Yep, Philly is on a tidal estuary and Pittsburgh is at the headwaters of the Mississippi. It's why, while not small, you don't see 100k+ cities on the Susquehanna, it's not navigable.
Everytime I crossed the susquehanna I would think how much differently Harrisburg and downriver towns would have developed had the Susquehanna been navigable
The Susquehanna valley - to include Selinsgrove, Sunbury and Northumberland, are three of my favorite little towns in America. I encountered them while exploring the surroundings of Bloomsburg where my then girlfriend was attending college. I'm honestly glad the rivers aren't navigable. The towns would all surely be much different
Sunbury and Northumberland have some fascinating history.
Chief Shikellamy, The Big Runaway, Fort Augusta, Joseph Priestley, Thomas Edison, The Hermit of Blue Hill, the Enola Gay...
https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-hermit-of-blue-hill-eccentric-john.html?m=1
Because we have never expanded municipal boundaries and so other than Philadelphia (and to some extent Pittsburgh) which annexed suburbs, our cities are physically tiny.
Look at Columbus, OH if you want to see the reverse.
Because they’re mostly in Philadelphia which is the 6th most populated city in the country.
Beyond that we have a lot of very densely populated suburbs and urban sprawl not within actual city limits.
And agriculture.
Look at surrounding counties though. 600,000 plus people in all of them and the largest “cities” which are generally actually townships are 40,000 to 80,000 at most. If townships/municipalities combined, a city in Delco, Bucks, Montgomery, etc would easily be over 100,000.
Edit: clarifications
Hell, if Reading "did a Philadelphia" and took over the entire county, Reading would be 430,000 strong. Remember, in the [1790 US Census](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1790_United_States_census#City_rankings), 3 of the top 20 largest cities in the country were within Philadelphia. More people live in Reading today than live in Center City Philly.
The "city" is old and all of the development is in the suburbs. and we don't have a [transit system](https://i.imgur.com/xwL3xG3.jpg) that can support density. I wish that could change, but politics mean that people want the city to fail.
Reading gets New York City Federal COLA.
I was interested in your position on the density of Center City. A quick search said it's the second most dense for center city area in the USA. So the fact is a) it's not common for there to be a ton of density in the center part of a major city and b) the *entirety of Reading* is being compared to one neighborhood which is of above average density. Kind of apples and oranges.
This is a super weird stand to take for a bunch of reasons. It's also not really right. Philadelphia city consolidated with the rest of the county in 1854. At the time it had about 500k people, growing to a peak a bit over 2M post ww2. It's got a bit over 1.5M now. Philadelphia city/county as a whole is denser than Reading city, and 25 times as dense as Berks Co. It wouldn't be a comparable consolidation.
The 4 middle Center City zip codes do have less people than Reading but it's barely over 2 square miles. Center City and the immediately surrounding neighborhoods have been the fastest growing parts of the city over the last 25 years.
That Allegheny county vs one city. Pittsburgh’s population is about 300k. Philadelphia is also its own county because of the size. It’s not a slight on Pittsburgh, it’s just a smaller city.
The city being merged with the county isn't necessarily a function of size, its more of just a local resident/politician preference. Pittsburgh and Allegheny County could easily merge, it's just that the local neighborhoods in Allegheny have historically enjoyed their autonomy as "independent" incorporated places.
Baltimore has a similar issue: Basically, the outlying (and wealthy, and spacious) areas prevented expansion of the city limits.
I've never understood the point of people claiming the "metro area" as a matter of boosting their size debate when it is so clear the surrounding area never wanted to be lumped into the city in any other way to begin with.
Old City was the original Philadelphia. During it's early height, it was the second largest city in the British empire, FFS. It expanded rapidly and enveloped Germantown, which predated it, and Manayunk, both to the northwest.
Pittsburgh was a fort, an outpost. It's geographically and topographically limited because it was never meant to be a large, industrial port city. It started as a garrison. It's gorgeous, don't get wrong, and I love it (going in July for the Phillies game), but there's not really much more to say about it. Geography, topography, and timing are basically everything. 🤷🏼♂️
The “metro area“ concept is actually very useful. For example, knowing the size of a metro area should help airlines decide how many flights and what size planes to fly into a regional airport. Philadelphia airport does not serve just the city of Philadelphia, it serves the metro area, which includes South Jersey, northern Delaware, and all the PA counties around Philadelphia. The “metro area“ concept also informs advertisers with regard to radio & television ad purchases to find out how many viewers are actually being served by a station.
Pittsburgh metro is 2m people. If you take Montgomery, Bucks, Chester and Delaware County, it's 2.5m people. Then you have Philly's 1.5m on top of that. And then you can add in Wilmington and South Jersey and you're up to 6.5m.
Pittsburgh area is way smaller.
We should really think of each "city" as the metro area. This is the area that works as a single economic market, where people commute and call between. It reflects the reality of how people live.
By this metric we have 17 cities with populations of more than 100,000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_metropolitan_areas
Basically all of New Jersey is just a suburb of Philadelphia or New York city by this metric - which is also accurate, IMO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_areas_of_New_Jersey
Sure, tax money in general gets disbursed across the entire state, in theory, so you are not entirely incorrect. But you can't imply philly is funding the rest of the state. Most tax revenue comes from sales tax, personal income tax, and corporate tax.
https://www.media.pa.gov/Pages/Revenue-Details.aspx?newsid=439
Edit. By county on personal income tax
https://www.revenue.pa.gov/News%20and%20Statistics/ReportsStats/PIT/Pages/default.aspx
Philly metro is vastly different than philly proper. Poster said philly, which is grossly inaccurate to say rest of state benefits from philly. Factor in bucks, montgomery, Delco, and chester county and it starts to look a little different...
The Philadelphia suburbs (bucks, Montgomery, Delco, and chester) themselves benefit from the city of Philadelphia. These areas would not be as heavily populated nor as affluent if the city of Philadelphia did not exist. Hence, the economic impact generated by those areas are still attributable to Philadelphia. That economic impact powers the rest of the state.
There is a reason why Philadelphia is the only classified first class city in the state. People can talk about how much they hate Philadelphia all they want. But the fact is, Pennsylvania would be Mississippi without it.
