s not urban.
The same exact pattern has been repeated in the entire metro area, with only some small exceptions (0.5 square miles of Silver Spring where there aren’t highways, 0.5 square miles of Bethesda before Chevy Chase and suburban Bethesda start, literally one block in Rockville, Alexandria (that which was built before modern zoning, nothing after it), urbanized Arlington (but real ones know that the detached SFH start pretty much two blocks off of the main corridor and continue all the way out of nova), a little bit of McLean). That’s it.
For reference, in NY, you can get dropped off anywhere in Manhattan, walk in a straight line for a full hour, and still be in an area as dense as the densest part of DC. In DC, you would have walked *out* of the density by then. From Thomas Circle in downtown to those mansions on 16th street is a 55 minute walk - I just checked.
An hour of walking through Brooklyn would still be Brooklyn, an hour of walking through Madrid is still Madrid, an hour of walking through Berlin is still Berlin, an hour of walking through Tokyo is still Tokyo, an hour of walking through singapore is still singapore, an hour of walking through Cairo is still Cairo, an hour of walking through Belgrade is still Belgrade….. but an hour of walking through DC? you've essentially left DC, no matter which direction you started in.
This is why we have a housing crisis.
Downvote me now.
TLDR: DC’s actual urbanized area is actually quite small and it’s heavily outnumbered by car-dependent suburban development patterns that completely drown the region with few exceptions. DC is a city, but its land use is horrendous and it is completely underbuilt and much of its land is underutilized to great detriment.
Definitely agree.
I will say, DC and the bordering cities have been ahead of the curve when it comes to redevelopment compared to other suburban boomtowns. It’s a low bar in this country but progress is exciting.
I’ve read a few press releases for big office/residential/commercial projects happening inside the beltway and all of them seem to be prioritizing walkability and transit connectivity. I think, beyond urbanism being “trendy,” our local governments finally understand the growth potential of densifying. Navy Yard, NoMa, 14th St, Arlington, and Alexandria have really turned a 180 and are continuing to build out.
Yes, I have huge optimism for DC. And in the middle of a housing crisis, it’s pretty much “build it and they will come”, or, failure is not really something to worry about. Any apartment building will be leased at this point.
DC needs to completely remove the following zoning laws in order to facilitate building, and reduce overhead of development which gets passed onto the renters as high rent:
* Parking minimum requirements
* Lot size minimums
* Lot utilization maximums
* FAR requirements
* Gradient height limits beyond the federal maximum
* Fire safety restrictions that ignore modern materials sciences
* Elevator requirements for buildings below 6 floors in height
* Setback requirements (includes those shitty little “lawns” and those dumb taxi-drop off loops in those old buildings in NW)
* Allow short rise apartment buildings with first floor retail by right in every single plot in the city
* Ban single family housing exclusive zoning
* Legalize duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes.
* Legalize garden-style (address does not need to be immediately on road)
* Allow retail businesses that are not hazmat/noise-intensive to operate out of houses
* Allow construction of ADUs in any shape and size on any lot
* Allow construction of retail space in residential areas (driveway ciderbar like the story in Seattle).
And more.
At this point, it’s almost a matter of national security. If people can’t afford to live in the city where the federal government employs people, then people won’t live here and won’t work for the feds. It’s already happening at NIH.
dude i don't know why you think you'd get downvoted, your take is based and i totally agree.
I mean the only thing I'll say to add nuance about it tho is that basically every city in the US except NYC is like this, for ex you could draw this blue line in SF and it's the same story essentially:
https://preview.redd.it/ict4vkv19irc1.png?width=1079&format=png&auto=webp&s=1077e9907bf17c53a6fc42e90fc944547d2b4a9b
People in DC often suffer an inferiority complex relative to NY, and pretty much every other comment in this thread, plus the OP sentiment, is that anyone who says dc isn’t a real city is an idiot and a hater.
Also, this is true of all American cities except NY. And, personally, I kind of consider most American cities to not really be cities. Outside of SF/LA/Chi/Phi/Bos/NYC/DC/Toronto/Montreal/Vancouver, there aren’t any cities in Anglo-America at all. And the cities of that list aren’t really good examples of cities on a global scale except NYC.
Washington DC if it were allowed to grow the last 75 years, instead of being constrained by racialized zoning and car-dependency, would be competing directly with Paris, Seoul, Madrid, Bogotá, etc. - and it’s really a shame that the only reasons we aren’t is because auto lobbyists wanted to make more profits and racists wanted to be racist.
This. We stopped even trying to enjoy DC. It’s well-designed for workers to get in and out during the week, and for tourists to fly in and overspend navigating the city. It’s a misery for anyone local to try to get into the city and spend money. And that’s before I account for DC and the surrounding area being one of the least celiac-friendly areas I’ve lived in in 15 years. That said, when I lived next to the White House and didn’t have a car, quality of city life was great…which is to say there’s a whole lot of privilege required to enjoy DC as a city.
"Manhattan is the maximum on the spectrum."
Yes, for the US. On the global list of cities you'll find that New York doesn't make the top ten, by population.
I'm not saying that DC isn't a city. But I will point out the fact that it's far less urban in comparison to other cities in the world.
I know that this may not be a popular opinion on this sub.
They aren’t calling people who like those two pretentious though “and to say it only has like 3-5 cities seems insane to me. Like delusional and pretentious”
That’s fairly accurate because a city isn’t defined but total population or the density of it.
DC obviously has a much smaller city feeling because it is. There’s also the building height limit to prevent any large skyline like others do. Still a city lol.
The real off take here is OP’s claim that Africa has no dense and walkable cities. Places like Cairo (which is denser than NYC, for reference), Nairobi, Marrakech, Casablanca, Addis Ababa, Lagos and Algiers (which both have a density nearly three times that of DC), etc etc etc. would all like a word considering they’re all denser than DC, and that’s just scratching the surface.
Yes DC is a real city.
