Damn, you're right. I did the spreadsheet math quickly based on 2018 estimates on the top 314 cities by population in the USA. Apparently 100k minimum population is the marker of "city" according to this. Anyways, ~94m city dwellers compared to ~327m (2018) for the USA. "Big" cities are a minority.

At 284, Boulder, CO is considered a "city". Don't get me wrong, it's a nice town, but you can't compare it to Austin (11), Portland, OR (25) or NYC (1). Top 100 cities comes to ~64.5m (Spokane, WA coming in at 100 with 219k).

I just... wow... I don't know why, but I truly thought "city slicker" America made up like 50%+ of the population. At best it's 29%. Not insignificant. But... not a wide majority.

I think it's best to compare metro areas and not cities per se. I live in a metro area much smaller than Austin, but it's still maybe a million people. If a city proper of say 100,000 people was out in the middle of nowhere, that would be very different.

I don't think so, speaking out of my personal experience. Colorado Springs Metro, for example, can gobble up a town called Palmer Lake (59k population). The Springs alone is 464k. Even though the Springs is kind of country (meh, not really, lots of defense and tech moved in the past decade), Palmer Lake IS country. Even though they border each other, they don't really vote the same or have similar concerns. Let's put it this way, your stereotypical hipster can live a good life in the Springs. Not so in Palmer Lake... at all. Then take Manitou Springs on the west side of CS. It's a tourist town/trap. Not at odds, but not similar either. CS is very locked in with the needs of Fort Carson, the Air Academy and 2 other air bases, along with defense and a few major tech firms dropped big offices in CS even though Denver is ~65 miles away.

Then take Wilsonville, OR. It's oddly considered a metro area for Portland. It's a good 30min away and independent AF from Portland. Plus the people there are different. More old money or straight up white trash.

Metro is a really loose/gray term. To say surrounding towns are the exact same as a city is a bad idea. Let's take the purchasing decision of a home in those areas. The "value" of location compared to price and are at odds. One person is willing to pay a premium for location, the other is not. Those are two different mindsets as to what that person is willing to deal with in life.

I think it's important to include the general area because people commonly live and commute anywhere within a few miles. Most Americans live in what are technically suburbs.

And the overall lifestyle of a place depends on the population within a reasonable radius of travel, not what is within an arbitrary boundary.

I live in an area of NY currently that has towns similar in size to where I went to school in AZ, but the surrounding area, say a ten mile radius, has maybe three times the population. It's a very noticeable difference, both in general lifestyle and in employment opportunities, education and so on.

> Not insignificant. But... not a wide majority.

Yes. Maybe you can understand some of the frustration coming out of "middle America"? The new American economy is booming in large metro areas, while the rest of the country stagnates. I'm not a Trump voter, but I certainly understand the bitterness at being economically and culturally dominated by a segment of the country that is at the very most, 50% of the population.

The remainder of the country is still relatively blue and urban/suburban. Just because they live outside of the large metro areas doesn't mean they are rural. For instance, the Austin area was around 30th largest on a list I was looking at whereas I live in a MSA that is more like 60th+. But there are still lots of people here, universities, etc. - it's not the middle of Wyoming or Alaska. It's just that the actual cities and towns aren't that large. I don't live in New Jersey, but have you ever been there? You have like flat suburbs that go on and on - individually, I imagine that you can have a large area with a large population, but the towns aren't so big.