Philly’s the anchor for the metro, though. The org I work for is about 1,000 people, based in Philly but drawing workers from across southeast PA and South Jersey — you can’t really separate out the city from that, and the suburbs don’t exist without the economic engine that is Philly.
Judging by the support for our sports teams I don’t think the 5 million+ that live in the Philly metro (the counties surrounding the city proper) “hate Philly.” The fact of the matter is that southeast PA is the most economically developed region of the entire state. Good schools, some of the best healthcare in the country, and generally a good place to raise a family. I’ve been all over the state and, while it has certain advantages and can certainly be beautiful, many, many areas are just light-years behind in terms of economic development.
>mostly in Philadelphia
What definitely of "mostly" are you using here? Philadelphia county has 1.6 million people. PA has over 12 million total. The vast majority of Pennsylvanians don't live in Philly.
>Beyond that we have a lot of very densely populated suburbs
I think you forgot about Allegheny county, which has 1.2 million people; not too far off from Philadelphia county. If you go by Metro area you'll see a bigger gap, but Pittsburgh Metro is still something like 40% the size of Philly Metro. Obviously smaller, but only by 2-2.5x.
So apply your comment to me to the question OP asked.
I’m not forgetting anyone by pointing out PA has a HUGE city, then lots of agricultural land and urban sprawl around other population centers that aren’t classified as cities.
There are a lot of historical and geographical reasons … but first and foremost comparing city populations across states is not a good idea as city boundaries vary from area to area due to state laws and many many other differences. A Census definition such as MSA is going to be more consistent across the nation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area
Came to point this out. Pennsylvania has a history of forming small municipalities, not annexing land to form mega municipal corporations.
For example, Harrisburg at 50,000 people is the largest municipality in the MSA of 600,000. The MSA is larger than Portland ME, Spokane WA or Reno, NV, but it gets lost in between the other populous areas of the East Coast.
That's the funny thing about Reading. It was founded because it was a flat area on the banks of the Schuylkill. and for 100 years, the city never extended north past Buttonwood Street & the hills. Other than the [Reading Railroad](https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3824rm.gla00187/?sp=43&r=-0.47,-0.04,1.94,0.805,0) & [Albright](https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3824rm.gla00187/?sp=45&r=-0.377,0,1.753,0.728,0), it was all wilderness compared to [the city](https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3824rm.gla00187/?sp=22&r=-0.373,0,1.747,0.725,0).
Let's compare ourselves to another state: Texas. I used to live in San Antonio. It's in Bexar county. And it's a big city. But it has no suburbs. Once you're outside city limits, and even before getting outside city limits, it turns to desert really fast. So it's entirely contained in Bexar county, and with the exception of some enclaves entirely enclosed in the city, there's basically nothing else in the county.
Now let's look at Philadelphia. Philly was around since before the revolution - in fact it was the biggest city at the time of the revolution, bigger than New York or Boston. But nowadays the population of people that work in Philly is largely outside the city. The suburbs surrounding it extends for about three or four counties in every direction. That's all people who live outside city and county limits - limits that don't even include the entire urban core - and are a lot more dense than the empty Texas desert.
Has mostly to do with the local form of government and some legislation passed in the 70’s I believe that made it almost impossible for one municipality to annex another. PA is made up of mainly townships, boroughs, and class 3 cities. Look at a map of Allentown for instance and you can see the weird boundaries that were historic annexes of surrounding townships into the city and where they were never completed. So short answer… townships.
Allegheny County alone has *130* municipalities. It’s every bit as efficient as you’d imagine. Yet every one is a sacred rice bowl.
Also, almost all of those people will say they’re “from Pittsburgh” the moment they leave the state.
To be fair, hardly anyone outside of Pennsylvania will recognize any towns on the western side between Erie and Pittsburgh. "The Oil Heritage Region" only rings a bell for history nerds.
"Is that near Pittsburgh?"
"Well, it's closer to Erie."
"Is that near Pittsburgh?"
"Sure, whatever, I'm from Pittsburgh."
I live near York and when people ask …”what city is that near , Pittsburgh or Philadelphia ?” I say Baltimore and watch their limited grasp of geography implode in their brain. But yes I end up saying closer to Philly
Totally true. I suppose my badly worded point was just that the people in power in those zillions of boroughs and townships go utterly batshit at the very hint of mergers (let alone annexations), no matter how sound the business case.
Back in the day on Facebook, I was a member of a group called “I live in…it’s near Gettysburg.” And it was definitely how I phrased things at times talking to people. Harrisburg was obviously a good answer too, but nearly 100% of people have heard of Gettysburg, even if they don’t know where it’s located. So it’s not just people from the cities who do that!
They say they’re from Pittsburgh within the state, too. There is culturally no difference between someone from Pittsburgh and someone from Braddock.
Hell, the latter is a 15 minute drive to downtown Pittsburgh.
This is 100% the answer. It has more to do with our forms of government than anything else. Erie has been "shrinking" in population, while the surrounding townships have been increasing in population over the same years. It is very difficult for local bodies to join together. Our counties are also much weaker than in many states.
I believe that Allentown's Dept of Health has jurisdictional power over both the county and state regulations. Bucks county health also has jurisdictional power over the state
Municipalities.
We have a ton of them.
Only Texas and Illinois have more individual municipalities than we do.
For example if Havertown and Upper Darby were a single municipality the population would be 130k, but they aren't so they are both below.
If you look at the South Central PA Designated Market Area (Harrisburg, Lancaster, York, Carlisle, Lebanon, Gettysburg) it is the 43 largest TV market in the country ahead of Oklahoma City, New Orleans, and Memphis.
If you start merging municipalities you can get Harrisburg Erie Reading Scranton and Bethlehem (independent of Allentown) all above 100k pretty easily.
Maybe this state does have lots of municipalities that spreads population numbers away from core cities. But Im not actually sure how unique this situation is compared to other states
Cities in PA by land area are very small. Philly is the biggest because it encompasses Philadelphia County but is still only 134 sq miles. But St. Mary’s is the 2nd largest by area, but is still only 100 sq mi. If you look at cities in the sun belt, they are like 600 sq miles just because they absorbed every surrounding municipality. That legislation in the 70’s just made it impossible to annex municipalities. So cities that appear to be shrinking just have people moving to surrounding communities that are sometimes still within a city’s zip code. If you had townships actually considered to be part of a city based on zip, you’d have a lot over 100,000
Luzerne and Lackawanna counties are over half a million combined. Scranton and Wilkes-Barre would probably exceed a 100k each if they annexed the surrounding municipalities.