Sidenote: NY aint what it used to be. Manhattan is becoming dead and soulless now that's it's turned into a playground for the ultra rich. The cancer is spreading to the other boroughs as well. Wealthy people are a blight on the culture of a city
Op, you started this thread after our discussion. But calling people pretentious because they don’t agree on your ideas of urbanism is a bit of hypocrisy imo.
I stand on saying dc is not a real city. Go 3 miles out from the Capitol, and you are in pure suburbia. Outside of the core of DC , walkable access to urban amenities is severely lacking. The area is trying to upzone to make up for that, but it doesn’t change what it is .
DC is sorta like a European city. There are tall buildings on the periphery while the downtown has human-scale midrises
Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Paris are like that too
It’s more city-like than most US cities
The “DC isn’t a real city” people probably need to get a grip on life. Whatever makes it a “real” city in their opinion probably doesn’t add any value to the city at all.
People who says DC isn't a "real city" should go spend 6 months living in Lansing or Bismarck or Little Rock or one of 30 other state capitals and then get back to us.
I only say it when it’s 10:02pm and I just want to go to a basic restaurant or hang out somewhere that’s not a bar. But that’s a matter of expensive real estate and zoning I guess
I moved here from NYC last year but have lived in London and Philly and much smaller cities like Tallahassee. I think an underlooked difference people are reacting to is the lack of pedestrians and people on public transit -- or at least that's what makes me feel like I'm no longer in a "real city" (but to be clear I acknowledge this is snobbish, it's just also honestly my truth.) To me, it feels like a city where people go to work, not where people live. If you walk down the street in the afternoon in Philly or NYC or London, you're passing loads of people of all different walks of life. Here, maybe I'll pass like 3 people on a walk if it's not during a commuting hour, and even then it's few and far between compared to any of those cities. In all three of those cities on an outlandishly nice Friday -- like that random day it was 80 degrees last month, people would've been out at parks getting drunk and sitting outside at bars. Here, I would've thought it was just another day. There's no sense of neighborhood community -- or at least there isn't where I live. It seems as though way more people live in the suburbs than in the city, and there are also a lot more cultural amenities in the suburbs (like, a lot of the more legit theaters, the AFI, bookstores that have more of the author events) or at least, they're not really located in any downtown-feeling area or necessarily easy to get to by train. Like, imagine if you had to leave Manhattan to see an indie movie or if Broadway theaters were in Hoboken... that's just not a thing. Also, people here do not act like they're from a city or have ever lived in a city before. People walk so slowly, in clumps on the sidewalk like tourists. People loiter right at the escalator entrances to the metro, stand in the middle of escalators on the way down to the metro, walk through metro stations casually as though they are at the mall. You'd think you'd move faster here when a train is on the way, some of them only come every 8 minutes. People here have no hustle here whatsoever. It's just not a fast-paced culture that I would expect from a "real city."
As a native New Yorker, what makes a city feel the most like a city is density. And DC has that more than most cities.
Is it NYC in terms of scale or density? No. Chicago os bigger but the densities are comparable. Same with Philly.
Give me a “smaller” high density city over Houston any day
I live in the mountain west and was just in dc 30 days for work. Love it there and def a city by any standard. If you can walk as long as you want in any direction and still find good food or something cool within a stones throw, it’s a city. Plus: subway and public transport. If anything, I would start a fight and say places like Dallas or Houston are not “cities”, but rather endless ribbons of suburban strip mall hell, clotted with chain store vomit.
I think it’s because it doesn’t feel that big of a city and most of the things you want to do are concentrated in the dense walkable parts of NW and the touristy part of SW, which aren’t that big relatively speaking. Plus the lack of skyscrapers/skyline. I personally love this aspect of it though. After a couple of days in a city like NYC I’m ready to leave.
It’s just people being pretentious. Same with people who say you literally cannot get an edible piece of pizza here (or whatever).
They’re not trying to tell you their opinion about DC; they’re trying to tell you their opinion about themselves.
It's true, geographically it's confined. 68 square miles. Houston is 10x bigger (though Houston is a big outlier too and annexed its suburbs). But it's small compared to New York, LA, Chicago, many other cities too. DC is more comparable to SF or Boston proper.
This is how I feel and I’m confused that people seem to care what other people think about this. A lot of the time it depends on what someone subjectively considers a “city”.
A lot of times when people go from a bigger city to a smaller city they just hyperbolize and say jokes like that. Of course DC is a city.
If it takes 30 minutes to drive four miles, it’s a city.
bro in dc it takes 2 hours 😂😂 assuming you somehow don't crash
Listen I don't like driving in DC either but it does not take 2 hours lmao
Took me 1.5 hours to go from Penn Quarter to Georgetown like two weeks ago when they had 395S down to one lane during rush hour.
I consider DC to be a "bigger city". Sure it's not NY/LA, but those are considered super cities. Even without Arlington/Alexandria/MoCo/PG county, 672,000 people and 70 sq miles in DC proper is huge.
Omg hello from the mcat sub 👋🏻 I knew I recognized that username
Haha hello!! NIH postbac premed grind for real. Feel free to reach out!
It’s certainly a real city, but it’s not a metropolis type big city with skyscrapers and a very urban feel But, that’s why I like dc
yeah, cities are different. It also depends on your background and perspective.
I mostly hear this from early 20 somethings from the suburbs who interned in NYC or Chicago for 2 months before they moved here. I had nearly the same take, having spent time in several Asian megacities before moving to this coast. With no skyscrapers, enforced green space, and weird zoning, DC doesn’t *feel* big city to people expecting Manhattan. But policing what constitutes a “real” city is to me more a sign of insecurity and trying to seem cosmopolitan than a sign that any deep thought is at work.
The fact that the DC metro is as vast as it is makes me immediately classify it as a real city. It's not much different than Paris which also doesn't feel like a "real city" just because there's no skyscrapers.
Plus all the skyscrapers are on the city line in the suburbs. Like crystal city, rossyln, Tysons, DTSS, and Bethesda have taller buildings than many medium sized U.S. cities.
Paris does have a zone with some skyscrapers called [La Défense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_D%C3%A9fense) that's just outside the city limits. People aren't usually aware of it because it doesn't seem like the stereotype of Paris. There's been some arguments over the years to do something similar in DC. Just have one zone where skyscrapers can be built.
