Pet Peeve - City Population Rankings
This just in from the City Paper - Phoenix is about to overtake Philadelphia as the fifth largest city in America.
This just in from Phillyville - ranking cities by population is retarded and anyone who pays any credence to these figures deserves to be bopped on the head.
In prose characteristic of its kiddie-pool brand of journalism, City Paper reports:
Twenty-five years later, we remain on the verge of being overtaken again. This time, by Phoenix. According to the latest Census estimates, as of July 1, 2005 (I read these in Brett Mandel's must-read Philadelphia Forward mailing list), we're holding somewhat steady at 1,463,281 residents, while Phoenix has 1,461,575.
The author goes on to get his panties all twisted up over "losing residents to the 'burbs and other cities because an increasing number of people think life's better lived elsewhere, for a variety of reasons." Yeah, well have you been to southwest Philly recently? I'd move to Delaware if I lived down the street from that place.
And guess what, the City of Phoenix also has a total land area of 475.1 square miles. Philadelphia has a total land area of 146.2 square miles. In other words, Phoenix has 325% more land area than Philadelphia. Hell, if Philly went ahead and annexed another 328.9 square miles of land, I'm sure we could add a million or so residents to our tally.
Montgomery County used to be part of Philadelphia. Why not just annex all of that land? Hell, how do you think Phoenix got to be a grand total of 475.1 square miles? Add MontCo's 750K+ residents to the mix and Philly's back over the 2,000,000 mark.
Why stop there? Let's just annex Wilmington, secede from the Commonwealth and become our own damn state. Maybe then we could finally get some Democrats elected to the Senate around these parts.
Hmmm, and not to mention with all the added tax revenue, Philly could prolly drop the damn BPT. I'm thinking Phoenix may be on to something here...
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