My school district is basically the boundaries for the local "community" as it is in most semi-rural areas. The district is about the size of Brooklyn, but it has only ~30,000 people. We have 8 governments. 3 boroughs (two of which touch each other) and 5 townships. There is no way anything can get done with 8 governments in one little community.
Only way roads get fixed around here is when the neighboring townships get their road crews together to tackle a project. At that point just have county roads like most of our neighbors.
Sullivan County, Ricketts Glen, and Worlds End disagree with you. Ya gotta get out man! Shake off this lowly slog of yours and get out into the wonderful world, not one of cynicism and fear, but of wonder!
I basically grew up in Sullivan county. Passing all of the slag heaps to get there on Routes 61 & 42. Through postcard worth towns like Centralia & Unityville.
It’s all about water. Pennsylvania is an “old” state that was developed in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Waterways were key to transportation, making Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia logical choices for development. Much of the state was and still is agrarian, hence more towns and villages rather than metropolitan areas.
Scranton had a population of about 143,000 in 1930 at its height but is now about 76,000. The decline of coal mining and manufacturing in the city was the biggest factor. Another is the growth of the suburbs, especially as roads were more developed, like Route 6 and the highways.
Lancaster is flat at 60k for the past ten years, the metro area around it grows instead. They won’t add to the city, they won’t take away from the quarry or farmland directly around the city.
Yeah, chicken and egg there really. Bylaw affirms what they would have done to begin with. Dont get me wrong, I love it here because of the natural beauty. But it answers OPs question.
That's an issue for local zoning. Lancaster is growing yes but is the citizenry elect councilmen/women and they are of the view that we don't want dense settlement it won't occur. We lived in a township to the west of Lancaster which had no water service, and the only sewer service was in one development with lots ranging from 1/2 to 1+ acre, every house had to be connected to the sewer system but every house had its own well. Other than that development all other homes and the small # of businesses all had septic. There was a strictly enforced zoning ... and became the issue in an election when one township supervisor decided to develop his property into a funeral home and wouldn't recuse himself from voting on the zoning variance authorization. The corrupt supervisor died before the final vote and the vote was deferred until a new supervisor could be elected. A crony if the corrupt supervisor qualified along with one other person, for the office in a special election. Enough people in the township learned about the crony's intent to vote for the approval that the other person running, who was not as well known or "connected" won, and the authority to open the property as a funeral home was denied. (The deceased supervisor had already built out the property with a function room, side rooms all would be appropriate for a funeral home). Before the vote a public hearing was held, and comments were 2 hrs, all but two people spoke against the approval for the operation as a funeral home. (The hearing for public comment was officially scheduled for 30 minutes.) That's the good thing about PA local governments...the ability for the local citizenry to make their wishes known.
Low density = Low tax base.
Low density growth is unsustainable and the root of most of our financial problems. (including potholes)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0)
Pennsylvania has a large number of small political divisions that operate as independent entities. Other places, a city is incorporated over a larger area. As an older state, Pennsylvania was chopped up in the horse and buggy days. There is little attempt (none?) to combine these redundant suburbs into the small cities they surround.
About a century ago, cities started to extend their limits to include the smaller towns that were on their borders. It made sense, public services could be consolidated. In the case of Pittsburgh, the smaller towns resisted this process. There is actually a small town, Mt Oliver, that is completely within the Pittsburgh city limits. Recently, there has been some talk of Homestead merging with the city, but the merger keeps getting delayed.
So a lot of other states the city grows and absorbs the suburbs or neighboring towns. Our government is setup to resist that so the actual cities can’t grow with the population.
PA doesn’t have laws for municipal consolidation, so many of our mid-sized cities are spread out across several municipalities in a way which limits their population numbers.
NJ, NY, CA have coastline.
PA has the Schuykill, the Lehigh and the Ohio/Allegheny merge to build cities. on. Erie is on the lake, but there are SO many cities on the Great Lakes, it is hard to compete with Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo on that one...even though it is named AFTER Erie (or the town is named after the lake.
One of the only cities in America to be built away from big water is Atlanta...a railroad town (now an airport hub).
Lakes, rivers and oceans have a lot to do with it. PA is mostly rural because of farming and coal...that is why rural PA is so backwards...
Suburbs/urban sprawl and municipal lines have a lot to do with this.
PA has 17 "[metropolitan areas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_metropolitan_areas)" with a population of over 100,000.
The Scranton/Wilkes Barre metropolitan area is about half a million, but no individual municipality reaches 100,000.
Montgomery County is home to more than a million people, but is not "a city."
(New York City is sort of the flip side of this. It counts as one large city in New York state because might have counted as several if the boroughs were governed independently.)
The second largest city in Pennsylvania is St. Marys in Elk County at 99 square miles, but it only has a population of 12,738. Dushore Pennsylvania is home to Sullivan County's only traffic light & it's Sullivan County's largest Borough @ just under 1 square mile. It's also NOT Sullivan County's seat. That's Laporte.
Pennsylvania is very, very rural once you're outside of the turnpike footprint.
Reading and Erie are very close to 100k. Reading was over 100k in 1950 but the city lost population until the 90s and is increasing again. Erie was above 100k at the 2010 census but lost population. The metro areas are larger than 100k. But like others have said, it has to do with navigable rivers, etc.
Cities tend to grow where transportation & resources coincide. This usually means coasts with natural harbors or rivers. In the U.S., that also sometimes means convenient locations for railroads or highways, canals, or the like. Having natural resources nearby (timber, coal, ore, or arable land) also doesn't hurt.
For cities to get really huge, the transportation factors facilitating trade have to be enormous. Pittsburgh's and Philadelphia's rivers do that.
Also the vast middle of the state is all mountains anyway.
Don't forget a lot of cities have lost population since they peaked (people moving to where there are jobs).