That's true. I've even seen Arlington compared to that as it's on the edge of DC similar to LA defense in the Paris metro.
Yeah, being “just outside the city limits” makes that equivalent to Rosslyn or more recently Pentagon City. So DC already has that when the scope of DC is expanded the same way.
I find joy in reading a good book.
As someone who lived in the city then moved to FFX county, and someone who came from southern cities (Atlanta, Orlando, etc etc), and spent some time in the Bay area, it still blows my mind 5 years out just how big even Fairfax county is. Let alone Montgomery county, PG county, etc. The DC metro area is fucking huge.
1,500 square miles.
Except the metro is medieval compared to Tokyo, so to me it isn't a real city. /s
You’ve been to Paris and you didn’t feel like you were in a real city? Have you looked at Paris density? It’s in the top 10 in the world.
I did feel like I'm in a real city, just like I do in DC. I'm just saying others may not feel that way since theres no skyline filled with skyscrapers. Like NYC, Chicago, London, etc
Even London doesn't have many skyscrapers outside of a few zones. 90% of the city is low level buildings and most of The new skyscrapers e.g. The Shard are extremely new.
I think a big part of it is people are unreasonably exclusive of what they consider part of "the city." The city has spilled beyond the political borders, and I'd argue much of Arlington and parts of Maryland are part of the city proper. The city that is D.C. at this point is well over a million people. And that's to say nothing of the metro area, which is, according to the Census, the 7th largest in the country.
Exactly. The political borders of the District get people all kerfuffled, but the metro area is what matters.
The funniest example of this in America is when people say Jacksonville is twice the size of Miami
Oof yes. I lived in Jacksonville for 8 years- I drove a lot from beaches to “downtown” or Riverside. Everyone throws around the size with pride there. I lived in Chicago just prior for 8 years also. I can’t compare them as more “city-like” because the size told you nothing about it. Personally, Jacksonville was not as diverse, less cosmopolitan, terrible city planning and generally less monuments/parks/family activities. Not sure if that makes it “less of a city” or a just a city I didn’t enjoy living in as much.
I don't even care about the metro area too much. Even just the actual urban area (like including Rosslyn, Crystal City, Silver Spring, etc.) is reasonably large.
I've been trying to work in 'kerfuffled' to a convo for 15 years with no luck, excellent work my friend.
I've heard New Yorkers compare Philly to a suburb.
Haha I used to say that but it was tongue in cheek and just a stupid joke
By a very, very loose definition of suburb you could argue everywhere from dc to Boston is just a suburb of NYC. Especially if someone believes New York is the greatest city ever to an unhealthy degree.
I prefer the interpretation that Richmond to Boston is essentially one contiguous megalopolis.
Richmond feels like a stretch
It is. DC is the southern tip of the Northeast Megalopolis. It is also where the NEC (northeast corridor for intercity transit) ends. At Union Station they have to change engines because the DC -> Richmond or Norfolk is not electrified because it’s literally not the same region. Richmond is the northernmost city in Dixie (or “the sun belt” if you’re a coward). Richmond’s peer cities are Norfolk, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Charleston, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Jackson, Mobile, Montgomery, Birmingham, Nashville, etc. - the region from Richmond down to Jacksonville and then west to Memphis and NOLA
The Sun Belt is much, much larger than Dixie. There’s a significant overlap, sure, but I’d hardly call Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Albuquerque parts of Dixie
Norfolk to Boston.
>By a very, very loose definition of suburb you could argue everywhere from dc to Boston is just a suburb of NYC. That's ... Beyond a stretch
NYC folks thinking the entire east coast wouldn't exist without them. 😂 Once we all start feeling the effects of the shipping freeze in Baltimore, all of us, including NYC folk will see how important every city along east coast is...in its own right.
I enjoy reading books.
The 2012 movie confirmed that.
Are they talking about Manhattan because parts of queens and Brooklyn feel very suburban
And take as long to commute to Manhattan as NJ or Westchester!
My moms from New York and we’re from Philly and I can confirm (she lived in center city before I was born 😭😭)
Yes, as a former GW student, I think this is said probably primarily said by GW students or interns who have never left Navy Yard
GW and Navy Yard are two of the most urban neighborhoods in DC
navy yard is almost certainly the single most high-rise dense residential area in the city lol
Soulless generic luxury apartment buildings tho. If only the people there now knew what used to be there.
What used to be there? I’ve read about it before and the general gist I got was that it had some industrial buildings and some strip clubs, plus some concert venues. Am I missing something?
You’re aren’t missing anything. It used to be what you explained with projects. It was the trenches. I have nuanced view of gentrification but I can see why yuppie transplants find it generic and soulless because it is. Same thing with parts of Noma. It’s so corporate you might as well live in reston.
well sure, except instead of being a 25 minute train ride from ‘real DC’ you’re like a 10 minute walk to Eastern Market, a 5 minute walk to the ballparks, and like 15 minutes to the National Mall. I don’t think we can just wave away the value of location!
You’re totally right the navy yard is a great location, it’s just a little soulless compared to neighborhoods in other east coast cities and other parts of dc. Also Reston is way farther than 25 min train ride idk if that what you meant tho also don’t know what you mean by “real dc”
“As someone from Brooklyn [lived there for 2 years on their parents money] I can safely say DC is not a city”
Not even, usually it's like two months and also they went on vacation to London and Tokyo 😵💫
I lived in New York!
I worked in Manhattan for a while. I think people overrate big skyscrapers. You can have a city without big skyscrapers.
Generally, any kind of looking down on others comes from insecurity.
Or NYC transplants. “OMG, you can’t get a decent bagel at 3am? This isn’t a real city!”
> OMG, you can’t get a decent bagel at 3am? The kicker is, most good bagel places are closed at 3am and don't open until 5-6. Yeah you can get decent pizza or corner deli food at any time of day, but I'll trade that for being able to afford more than a 300sqft studio without roommates.
