Your City's Shape

[Cadeho]

Does anyone pay attention to or know the shape of their cities, geographically? Does it make you proud when you see it like you do when you see images of your city, flag, or other unique signatures of your city?

Has anyone ever thought about the annexations that created the current city limits?

Maybe I'm the weird one because I like playing with maps of Richmond and looking at its current and previous configurations. I even made several avatars with the city's shape. However only one of them I've used, and it has Richmond's flag over or under it depending on how your monitor is.

Richmond is in yellow.

[hudkina]

Here is Detroit:

[bmorescottamanda]

Baltimore city

Baltimore city and county

[tamias6]

Here's the municipal geography of my home town of Grand Rapids, MI. To me it looks like a squid wearing a chef's hat.

[RustTown]

Lansing, Michigan's 35 square miles

[kickflipjr]

Not the best map of pittsburgh. But you can see the shape.

[Bartholomew]

This SAPD map clearly shows the city limits and thus the shape of San Antonio:

[Bartholomew]

Very cool topic. I have always found the shape of cities, states, and countries fascinating.

This neighborhood map of my hometown of Hartford clearly defines the city's municpal boundaries:

[Snowguy716]

Here is Minneapolis. It's not my home town, but it's the closest large city to me.

[lammius]

Here's a map of municipalities in Essex County, NJ. I live in the bright red one, Montclair Township. It's a boring, 6-sq-mile box in north-central Essex.

Newark, in the southeastern corner of the county, has a more interesting shape. The strange appendage on its west side was formed when East Orange and Irvington seceded from Newark in the early 20th century. Today Newark has a land area of 23 square miles, making it the smallest of America's 100 most populous cities (according to wikipedia)

[colin]

Tucson's shape is nothing overly special save for a few strange annexations, but I've always been amazed at Peoria's shape. It sort of typifies the insane annexation going on in the Phoenix area now. This is due to a state law which gives a portion of state funds to municipalities based on their population. Cities annex empty land anticipating that these areas will eventually be developed.

I should also note that the center of town is in the upper portion of the blue area (no real city center though) and almost all of the brown area is open, undeveloped desert as of now.

[Cadeho]

Wow very interesting maps! I didn't even think about neighborhoods and their shapes too. Keep including them too! Tucson has that much open land? If it weren't for state law, it's be neat for Richmond to annex land to the east that's largely been ignored by the surrounding county to the north, west and east. However, because the western portion of the county is overdeveloped and the county's total population is over 200,000 people, it can't be annexed. It's like a city in Va not being able to annex another city. I guess we have merging left?

I drew a maps of an unrealistic Richmond combining it with the county to the north, Henrico, and the county to the south, Chesterfield.

The other gold areas are our Tri-Cities, Petersburg, Colonial Heights, and Hopewell.

[dan326]

I've found Baton Rouge's shape to go south/east, following the interstates.

[UrbanSprawl]

This is the boundaries of Memphis after the recent annexations.

[1ajs]

[davidals]

Charlotte's annexation history: http://ww.charmeck.org/Planning/Annexation...ion_History.pdf

The blobby red map is about 5 years out-of-date...

[dimebag1980]

Very interesting topic, but I'm game. I've always been intrigued by the shapes of cities, because so many dynamics go into this. In the case of the map below, to the left (west) of the Red River, you have Shreveport (pop 200,000) and to the right (east) you have its sister city, Bossier City (pop 60,000.)

This map also includes Barksdale Air Force Base, which is shown as an urbanized area in the middle-right of this image. Basically the entire area that says "BOSSIER" in big, gray letters, is Barksdale Air Force Base. Bossier's city limits border the base's limits, and so the city has grown around the base to the north. The city is also beginning to grow around it to the south as well. When I-69 is completed, it will be just to the east of the base, opening up the possibility of the urbanized area spreading all the way around the base. Will that ever happen? Who knows.

Shreveport's shape is more "round" as it's not bordered by any major military installation which could stifle its growth. Shreveport also tends to overtake and grow around the smaller towns, and could grow all the way to the Texas/Louisiana state line to the west, and the Caddo/DeSoto Parish line to the south. As a matter of fact, a southeastern leg of the city (blocked by the legend in this image) does extend to within just a few miles of the parish line.

[Copper]

Here are Canadian cities with a couple others for reference. The Toronto one actually includes 3 CMAs (Toronto, Hamilton, Oshawa). I didn't make this BTW.

[tracer1138]

Here are Canadian cities with a couple others for reference. The Toronto one actually includes 3 CMAs (Toronto, Hamilton, Oshawa). I didn't make this BTW.

[Teleny]

Where did y'all find the city limits of your cities? I tried to find Wilmington, and Newark, Delaware, but I was unsuccessful

[hagetaka]

The unusual landscape of Seattle an odd collections of hills, water, & mountains in the distance

[indy500]

Indianapolis

[dgreco]

providence (residential plus downtown)

[suburban george3]

Winston-Salem in all 132.4 square miles of sprawl (ward map)

I think it looks like a fish head for some reason...