[https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1920/bulletins/demographics/population-pa-number-of-inhabitants.pdf](https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1920/bulletins/demographics/population-pa-number-of-inhabitants.pdf)
Montgomery County, one of the Philly ring counties/suburbs has 860,000 people living in it alone. Add in Chester, Bucks, and DelCo, and you're probably pushing 2mil in the suburbs. We don't need no stinkin' 100,000 plus cities.
Pennsylvania has a large rural population scattered across the state, whereas other heavily-populated States have most of their population in large metro areas. I think the rural population of PA is something like 50%, which is really surprising.
As has been stated elsewhere in the comments: it is because PA's municipalities have a bias to NOT consolidate. Every square inch of land in the Commonwealth is already incorporated and since we like local control and annexing in PA legally requires consent, annexation is rare.
The problem is that this isn't how most of the country works. But we humans build wherever we build. For instance: you can drive through MULTIPLE municipalities in York and if you aren't paying attention to the white signs with blue type you wouldn't know you changed municipalities.
(Also, search Mount Oliver, PA and notice what singular municipality borders it.)
If you look at the US Census's Metropolitan Statistical Areas, you will find that PA has 17 that have more than 100,000 people, 8 of which have more than 400,000 people.
The oddity is that people identify more with their municipality which, in some cases, are more like the "neighborhoods" in cities (think the neighborhoods of New York, London, and Tokyo). This is amplified by Pennsylvania's many school districts, one of the main ways to identify an area, are fiercely independent of each other, as well as the preserved farmland and forests that can create a visual separation even if there isn't an economic separation.
I’m addition to the water reasons. The very size is a relatively important part. What is the necessity of cramming a bunch of people into huge cities when you have so much space? There isn’t. Look at Montana. Look at Colorado. Look at Maine. Big doesn’t mean big cities. Big means big space, less need for big cities if there’s plenty of space around towns to spread out into.
Almost 50% of the population lives in the Philly metro area. Almost 20% in the Pittsburgh metro area. It is a bit tricky because Philly metro includes other states. But it gives you a good idea. There just isn't much of anything in the middle. There was coal. That's basically dead. It isn't uncommon. Go check out anywhere in Illinois that isn't the Chicago area. 6th most populous state, 25th in land area. Mostly empty. The Chicago metro area is 75% of the state population. Although some of that is in Indiana, but not a lot.
It’s actually one of the things I like about Pennsylvania. Unlike other states where you have desolate, desolate, desolate CITY! desolate, desolate, desolate CITY!, in PA you have a nice spread-out population.
Though it occurs to me that if we had just one or two more 250K cities, we would probably be a solid blue state.
OP specified that the parameters of their search were cities of more than 100,000 residents.
You claimed that Pennsylvania only had two cities that met the criteria OP set. I informed you that Allentown also meets said criteria.
Are you saying that Allentown doesn’t have 100,000 residents?
Waterway access is a huge indicator of where cities were formed.
Yep, Philly is on a tidal estuary and Pittsburgh is at the headwaters of the Mississippi. It's why, while not small, you don't see 100k+ cities on the Susquehanna, it's not navigable.
Everytime I crossed the susquehanna I would think how much differently Harrisburg and downriver towns would have developed had the Susquehanna been navigable
The Susquehanna valley - to include Selinsgrove, Sunbury and Northumberland, are three of my favorite little towns in America. I encountered them while exploring the surroundings of Bloomsburg where my then girlfriend was attending college. I'm honestly glad the rivers aren't navigable. The towns would all surely be much different
Sunbury and Northumberland have some fascinating history. Chief Shikellamy, The Big Runaway, Fort Augusta, Joseph Priestley, Thomas Edison, The Hermit of Blue Hill, the Enola Gay... https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-hermit-of-blue-hill-eccentric-john.html?m=1
What is the Enola Gays connection to PA?
The navigator, Theodore Van Kirk, was from Northumberland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Van_Kirk
Oh that's neat I didn't know that
Tell me about it. Where I come from rivers and creeks are dozens or hundreds of feet deep. Up here you can literally walk across them.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_River
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😂😂
You don’t have the Great Lakes for a Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse
Uh . Erie is on a Great Lake . *Lake Erie*
That doesn’t count, it’s more like a good lake, not quite great.
Ha
It's not so much the Great Lakes themselves but the Erie Canal that accounts for Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany.
\*Indianapolis has entered the chat\*
Denver would like a word too.
Because we have never expanded municipal boundaries and so other than Philadelphia (and to some extent Pittsburgh) which annexed suburbs, our cities are physically tiny. Look at Columbus, OH if you want to see the reverse.
Bingo. Need to look at MSA population not just the core city.
>Why Are There Ony 3 Cities With Over 100,000 People? four, counting Beaver Stadium on game day
Or twice a year when Pocono has a race
Pocono holds 76,000 people.
100 points to John\_EightThirtyTwo
Because they’re mostly in Philadelphia which is the 6th most populated city in the country. Beyond that we have a lot of very densely populated suburbs and urban sprawl not within actual city limits. And agriculture.
Look at surrounding counties though. 600,000 plus people in all of them and the largest “cities” which are generally actually townships are 40,000 to 80,000 at most. If townships/municipalities combined, a city in Delco, Bucks, Montgomery, etc would easily be over 100,000. Edit: clarifications
Yes alot of Pa. is rural too with lots of farming 😃
Moo motherfucker. Lol
Hell, if Reading "did a Philadelphia" and took over the entire county, Reading would be 430,000 strong. Remember, in the [1790 US Census](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1790_United_States_census#City_rankings), 3 of the top 20 largest cities in the country were within Philadelphia. More people live in Reading today than live in Center City Philly. The "city" is old and all of the development is in the suburbs. and we don't have a [transit system](https://i.imgur.com/xwL3xG3.jpg) that can support density. I wish that could change, but politics mean that people want the city to fail.
Reading gets New York City Federal COLA. I was interested in your position on the density of Center City. A quick search said it's the second most dense for center city area in the USA. So the fact is a) it's not common for there to be a ton of density in the center part of a major city and b) the *entirety of Reading* is being compared to one neighborhood which is of above average density. Kind of apples and oranges.
Not really. Reading didn't swallow up the entire county. Use the 1790 borders and my point stands.