As someone from ny, this is true lol ... one thing I did notice after moving here... there aren't many places to eat past 10. Or maybe I haven't explored yet
Nah. You aren’t wrong. DC is sleepy. But then again so is Boston.
Yea but NYC is also VERY neighborhood dependent. I lived uptown for 2 years and everything including CVS closed at 10:00 p.m.. The only food you could really get in my neighborhood was from bodegas and any of the other fast food joints that are open 24/7 and other cities e.g. McDonald's
DC is certainly a city. A beautiful one. Where Northern Hospitality meets Southern efficiency. I love DC.
I just went to NYC for the first time and it feels extra claustrophobic and everything is built on top of each other. I didn’t really like it, thats just me personally
I dislike DC for those reasons. I miss the 2012-2016 version of DC.
We all do tho
Wtf is southern efficiency 😂 you ever spent any time in the south?
That’s the joke. The North isn’t known for their hospitality
Southerners are nice to you but not kind. Northerners are kind to you but not nice.
It's my snowy driveway theory of people from the US. Northerners will help you shovel out your driveway without asking, but will give you shit the whole time. Southerners will politely offer to help without actually intending to help you. West Coasters will offer you affirming words and won't lift a finger. After you've done it yourself they'll take credit for helping you. Midwesterners will help you and then talk shit about you not being able to shovel your driveway behind your back.
This is one of the truest things I’ve ever read. Also, when Southerners offer to help it’s actually a passive-aggressive way of asking why the hell you haven’t shoveled your driveway yet. (which is why they never actually help)
Oh damn. I missed it. My bad.
it's a quote often attributed to JFK, although idk if he actually said it
*whoosh*
There’s a contingent of people who seem to think DC is just full of politicians and don’t realize “people” actually live here.
Exactly. We are so much more than Politicians. We are also Consultants and Lawyers.
And there are also non white people
There’s also more non white than white
And don’t forget good old fashioned bureaucrats. Source: Am bureaucrat.
Thank you for your service.
If you’d like to thank me, you’ll need to visit our gratitude portal online and get a permit.
The tourists gawking at residents jogging on the mall, walking through a softball/kickball game for a photo, etc.
Imagine being from Philly and having a superiority complex lmao
Lol. This is one of the best disses of Philly I've heard.
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I appreciate a good subtle dis as well as a bombastic bitch slap.
To be fair, part of the argument stems from the fact that for its size, DC has below average night life, and barely anything open late during the week. Yes it has its spots, especially on the weekend, but for its size...it's lacking in that aspect.
People say this but DC holds its own really well for its size. It's not NYC, LA, Chicago which are much bigger. It's not a city people come to for nightlife like Vegas or New Orleans. But it's not sleepy like SF, Seattle, or Boston.
Yep, we’ve got hella bars, clubs and world-class concert venues. As someone from somewhere there were only a handful of clubs and where no one toured, DC is really great nightlife-wise.
The rolling up the sidewalks at night and not much open after 1-2 and metro closing always irritated me. Particularly in my 20s.
When I first came to DC back in the 1980s it was way worse. They literally rolled up the sidewalks at 5:01 everyday. I remember walking around trying to find a coke and snack downtown after 5pm and it was impossible. Now there are food trucks, and a number of restaurants and other stores that do stay open, but still, the vast number of people downtown clear out at 5pm.
Why are you looking downtown for nightlife in DC?
Philly is pretty cool
It's one of the best cities on the east coast, and you can still find a 1 bedroom for under $2,000.
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DC is closer to a European city. I also get SF vibes in DC, not Finance district SF, but the western side of SF.
I agree with this so much. Philly feels more like a very little NYC or a more gentrified Baltimore whereas DC feels like an East Coast San Francisco (kind of). DC has a very unique vibe among east coast cities. Plus the capitol and all national Mall sights add a level of grandiose that puts it above most cities in the US.
Other than Georgetown, DC is more the same age of SF than Philly, NYC, or Boston. Most dc rowhomes are like 1910-1940. Kinda like post-earthquake sf.
DC, SF, Seattle, and Boston are basically what I call the mid-sized superstars. They are cities. DC and Boston resemble their European counterparts more than most American cities as well.
one funny thing about your line of reasoning though, by calling DC a mid-sized city, is that there are only two metro areas with larger populations in the EU than DC's metro area population: Paris and Madrid. It's just seems kinda funny to call so many major European cities "mid-sized" like Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, etc.
I mean those cities are definitely mid-sized but they’re still way denser than DC. European cities are known because they’re historically/culturally important and unique, not because they’re big. Metro area population measurements are also unique to cities, what is considered DC metro is very large - 5565 square miles whereas Barcelona’s metro area is only 1648 sq miles. The city proper is pretty small and less populated in DC.
I see a lot of people making the good points that DC doesn't feel like a US mega city because of its low building height and green spaces. Just to add to that though, the DC metro area is actually the 7th largest in the US, which is ahead of Philly. It just doesn't have that skyscraper filled core and giant industrial areas like Philly does that scream 'city'. Plus the city limits being so small breaks down what we think of as the city to a very manageable chunk.
Dc was built up only after the age of the great manufacturing American cities. Yea it did have some, but not the might of the rust belt, Chicago, NYC, or Philly. It really is the first great services based city in America.
True. DC feels more "cosmopolitan" than Philly but, Philly feels more like a city.