Lol why would use anything from 1790...?
Historical reference.... Philadelphia didn't gain people. It gained land.
This is a super weird stand to take for a bunch of reasons. It's also not really right. Philadelphia city consolidated with the rest of the county in 1854. At the time it had about 500k people, growing to a peak a bit over 2M post ww2. It's got a bit over 1.5M now. Philadelphia city/county as a whole is denser than Reading city, and 25 times as dense as Berks Co. It wouldn't be a comparable consolidation. The 4 middle Center City zip codes do have less people than Reading but it's barely over 2 square miles. Center City and the immediately surrounding neighborhoods have been the fastest growing parts of the city over the last 25 years.
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That was a really interesting link you provided. Thank you.
You’ve heard of Pittsburgh, right?
The second largest city in PA with 1/5 the population of Philadelphia? Yeah… did my comment lead you to believe I’d forgotten about it?
Population of Allegheny County is 1.2 million.
That Allegheny county vs one city. Pittsburgh’s population is about 300k. Philadelphia is also its own county because of the size. It’s not a slight on Pittsburgh, it’s just a smaller city.
The city being merged with the county isn't necessarily a function of size, its more of just a local resident/politician preference. Pittsburgh and Allegheny County could easily merge, it's just that the local neighborhoods in Allegheny have historically enjoyed their autonomy as "independent" incorporated places.
Baltimore has a similar issue: Basically, the outlying (and wealthy, and spacious) areas prevented expansion of the city limits. I've never understood the point of people claiming the "metro area" as a matter of boosting their size debate when it is so clear the surrounding area never wanted to be lumped into the city in any other way to begin with. Old City was the original Philadelphia. During it's early height, it was the second largest city in the British empire, FFS. It expanded rapidly and enveloped Germantown, which predated it, and Manayunk, both to the northwest. Pittsburgh was a fort, an outpost. It's geographically and topographically limited because it was never meant to be a large, industrial port city. It started as a garrison. It's gorgeous, don't get wrong, and I love it (going in July for the Phillies game), but there's not really much more to say about it. Geography, topography, and timing are basically everything. 🤷🏼♂️
The “metro area“ concept is actually very useful. For example, knowing the size of a metro area should help airlines decide how many flights and what size planes to fly into a regional airport. Philadelphia airport does not serve just the city of Philadelphia, it serves the metro area, which includes South Jersey, northern Delaware, and all the PA counties around Philadelphia. The “metro area“ concept also informs advertisers with regard to radio & television ad purchases to find out how many viewers are actually being served by a station.
So did the local neighborhoods in Philadelphia up until 1854.
The city proper, yes. But the greater Pittsburgh area is not.
Pittsburgh metro is 2m people. If you take Montgomery, Bucks, Chester and Delaware County, it's 2.5m people. Then you have Philly's 1.5m on top of that. And then you can add in Wilmington and South Jersey and you're up to 6.5m. Pittsburgh area is way smaller.
Yeah people from the western half of the state really don't understand how large and dense the area of Philadelphia is. Well stated.
Love when people from Pittsburgh have to count their county to boost their numbers. Such a desperate move.
Enjoy your higher population, crime rate, homeless problem, housing costs, and puzzlingly dirty streets. I’m real jealous.
K
Not really.
We should really think of each "city" as the metro area. This is the area that works as a single economic market, where people commute and call between. It reflects the reality of how people live. By this metric we have 17 cities with populations of more than 100,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_metropolitan_areas Basically all of New Jersey is just a suburb of Philadelphia or New York city by this metric - which is also accurate, IMO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_areas_of_New_Jersey
PA has 13 million people. 1.5 million in Philadelphia, and 11.5 million people who hate Philadelphia.
11.5 million people who love spending the tax money that Philadelphia sends to Harrisburg.
Sure, tax money in general gets disbursed across the entire state, in theory, so you are not entirely incorrect. But you can't imply philly is funding the rest of the state. Most tax revenue comes from sales tax, personal income tax, and corporate tax. https://www.media.pa.gov/Pages/Revenue-Details.aspx?newsid=439 Edit. By county on personal income tax https://www.revenue.pa.gov/News%20and%20Statistics/ReportsStats/PIT/Pages/default.aspx
The Philly metro area supports a ton of jobs that account for a sizable chunk of the latter two.
Philly metro is vastly different than philly proper. Poster said philly, which is grossly inaccurate to say rest of state benefits from philly. Factor in bucks, montgomery, Delco, and chester county and it starts to look a little different...
The Philadelphia suburbs (bucks, Montgomery, Delco, and chester) themselves benefit from the city of Philadelphia. These areas would not be as heavily populated nor as affluent if the city of Philadelphia did not exist. Hence, the economic impact generated by those areas are still attributable to Philadelphia. That economic impact powers the rest of the state. There is a reason why Philadelphia is the only classified first class city in the state. People can talk about how much they hate Philadelphia all they want. But the fact is, Pennsylvania would be Mississippi without it.
That is absolutely a FACT
Philly’s the anchor for the metro, though. The org I work for is about 1,000 people, based in Philly but drawing workers from across southeast PA and South Jersey — you can’t really separate out the city from that, and the suburbs don’t exist without the economic engine that is Philly.
Philly isn’t funding the whole state, but Chester, Montgomery, and Bucks are doing most of the heavy lifting there
Judging by the support for our sports teams I don’t think the 5 million+ that live in the Philly metro (the counties surrounding the city proper) “hate Philly.” The fact of the matter is that southeast PA is the most economically developed region of the entire state. Good schools, some of the best healthcare in the country, and generally a good place to raise a family. I’ve been all over the state and, while it has certain advantages and can certainly be beautiful, many, many areas are just light-years behind in terms of economic development.
>mostly in Philadelphia What definitely of "mostly" are you using here? Philadelphia county has 1.6 million people. PA has over 12 million total. The vast majority of Pennsylvanians don't live in Philly. >Beyond that we have a lot of very densely populated suburbs I think you forgot about Allegheny county, which has 1.2 million people; not too far off from Philadelphia county. If you go by Metro area you'll see a bigger gap, but Pittsburgh Metro is still something like 40% the size of Philly Metro. Obviously smaller, but only by 2-2.5x.