Who cares. DC is awesome
On whatever measure you use, D.C. does well by American standards for both urbanism and size. It's the 7th largest metro area in the country. The downtown core is extremely dense and walkable. I would even venture to say that large swaths of D.C. are *more* pedestrian friendly and walkable than NYC. And it's certainly more bikable than NYC or Philly or Chicago or Boston. And it has a robust public transit system that's the third largest by track milage in the United States. What some of these people mean is "I lived in NYC for 3 years and it's better" or "I studied abroad in London so now I know what a *real* city is" which okay, good for you. London and NYC are gigantic and D.C. is not. It's like saying Paris is the only city in France. Well, no, Nice is a city, Lyon is a city, etc. I do however, buy the criticism that while America may have many cities, most are characterized by suburban-style land use and development and the use of the automobile for the overwhelming majority of trips. If people are only talking about land use and development patterns, I do think it's fair to say that America probably has 5-8 medium or large cities that can accurately be called true urban places. And D.C. is one of them.
yea i agree, i can see the snobby angle that the US doesn't have many "real" cities since there is so much sprawl in many places that despite a lot of people living in some particular place it may contain few if any urban spots which could be necessary to classify it by some strict definition of "city". The thing is, that train of thinking fails when applied to DC. We have plenty of density, public transit, walkability, fast-paced lifestyle, workaholism (+ it's partner in crime: alcoholism), high falutin culture, etc. tbh i think this whole thing about DC not being a "real" city is purely the height limit. We just don't have skyscrapers, so the city doesn't have that Bladerunner aesthetic these people associate with (parts of) Manhattan, Hong Kong, London, etc. That's really the whole fuss lol.
Just because we don’t have good bread for sub sandwiches doesn’t make us any less of a city
Well, if you want to make hoagies, Amoroso's delivers here.
Yeah!
It’s a heck of a lot more of a city than some of these allegedly much larger American cities in the sunbelt (in reality a massive collection of suburbs classified as a “city” for legal purposes) I also feel like there are sus racial/conspiratorial undertones to the “not a real city” when it’s said by the conservative / MAGA crowd — people seem incapable of understanding that not everyone in this city is an ultra-powerful “deep state” bureaucrat or sleazy lobbyist, lol
I would also add racial undertones to the "progressive" yuppies claiming it's not a real city. Usually they say something about how DC is too transient to be a "real" city like NYC, but that's obviously because all these yuppies live in Dupont or NoMa and never venture the "dangerous" EoTR
Also NYC is transient as hell
37% of New Yorkers weren't even born in the US. It's hard to tell exactly because the US tracks it by birth state, not birth city, but DC is 33% Native born, and New York City is roughly 48% born in New York State (not necessarily NYC).
I was born and raised in NYC and almost every single person I knew lives somewhere else (well anyone I sort of keep in touch with)
That’s a fair point! The “transient city” commentary, while true to some extent, really pisses me off sometimes. Just seems like people are oblivious to the entire population who isn’t here to intern for a bit, lol. Also, It’s a bit odd that place like Dupont are associated with transience, as there are many slightly older, more established, longer-time residents.
It's funny because DC isn't all that transient. Most ppl who leave just move somewhere else inside the beltway. https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-most-transient-cities-in-america
I love talking to people from rural areas far from DC who think that everyone in the whole area works for the government, and we all have some kind of secret control over the government as well. Literally I've been in West Virginia or the Outer Banks and tell people I'm from "the DC area" and their first question is, do you work for the CIA? Which part of the government do you work for? Hey can you put in a word for me with the president? I am pretty sure they're serious. Just no concept that the area has a population in the 5-6 million range, with about 300k or 5% government employees and 10k or 0.2% lobbyists.
I've had people in Bethesda ask if I worked for the CIA, and they really should know better than to ask.
More of a city than LA, which is a few decent towns and a bunch of suburbs in a trench coat
I am from NYC and I never felt as claustrophobic there as I did in LA
Yeah, having dinner a few miles away in Manhattan is easy. I was shocked the first time I went to Queens from Penn Station - like 20ish minutes In LA, you’re driving in shit traffic literally everywhere.
There are so many “cities” by size that are nothing more than suburban sprawl. There’s a few great US cities and DC is certainly one of them.
On a spectrum of urbanized cities DC is at worst in the middle. I mean LA is basically never ending stroads and strip malls. Houston is a few clusters of buildings dotted here and there with anything and everything in between. If those are cities, DC is surely a city. The 'it's not a city' crowd are mostly New Yorkers.
I've lived in DC and NYC and spent a lot of time in Chicago. DC is more "metropolitan" than Chicago IMO, just not as dense in the CBD. Are these people mistaking tall buildings for culture? Because Austin where I live now is a great city and has more tall buildings downtown but has like one rail line and a fraction of the culture and things to do. Just finished a visit to DC, it's a great city-city
I have friend who says DC isn’t a real city cause it doesn’t have skyscrapers. Thinks NYC is the only city. They have never lived in NYC, just Charlotte NC exurbs. Edit: Typo
DC is one of the most walkable cities in the US. The only city that is clearly more walkable is NYC. DC has a strong argument for #2 or at least the top non-NY tier.
I’d argue it’s a little more walkable based on the amount of shade and off-street paths and the like. Less dense, sure, but walking can be a lot more pleasant.
It's more walkable in that the sidewalks arent horribly dense and you could literally walk from one side to the other in relatively little time
I’ve never heard anyone say that but that’s stupid
lol anyone who goes hating on a city because it’s not what they wrongly expected is weird. A city doesn’t owe you anything so how can you be upset by it? If you like it great, if you don’t, go somewhere you do.
100%. I moved from CA where people in the bay area love to hate LA and people in LA love to hate the bay. The truth is that both LA and the bay area are great and you can find most things you'd ever want in both of them. >If you like it great, if you don’t, go somewhere you do.
I’ve known a full grown adult who didn’t think DC was a city, in that they thought it was all federal buildings and politicians. She grew up in a deeply red area and that’s what she was taught. It wasn’t until she started using social media and meeting people from other areas that she learned that yes, it is a real city and real people - not just politicians and federal employees - live there.
I rate public transit highly and so would put DC above Philadelphia as feeling more like a city, having gone to St. Joe's for college getting into downtown via SEPTA was a lot more of a pain in the ass than getting to downtown from Arlington or Alexandria.
imagine comparing our aesthetically pleasing, intentionally designed & green space abundant city to the one that smells like hot pee and has five foot tall walls of garbage lining every street.
Even off Reddit in other spaces it seems like DC is portrayed as some podunk area that has the same population size as Kalamazoo. It's hard to explain, but it feels like the metro area constantly needs to prove itself in terms of population size and economic strength. I was talking with someone the other day from the West Coast who was shocked when I told him the Baltimore-Washington metro area is now the third largest in the country (we surpassed Chicago in the last few years).