So apply your comment to me to the question OP asked. I’m not forgetting anyone by pointing out PA has a HUGE city, then lots of agricultural land and urban sprawl around other population centers that aren’t classified as cities.
There are a lot of historical and geographical reasons … but first and foremost comparing city populations across states is not a good idea as city boundaries vary from area to area due to state laws and many many other differences. A Census definition such as MSA is going to be more consistent across the nation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area
Came to point this out. Pennsylvania has a history of forming small municipalities, not annexing land to form mega municipal corporations. For example, Harrisburg at 50,000 people is the largest municipality in the MSA of 600,000. The MSA is larger than Portland ME, Spokane WA or Reno, NV, but it gets lost in between the other populous areas of the East Coast.
Two cities in the same state like how is that even possible.
Like, how does it work, if I leave Philadelphia am I in Pittsburgh? Am I in Pittsburgh right now?
Yes.
Charlie, is that you?
Estimates say around 60% of Pennsylvania is mountainous, hilly, or riddled with ridges.
And potholes. Riddled with potholes.
That's the funny thing about Reading. It was founded because it was a flat area on the banks of the Schuylkill. and for 100 years, the city never extended north past Buttonwood Street & the hills. Other than the [Reading Railroad](https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3824rm.gla00187/?sp=43&r=-0.47,-0.04,1.94,0.805,0) & [Albright](https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3824rm.gla00187/?sp=45&r=-0.377,0,1.753,0.728,0), it was all wilderness compared to [the city](https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3824rm.gla00187/?sp=22&r=-0.373,0,1.747,0.725,0).
https://preview.redd.it/x5spxxftdc8d1.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=82d51a9a39beb6f000808c26bc7c21a5e7719130
https://preview.redd.it/9td291kbhe8d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=201e52fd45b3f5f047822f0436648c961fff6fb2
Let's compare ourselves to another state: Texas. I used to live in San Antonio. It's in Bexar county. And it's a big city. But it has no suburbs. Once you're outside city limits, and even before getting outside city limits, it turns to desert really fast. So it's entirely contained in Bexar county, and with the exception of some enclaves entirely enclosed in the city, there's basically nothing else in the county. Now let's look at Philadelphia. Philly was around since before the revolution - in fact it was the biggest city at the time of the revolution, bigger than New York or Boston. But nowadays the population of people that work in Philly is largely outside the city. The suburbs surrounding it extends for about three or four counties in every direction. That's all people who live outside city and county limits - limits that don't even include the entire urban core - and are a lot more dense than the empty Texas desert.
Has mostly to do with the local form of government and some legislation passed in the 70’s I believe that made it almost impossible for one municipality to annex another. PA is made up of mainly townships, boroughs, and class 3 cities. Look at a map of Allentown for instance and you can see the weird boundaries that were historic annexes of surrounding townships into the city and where they were never completed. So short answer… townships.
Allegheny County alone has *130* municipalities. It’s every bit as efficient as you’d imagine. Yet every one is a sacred rice bowl. Also, almost all of those people will say they’re “from Pittsburgh” the moment they leave the state.
To be fair, hardly anyone outside of Pennsylvania will recognize any towns on the western side between Erie and Pittsburgh. "The Oil Heritage Region" only rings a bell for history nerds. "Is that near Pittsburgh?" "Well, it's closer to Erie." "Is that near Pittsburgh?" "Sure, whatever, I'm from Pittsburgh."
I live near York and when people ask …”what city is that near , Pittsburgh or Philadelphia ?” I say Baltimore and watch their limited grasp of geography implode in their brain. But yes I end up saying closer to Philly
Happy cake day, grew up in Geddispurg now I live in “Pittsburgh”.
Totally true. I suppose my badly worded point was just that the people in power in those zillions of boroughs and townships go utterly batshit at the very hint of mergers (let alone annexations), no matter how sound the business case.
Back in the day on Facebook, I was a member of a group called “I live in…it’s near Gettysburg.” And it was definitely how I phrased things at times talking to people. Harrisburg was obviously a good answer too, but nearly 100% of people have heard of Gettysburg, even if they don’t know where it’s located. So it’s not just people from the cities who do that!
They say they’re from Pittsburgh within the state, too. There is culturally no difference between someone from Pittsburgh and someone from Braddock. Hell, the latter is a 15 minute drive to downtown Pittsburgh.
This is 100% the answer. It has more to do with our forms of government than anything else. Erie has been "shrinking" in population, while the surrounding townships have been increasing in population over the same years. It is very difficult for local bodies to join together. Our counties are also much weaker than in many states.
I believe that Allentown's Dept of Health has jurisdictional power over both the county and state regulations. Bucks county health also has jurisdictional power over the state
Municipalities. We have a ton of them. Only Texas and Illinois have more individual municipalities than we do. For example if Havertown and Upper Darby were a single municipality the population would be 130k, but they aren't so they are both below.
If you look at the South Central PA Designated Market Area (Harrisburg, Lancaster, York, Carlisle, Lebanon, Gettysburg) it is the 43 largest TV market in the country ahead of Oklahoma City, New Orleans, and Memphis.
If Harrisburg included Susquehanna and Swatara, and any other surrounding municipality in it’s city limits, it easily be over 100,000
If you start merging municipalities you can get Harrisburg Erie Reading Scranton and Bethlehem (independent of Allentown) all above 100k pretty easily. Maybe this state does have lots of municipalities that spreads population numbers away from core cities. But Im not actually sure how unique this situation is compared to other states
Cities in PA by land area are very small. Philly is the biggest because it encompasses Philadelphia County but is still only 134 sq miles. But St. Mary’s is the 2nd largest by area, but is still only 100 sq mi. If you look at cities in the sun belt, they are like 600 sq miles just because they absorbed every surrounding municipality. That legislation in the 70’s just made it impossible to annex municipalities. So cities that appear to be shrinking just have people moving to surrounding communities that are sometimes still within a city’s zip code. If you had townships actually considered to be part of a city based on zip, you’d have a lot over 100,000
Luzerne and Lackawanna counties are over half a million combined. Scranton and Wilkes-Barre would probably exceed a 100k each if they annexed the surrounding municipalities.
Townships. All these other answers are dumb. It's townships.