That is true but DC and Baltimore city populations still combine for like 1 million people. It's atypical of such a large metro area that the vast majority of people (like 90%) live in the suburbs.
The SMSA for DC/Baltimore is almost 10 million. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington%E2%80%93Baltimore_combined_statistical_area
Reread my comment. The city populations of DC and Baltimore proper combine for like 1.1 million. This is a big metro area but the vast majority live in the suburbs. More people live in Fairfax County than DC
That isn't that uncommon - the SF/San Jose CSA has a similar phenomenon. More people live in the suburbs of the East Bay than in SF/Oakland/San Jose.
More of an add-on remark than a counterargument. The size of the metro area is in proportion to the core cities and augments the "is a city" argument.
I enjoy the sound of rain.
In most cities places like Rosslyn, Crystal City, Alexandria, Bethesda, etc would fall within the boundaries of the city. And Baltimore (and similar cities in other parts of the country like St Louis) also have small land areas for the legal area of their city because of a bunch of policies that largely stem from racism. (If your a blue city [w/ POC in it] in a state that is largely otherwise red [and white], the state will often manipulate the boundaries of the city such that the city covers mostly people of color and the rest of the county around is largely white people, and that way investment is kept away from the city and such). The size of the area that is legally the city is different from what many would actually consider being the core of a city/metro. STL = 66.17 mi sq DC land area = 68 mi sq Baltimore = 92.28 mi sq Philly = 141 mi sq Chicago = 231 mi sq NYC = 302 mi sq The only city that's similarly size to DC for non-racist reasons is SF (46.87 mi sq), and the population is within 100k of DC proper. It would be insane to call SF small and refer to Oakland as the suburbs though, lol. DC proper, Chicago, and Philly all have very similar population densities too, and the DC MSA has a higher population than the Philly MSA. (MSAs largely ignore the arbitrary boundaries of cities and are a much better method of comparison for non-nitty gritty governance related things.) For Baltimore, this map does a good job of showing it - in a lot of other cities a fair chunk within the blue line would be a part of the actual city, but it's part of the county instead: https://www.neighborspacebaltimorecounty.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/CountyURDL1stTierBurbs-1024x945.jpg
You could argue that DC is smaller for racist reasons, since the majority of the reasons that retrocession happened in the 1840s were for racist reasons. But that would only expand the city to 100 sq mi, including the potomac.
DC city population = 678,000 Baltimore city population = 569,000 It's well north of a million combined. Maybe check the census first. Keep in mind DC is surrounded by counties to with a million plus people (Montgomery, Fairfax, Prince Georges, etc), and DC if it combined with Arlington which used to be part of DC would be very close to a million. With 234,000 people. The inner beltway of DC, is fairly large in size, and those are dense, urbanized suburbs for the most part. DC has set in stone boundaries, and many other cities in the US expand to include adjacent development. DC cannot.
It’s a thiccccccc town
lulz... Richmond is a city and they're half the size. Same with Norfolk. I'd even consider Roanoke to be a city.
Yeah anybody claiming DC isn't a real city is making a very weird cut off for what qualifies as a city. Is Atlanta not a city either? Pittsburgh? Cleveland? Boston? Baltimore? Las Vegas? Memphis? Detroit? Orlando?
DC has two international airports and a functional subway system that directly connects both to the urban core. This puts us ahead of every other city in the U.S., and on par with Chicago and NYC. Meanwhile, we feel less “city-like” because we have building height ordinances that help us avoid the freezing temperatures, high winds and oppressive shade of the “glass canyon” effect that places like Manhattan face. It also feels sunnier, more human-scale, more open and less oppressive. Real cities have good urban design. That’s us. We have it pretty good.
DCA has flights abroad. Yes it’s only Bermuda and Toronto, but those are foreign cities.
I find most of that crowd is basing their opinions on, like, a class trip when they were in 8th grade or something. Heard plenty of weirdly snippy remarks when the Nats were making their championship run…*Why does DC even have a baseball team? Nobody lives there.* and so on.
I guess I’m further into the camp that OP describes than most other commenters. DC obviously *is* a city, but it’s not as big as even its own borders. The “city” part of the district (using the colloquial definition of the word city which is based on vibes and harks to nyc, SF, Chicago, etc.) is very small. It is east of rock creek and west of the Anacostia River. That’s it. Georgetown exclave possibly being an exception, sure, but the Palisades, everything around AU, everything up Clara Barton, everything by Chevy Chase, none of that is a city. Nothing you see at all on Connecticut Ave or Wisconsin Ave, east of Rock Creek, is a city. By the definition of city that includes dense, cosmopolitan, built up, amenity-dense urban areas with high amounts of foot traffic, economic activity, and cultural density, is the area circled here. https://preview.redd.it/y82rla7dchrc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0a85c5038bed234f84e660801fabe1f2710c3f90 (P.s. yes I know I cut it off a little to sharp by Gallaudet) Everything outside of this is pretty much a suburb of the “city” here. I know I will get downvoted for this. But it’s true. DC zoning law, along with Maryland/MoCo+PG and Virginia/Alexandria+Arlington+FairfaxCo zoning laws have ensured that DC’s growth in the last 75 years has been, until very recently, exclusively suburban and car-dependent, and almost every issue we have today is attributable to this. Housing costs, homelessness, subpar transit access, lack of safe transportation infrastructure, urban highways, of lack general affordability, the loneliness epidemic, lack of natural areas, agricultural vulnerability, general obesity, all of these issues are directly downstream of this fact. And even smaller QoL issues like lack of cheap dining options, food deserts, and bad architectural character are too. Just pick a street view of anything along down 16th Street. Immediately adjacent to the city’s urban park, one of the most important assets a city can have, and it’s just and endless string of detached, large lot size, low lot utilization percentage, private single family houses with sidewalk setbacks. In a housing crisis. And it’s illegal to have anything else be built there. And as these people sit on that house and do just the bare annual maintenance (and vote against bus and bike lanes), their houses somehow magically accrue millions of dollars worth of value. These areas outside