2500+ municipalities. We'd have more 100k cities if we didn't have boundary lines cutting up metro areas in to a dozen pieces.
Townships are why our roads suck so much.
My school district is basically the boundaries for the local "community" as it is in most semi-rural areas. The district is about the size of Brooklyn, but it has only ~30,000 people. We have 8 governments. 3 boroughs (two of which touch each other) and 5 townships. There is no way anything can get done with 8 governments in one little community.
Only way roads get fixed around here is when the neighboring townships get their road crews together to tackle a project. At that point just have county roads like most of our neighbors.
Rural PA is beautiful. No need to urbanize everything.
Best I can do is an Amazon Warehouse
*Nothing more beautiful than the slag heaps and fields of freshly sown meth*. Ò\_o
Sullivan County, Ricketts Glen, and Worlds End disagree with you. Ya gotta get out man! Shake off this lowly slog of yours and get out into the wonderful world, not one of cynicism and fear, but of wonder!
I basically grew up in Sullivan county. Passing all of the slag heaps to get there on Routes 61 & 42. Through postcard worth towns like Centralia & Unityville.
Drove through bustling down town Centralia, twice, on Saturday!!
I wish you well. I hope your cup is half full or more someday
All them damn hills.
It ain't known as Penns Woods for nothing.
It’s all about water. Pennsylvania is an “old” state that was developed in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Waterways were key to transportation, making Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia logical choices for development. Much of the state was and still is agrarian, hence more towns and villages rather than metropolitan areas.
Scranton had a population of about 143,000 in 1930 at its height but is now about 76,000. The decline of coal mining and manufacturing in the city was the biggest factor. Another is the growth of the suburbs, especially as roads were more developed, like Route 6 and the highways.
I guess you've never lived in Pennsylvania.
Same as Oregon. Extremely rural
People like to live near other people and near job opportunities.
Then why do I have a [21 hour commute to work](https://i.imgur.com/xwL3xG3.jpg)?
Lancaster is flat at 60k for the past ten years, the metro area around it grows instead. They won’t add to the city, they won’t take away from the quarry or farmland directly around the city.
Bylaw it cannot expand
Yeah, chicken and egg there really. Bylaw affirms what they would have done to begin with. Dont get me wrong, I love it here because of the natural beauty. But it answers OPs question.
Not North, South, East, or West, but Up... It's called Density.
That's an issue for local zoning. Lancaster is growing yes but is the citizenry elect councilmen/women and they are of the view that we don't want dense settlement it won't occur. We lived in a township to the west of Lancaster which had no water service, and the only sewer service was in one development with lots ranging from 1/2 to 1+ acre, every house had to be connected to the sewer system but every house had its own well. Other than that development all other homes and the small # of businesses all had septic. There was a strictly enforced zoning ... and became the issue in an election when one township supervisor decided to develop his property into a funeral home and wouldn't recuse himself from voting on the zoning variance authorization. The corrupt supervisor died before the final vote and the vote was deferred until a new supervisor could be elected. A crony if the corrupt supervisor qualified along with one other person, for the office in a special election. Enough people in the township learned about the crony's intent to vote for the approval that the other person running, who was not as well known or "connected" won, and the authority to open the property as a funeral home was denied. (The deceased supervisor had already built out the property with a function room, side rooms all would be appropriate for a funeral home). Before the vote a public hearing was held, and comments were 2 hrs, all but two people spoke against the approval for the operation as a funeral home. (The hearing for public comment was officially scheduled for 30 minutes.) That's the good thing about PA local governments...the ability for the local citizenry to make their wishes known.
Low density = Low tax base. Low density growth is unsustainable and the root of most of our financial problems. (including potholes) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0)
My town is slightly < 100mi. from each of Buffalo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. There really isn't shit out here.
Best part of the state
I'm assuming you're near Erie and there's all kinds of shit to do there.
We’re spread out more. Like where does Harrisburg end? There’s easy 500000 between Hershey and Carlisle. But Harrisburg proper may have 40k
Don’t forget a lot of the state is owned by the state in state preserved parks
Pennsylvania has a large number of small political divisions that operate as independent entities. Other places, a city is incorporated over a larger area. As an older state, Pennsylvania was chopped up in the horse and buggy days. There is little attempt (none?) to combine these redundant suburbs into the small cities they surround.
About a century ago, cities started to extend their limits to include the smaller towns that were on their borders. It made sense, public services could be consolidated. In the case of Pittsburgh, the smaller towns resisted this process. There is actually a small town, Mt Oliver, that is completely within the Pittsburgh city limits. Recently, there has been some talk of Homestead merging with the city, but the merger keeps getting delayed.
So a lot of other states the city grows and absorbs the suburbs or neighboring towns. Our government is setup to resist that so the actual cities can’t grow with the population.
PA doesn’t have laws for municipal consolidation, so many of our mid-sized cities are spread out across several municipalities in a way which limits their population numbers.
Because we don’t want you to smell the meth we have cooking in our pole barn.
Because we don’t want to be a parking lot and warehouse shit hole like NJ. KEEP PA BEAUTIFUL
Because you said it yourself, Pennsylvania is a big state. People and companies are spread out throughout the country.
I mean but come on, 3 cities in one state? Like... How is that even possible?
NJ, NY, CA have coastline. PA has the Schuykill, the Lehigh and the Ohio/Allegheny merge to build cities. on. Erie is on the lake, but there are SO many cities on the Great Lakes, it is hard to compete with Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo on that one...even though it is named AFTER Erie (or the town is named after the lake. One of the only cities in America to be built away from big water is Atlanta...a railroad town (now an airport hub). Lakes, rivers and oceans have a lot to do with it. PA is mostly rural because of farming and coal...that is why rural PA is so backwards...
Montana is 3x bigger than Pennsylvania and only has one city over 100,000 in population. It happens more than you think.
PA has natural beauty that shouldn't be cleared for cities?
Suburbs/urban sprawl and municipal lines have a lot to do with this. PA has 17 "[metropolitan areas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_metropolitan_areas)" with a population of over 100,000. The Scranton/Wilkes Barre metropolitan area is about half a million, but no individual municipality reaches 100,000. Montgomery County is home to more than a million people, but is not "a city." (New York City is sort of the flip side of this. It counts as one large city in New York state because might have counted as several if the boroughs were governed independently.)
ALLENTOWN MENTIONED 🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🔵🍁❤️🦅🟡🟡🟡🟡🟡🟡🟡🟡
The second largest city in Pennsylvania is St. Marys in Elk County at 99 square miles, but it only has a population of 12,738. Dushore Pennsylvania is home to Sullivan County's only traffic light & it's Sullivan County's largest Borough @ just under 1 square mile. It's also NOT Sullivan County's seat. That's Laporte. Pennsylvania is very, very rural once you're outside of the turnpike footprint.
Reading and Erie are very close to 100k. Reading was over 100k in 1950 but the city lost population until the 90s and is increasing again. Erie was above 100k at the 2010 census but lost population. The metro areas are larger than 100k. But like others have said, it has to do with navigable rivers, etc.
Winter and hills
Cities tend to grow where transportation & resources coincide. This usually means coasts with natural harbors or rivers. In the U.S., that also sometimes means convenient locations for railroads or highways, canals, or the like. Having natural resources nearby (timber, coal, ore, or arable land) also doesn't hurt. For cities to get really huge, the transportation factors facilitating trade have to be enormous. Pittsburgh's and Philadelphia's rivers do that. Also the vast middle of the state is all mountains anyway.
Don't forget a lot of cities have lost population since they peaked (people moving to where there are jobs). [https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1920/bulletins/demographics/population-pa-number-of-inhabitants.pdf](https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1920/bulletins/demographics/population-pa-number-of-inhabitants.pdf)
During home games State College has over 100k people
Allentown is the third? Or Harrisburg?
Girl, how many more people are you trying to fit in those towns in Delaware County?! lol
Geography
Pa has the largest rural population of any state.
Because land mass does not correlate to population density. Most of PA is mountains. That does not lend itself to large communities of people.
Because stay the hell away from me that’s why!
Because you chose an arbitrary number.
8th p⁰
Montgomery County, one of the Philly ring counties/suburbs has 860,000 people living in it alone. Add in Chester, Bucks, and DelCo, and you're probably pushing 2mil in the suburbs. We don't need no stinkin' 100,000 plus cities.
Pennsylvania has a large rural population scattered across the state, whereas other heavily-populated States have most of their population in large metro areas. I think the rural population of PA is something like 50%, which is really surprising.
As has been stated elsewhere in the comments: it is because PA's municipalities have a bias to NOT consolidate. Every square inch of land in the Commonwealth is already incorporated and since we like local control and annexing in PA legally requires consent, annexation is rare. The problem is that this isn't how most of the country works. But we humans build wherever we build. For instance: you can drive through MULTIPLE municipalities in York and if you aren't paying attention to the white signs with blue type you wouldn't know you changed municipalities. (Also, search Mount Oliver, PA and notice what singular municipality borders it.) If you look at the US Census's Metropolitan Statistical Areas, you will find that PA has 17 that have more than 100,000 people, 8 of which have more than 400,000 people. The oddity is that people identify more with their municipality which, in some cases, are more like the "neighborhoods" in cities (think the neighborhoods of New York, London, and Tokyo). This is amplified by Pennsylvania's many school districts, one of the main ways to identify an area, are fiercely independent of each other, as well as the preserved farmland and forests that can create a visual separation even if there isn't an economic separation.
I’m addition to the water reasons. The very size is a relatively important part. What is the necessity of cramming a bunch of people into huge cities when you have so much space? There isn’t. Look at Montana. Look at Colorado. Look at Maine. Big doesn’t mean big cities. Big means big space, less need for big cities if there’s plenty of space around towns to spread out into.
How borders were drawn
Erie Pennsylvania used to be a 4th but has been steadily losing population over the last couple decades
What's the third city after Philly and Pittsburgh?
For what it's worth, Erie combined with Millcreek has a population of about 140k. They might as well be the same city.
The Lehigh Valley has close to 900k by now. Allentown only city over 100k officially. It’s one big continuous burb
Almost 50% of the population lives in the Philly metro area. Almost 20% in the Pittsburgh metro area. It is a bit tricky because Philly metro includes other states. But it gives you a good idea. There just isn't much of anything in the middle. There was coal. That's basically dead. It isn't uncommon. Go check out anywhere in Illinois that isn't the Chicago area. 6th most populous state, 25th in land area. Mostly empty. The Chicago metro area is 75% of the state population. Although some of that is in Indiana, but not a lot.
Because this state sucks. Worst day of my life was the day I was forced to move to this butt state
It’s actually one of the things I like about Pennsylvania. Unlike other states where you have desolate, desolate, desolate CITY! desolate, desolate, desolate CITY!, in PA you have a nice spread-out population. Though it occurs to me that if we had just one or two more 250K cities, we would probably be a solid blue state.
Because it's a rural state. More rural than average in this country. It's named Penn's Woods for a reason.
NY? Rural ≠ State Population
Middle Pennsylvania racism is worst than the south, why even deal with it?
It's the optimal way to train bad driving skills while on a cell phone? I mean really, the left lane isn't for testing how slow you can drive.
Three cities? Pa only has two—if you count Pittsburgh. Edit: Pittsburgh doesn’t count.
Allentown also has over 100,000
Cool little town
OP specified that the parameters of their search were cities of more than 100,000 residents. You claimed that Pennsylvania only had two cities that met the criteria OP set. I informed you that Allentown also meets said criteria. Are you saying that Allentown doesn’t have 100,000 residents?
Can you really argue with the government?
Sure you can! But you’d have a hell of a time finding a more reputable source
You can argue that your objectivley wrong.
And since when has being objectively wrong made people not argue?
Since the birth of humanity. You can argue it is the purpose of Reddit.
It has Allentown
lol
Allentown has 125,000
Hey cool
Confidently Incorrect
Sorry to hurt your feelings
Geography nerds reaction: EMOTIONAL DAMAGE
Nah.. didn't hurt my feelings... As an FYI.. Reading and Erie will probably be over 100 k in the net year or two.
Reading and Erie will according to trends.
Because most people from New York and New Jersey come here in the summer.
Have you heard of Jersey Shore?