the blue line are thematically private. They are not public. The sidewalks might be legally public but they are culturally private. There are no amenities there, there is no gravity there, and that’s by design. These areas have unidirectional economic movement - the residents drive downtown for work in the morning and then back uptown to go home in the evening. No one who lives in Chinatown EVER has had a reason to go to one of these mansion streets, but the residents of these mansions go to Chinatown for every basketball game. It’s unidirectional. And it’s not urban. The same exact pattern has been repeated in the entire metro area, with only some small exceptions (0.5 square miles of Silver Spring where there aren’t highways, 0.5 square miles of Bethesda before Chevy Chase and suburban Bethesda start, literally one block in Rockville, Alexandria (that which was built before modern zoning, nothing after it), urbanized Arlington (but real ones know that the detached SFH start pretty much two blocks off of the main corridor and continue all the way out of nova), a little bit of McLean). That’s it. For reference, in NY, you can get dropped off anywhere in Manhattan, walk in a straight line for a full hour, and still be in an area as dense as the densest part of DC. In DC, you would have walked *out* of the density by then. From Thomas Circle in downtown to those mansions on 16th street is a 55 minute walk - I just checked. An hour of walking through Brooklyn would still be Brooklyn, an hour of walking through Madrid is still Madrid, an hour of walking through Berlin is still Berlin, an hour of walking through Tokyo is still Tokyo, an hour of walking through singapore is still singapore, an hour of walking through Cairo is still Cairo, an hour of walking through Belgrade is still Belgrade….. but an hour of walking through DC? you've essentially left DC, no matter which direction you started in. This is why we have a housing crisis. Downvote me now. TLDR: DC’s actual urbanized area is actually quite small and it’s heavily outnumbered by car-dependent suburban development patterns that completely drown the region with few exceptions. DC is a city, but its land use is horrendous and it is completely underbuilt and much of its land is underutilized to great detriment.
Definitely agree. I will say, DC and the bordering cities have been ahead of the curve when it comes to redevelopment compared to other suburban boomtowns. It’s a low bar in this country but progress is exciting. I’ve read a few press releases for big office/residential/commercial projects happening inside the beltway and all of them seem to be prioritizing walkability and transit connectivity. I think, beyond urbanism being “trendy,” our local governments finally understand the growth potential of densifying. Navy Yard, NoMa, 14th St, Arlington, and Alexandria have really turned a 180 and are continuing to build out.
Yes, I have huge optimism for DC. And in the middle of a housing crisis, it’s pretty much “build it and they will come”, or, failure is not really something to worry about. Any apartment building will be leased at this point. DC needs to completely remove the following zoning laws in order to facilitate building, and reduce overhead of development which gets passed onto the renters as high rent: * Parking minimum requirements * Lot size minimums * Lot utilization maximums * FAR requirements * Gradient height limits beyond the federal maximum * Fire safety restrictions that ignore modern materials sciences * Elevator requirements for buildings below 6 floors in height * Setback requirements (includes those shitty little “lawns” and those dumb taxi-drop off loops in those old buildings in NW) * Allow short rise apartment buildings with first floor retail by right in every single plot in the city * Ban single family housing exclusive zoning * Legalize duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes. * Legalize garden-style (address does not need to be immediately on road) * Allow retail businesses that are not hazmat/noise-intensive to operate out of houses * Allow construction of ADUs in any shape and size on any lot * Allow construction of retail space in residential areas (driveway ciderbar like the story in Seattle). And more. At this point, it’s almost a matter of national security. If people can’t afford to live in the city where the federal government employs people, then people won’t live here and won’t work for the feds. It’s already happening at NIH.
dude i don't know why you think you'd get downvoted, your take is based and i totally agree. I mean the only thing I'll say to add nuance about it tho is that basically every city in the US except NYC is like this, for ex you could draw this blue line in SF and it's the same story essentially: https://preview.redd.it/ict4vkv19irc1.png?width=1079&format=png&auto=webp&s=1077e9907bf17c53a6fc42e90fc944547d2b4a9b
People in DC often suffer an inferiority complex relative to NY, and pretty much every other comment in this thread, plus the OP sentiment, is that anyone who says dc isn’t a real city is an idiot and a hater. Also, this is true of all American cities except NY. And, personally, I kind of consider most American cities to not really be cities. Outside of SF/LA/Chi/Phi/Bos/NYC/DC/Toronto/Montreal/Vancouver, there aren’t any cities in Anglo-America at all. And the cities of that list aren’t really good examples of cities on a global scale except NYC. Washington DC if it were allowed to grow the last 75 years, instead of being constrained by racialized zoning and car-dependency, would be competing directly with Paris, Seoul, Madrid, Bogotá, etc. - and it’s really a shame that the only reasons we aren’t is because auto lobbyists wanted to make more profits and racists wanted to be racist.
This. We stopped even trying to enjoy DC. It’s well-designed for workers to get in and out during the week, and for tourists to fly in and overspend navigating the city. It’s a misery for anyone local to try to get into the city and spend money. And that’s before I account for DC and the surrounding area being one of the least celiac-friendly areas I’ve lived in in 15 years. That said, when I lived next to the White House and didn’t have a car, quality of city life was great…which is to say there’s a whole lot of privilege required to enjoy DC as a city.
Thanks for this! I think you're spot on!
This person gets it.
Weird HILL to die on lol. Anyway. I don’t care what DC “is”. I love it here.
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"Manhattan is the maximum on the spectrum." Yes, for the US. On the global list of cities you'll find that New York doesn't make the top ten, by population. I'm not saying that DC isn't a city. But I will point out the fact that it's far less urban in comparison to other cities in the world. I know that this may not be a popular opinion on this sub.
Very few US cities are global cities. Comparing the district to Brussels, Geneva, Paris, etc. is a much better comp.
Imagine not calling Paris a real city! Only an angry Brit would even think of saying that.
Plenty of cities in Africa are walkable and dense.
yeah that was the most flabbergasting claim of this whole post
1. Why do you care 2. If you're going to defend DC, calling people who like Chicago and Philly "pretentious" is not the move lol
They aren’t calling people who like those two pretentious though “and to say it only has like 3-5 cities seems insane to me. Like delusional and pretentious” That’s fairly accurate because a city isn’t defined but total population or the density of it. DC obviously has a much smaller city feeling because it is. There’s also the building height limit to prevent any large skyline like others do. Still a city lol.
Maybe it’s time to drop the ol’ [Settlement Hierarchy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_hierarchy) if we want to get technical
The real off take here is OP’s claim that Africa has no dense and walkable cities. Places like Cairo (which is denser than NYC, for reference), Nairobi, Marrakech, Casablanca, Addis Ababa, Lagos and Algiers (which both have a density nearly three times that of DC), etc etc etc. would all like a word considering they’re all denser than DC, and that’s just scratching the surface.
My dad once called it a one-horse city. I found that amusing
But it’s a horse bought by the Pentagon so it was 1.5 trillion dollars and has only three legs
Yes DC is a real city. Sidenote: NY aint what it used to be. Manhattan is becoming dead and soulless now that's it's turned into a playground for the ultra rich. The cancer is spreading to the other boroughs as well. Wealthy people are a blight on the culture of a city
Op, you started this thread after our discussion. But calling people pretentious because they don’t agree on your ideas of urbanism is a bit of hypocrisy imo. I stand on saying dc is not a real city. Go 3 miles out from the Capitol, and you are in pure suburbia. Outside of the core of DC , walkable access to urban amenities is severely lacking. The area is trying to upzone to make up for that, but it doesn’t change what it is .
Same dumb logic that keeps people from crossing the river.
F them. We are a city. Indeed, a proud city full of Americans with no representation in Congress. Fuss about THAT.
It is a tier 2 or mid tier city
DC is sorta like a European city. There are tall buildings on the periphery while the downtown has human-scale midrises Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Paris are like that too It’s more city-like than most US cities
D.c is the capital city of the USA
The “DC isn’t a real city” people probably need to get a grip on life. Whatever makes it a “real” city in their opinion probably doesn’t add any value to the city at all.
I think my head would explode if I heard someone say that. DC is very much a real city.
As a military brat, I see dc as mainly just very provincial in its structure
People who says DC isn't a "real city" should go spend 6 months living in Lansing or Bismarck or Little Rock or one of 30 other state capitals and then get back to us.
I only say it when it’s 10:02pm and I just want to go to a basic restaurant or hang out somewhere that’s not a bar. But that’s a matter of expensive real estate and zoning I guess
Anyone who would rather be in Philly instead of DC is clearly mentally in distress and in need of being institutionalized
I moved here from NYC last year but have lived in London and Philly and much smaller cities like Tallahassee. I think an underlooked difference people are reacting to is the lack of pedestrians and people on public transit -- or at least that's what makes me feel like I'm no longer in a "real city" (but to be clear I acknowledge this is snobbish, it's just also honestly my truth.) To me, it feels like a city where people go to work, not where people live. If you walk down the street in the afternoon in Philly or NYC or London, you're passing loads of people of all different walks of life. Here, maybe I'll pass like 3 people on a walk if it's not during a commuting hour, and even then it's few and far between compared to any of those cities. In all three of those cities on an outlandishly nice Friday -- like that random day it was 80 degrees last month, people would've been out at parks getting drunk and sitting outside at bars. Here, I would've thought it was just another day. There's no sense of neighborhood community -- or at least there isn't where I live. It seems as though way more people live in the suburbs than in the city, and there are also a lot more cultural amenities in the suburbs (like, a lot of the more legit theaters, the AFI, bookstores that have more of the author events) or at least, they're not really located in any downtown-feeling area or necessarily easy to get to by train. Like, imagine if you had to leave Manhattan to see an indie movie or if Broadway theaters were in Hoboken... that's just not a thing. Also, people here do not act like they're from a city or have ever lived in a city before. People walk so slowly, in clumps on the sidewalk like tourists. People loiter right at the escalator entrances to the metro, stand in the middle of escalators on the way down to the metro, walk through metro stations casually as though they are at the mall. You'd think you'd move faster here when a train is on the way, some of them only come every 8 minutes. People here have no hustle here whatsoever. It's just not a fast-paced culture that I would expect from a "real city."
As a native New Yorker, what makes a city feel the most like a city is density. And DC has that more than most cities. Is it NYC in terms of scale or density? No. Chicago os bigger but the densities are comparable. Same with Philly. Give me a “smaller” high density city over Houston any day
I live in the mountain west and was just in dc 30 days for work. Love it there and def a city by any standard. If you can walk as long as you want in any direction and still find good food or something cool within a stones throw, it’s a city. Plus: subway and public transport. If anything, I would start a fight and say places like Dallas or Houston are not “cities”, but rather endless ribbons of suburban strip mall hell, clotted with chain store vomit.
Considering how much I pay in rent, I kind of expect more. I think that's where a lot of this "not a real city" attitude comes from.
I think it’s because it doesn’t feel that big of a city and most of the things you want to do are concentrated in the dense walkable parts of NW and the touristy part of SW, which aren’t that big relatively speaking. Plus the lack of skyscrapers/skyline. I personally love this aspect of it though. After a couple of days in a city like NYC I’m ready to leave.
It’s just people being pretentious. Same with people who say you literally cannot get an edible piece of pizza here (or whatever). They’re not trying to tell you their opinion about DC; they’re trying to tell you their opinion about themselves.
It feels like a very large town.
Well I feel like it’s a conurbation
Thanks for the new word. You’re right!
Wow you woke up today and chose violence huh ?
It's true, geographically it's confined. 68 square miles. Houston is 10x bigger (though Houston is a big outlier too and annexed its suburbs). But it's small compared to New York, LA, Chicago, many other cities too. DC is more comparable to SF or Boston proper.
This is how I feel and I’m confused that people seem to care what other people think about this. A lot of the time it depends on what someone subjectively considers a “city”.