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Will NWA ever be largest metro in state?


bigboyz05

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It does. Full-time students don't count in unemployment numbers. Part-time students can and UALR is largely part-time, UA largely full-time. The higher educational situation in Central Ark is exceedingly complex because of large number of students commuting to UCA and Pulaski Tech.

I'm kind of surprised poverty numbers for Springdale and Rogers aren't high as well with the number of low-wage Hispanics living there.

In LR I don't think the hood comes and finds you. In a lot of other cities I've been to I think it does.

I wonder if eventually the Hispanics in NWA will begin to engage in crime more like what you see in Dallas, Houston, Miami, and San Antonio where crime is predominantly Hispanic as time goes on. It hasn't yet, I wonder if that happens when you have more entrenchment and second generation immigrants as well as more isolated largely Spanish-speaking only sections of town. On the other hand, maybe it's because NWA is luring different types of immigrants and there are fewer criminal opportunities there to attract criminal elements.

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Man you can't use that data for Fayetteville. The poverty rate in Fayetteville is not 19% and the unemployment rate is not 13%. I am sure those numbers are affected highly by the presence of the University which has 17000 students in a city of 60000. I know not all of the students live in Fayetteville but still its a large part of that city and it sku's the numbers very greatly.
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I'm in Little Rock tonight through Saturday. Sure is a nice city! Just beautiful what has happened with the downtown near the Clinton Library and river front. There's great healthcare here. And there are some really nice suburban areas here, too. The hills and bridges and views are just great. If you haven't been here recently, come back.

I saw a study quoted last week in an honor's thesis that I am advisor on that said NWA will surpass LR in population by 2025. Can't remember the study but it was an impressive sounding source. Anyway, if Wal-Mart slows down (and they are), that prediction could easily be wrong.

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I'm in Little Rock tonight through Saturday. Sure is a nice city! Just beautiful what has happened with the downtown near the Clinton Library and river front. There's great healthcare here. And there are some really nice suburban areas here, too. The hills and bridges and views are just great. If you haven't been here recently, come back.

I saw a study quoted last week in an honor's thesis that I am advisor on that said NWA will surpass LR in population by 2025. Can't remember the study but it was an impressive sounding source. Anyway, if Wal-Mart slows down (and they are), that prediction could easily be wrong.

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Your theory on Katrina is baseless. I've heard it before, here in Little Rock, as an explaination for the jump in murders last year. Of course, none of the people involved (even to date, as far as I know) were refuges from New Orleans. This is actually the first murder I've heard of commited in AR by a refugee.

Also, higher population density does not increase crime. Concentrated proverty does, however. And it's not racial tensions which create crime per se, so much as the perception of crime. If you'll notice, "crime" is often a stand in for "black folk" in common parlance, and likewise "good/better schools" means "white folk." It's not true all the time, but enough to be quite disturbing.

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Yes, my Katrina theory isn't very good, but I still wonder what happened to the statistically-established criminal element present in New Orleans after the hurricane. I can hardly believe that none of it was displaced, especially when much of the rest of the population was (even if only for a short time).

I'm kind of confused. Can't concentrated poverty be linked to concentrated population? Are you talking about poverty as a precentage of the population or as a numerical representation?

I believe I actually said racial tensions don't really create as much crime as people think, but to rule out racial tensions as a cause of crime entirely is just not believeable. I mean, the LR School Board is apparently still subject to racial tension, so is it such a stretch?

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That depends on your definition of racial tension. If you mean directly, perhaps not. If you mean groups of people divided by race ending up living in distinct areas of cities, then it most certainly does through declined access to quality education, jobs, etc. It's a matter of social perspective.

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You see profound poverty in parts of rural Arkansas amongst whites and minorities but crime is highest in urban areas like LR, Hot Springs, and Pine Bluff, where you have both poverty and density. Crime doesn't seem to be as much of a problem in very poor predominantly minority rural areas.
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  • 2 weeks later...

Little Rock has a lot of great things going for it right now.

If it can ward off any major employers (Alltel) relocating, its poised for some growth.

The downtown and riverfront really are the jewel of urban development in the state. The Big Dam bridge and the trail loop it completes. Wow. Much larger cities around the country would LOVE to have that kind of amenity in the heart of town. LR has a ton of recent new downtown residential, and much more on the drawing board.

As for the crime stats, they are disheartening, but I don't think they are going to squash growth. Atlanta has a huge crime problem, but its experienced phenomenal growth in the last 15 years and its urban core is actually revitalizing quite rapidly now. LR is not Detroit and won't ever be.

I believe NWA will start to slow down (although I've been predicting that for years) and that Little Rock should pick up speed as its becoming a more and more attractive place to live and do business every year.

I think some of the last several years of NWA growth were pent up growth released over the last ten years by the completion of I-540 and XNA.

If Fayetteville can ride the "sustainability" and green building wave that is sweeping the country (per my evenings with Brian Williams and NBC Nightly News), perhaps it can spur some more growth for the region. Even if we manage to sustain the current 1000 people per month moving to NWA for the next 20 years, we'd only then catch LR. Thats assuming LR stands still, which obviously isn't happening.

Overall, I believe NWA will continue to grow steadily, and not boom at quite the rate it has the last decade, and I expect LR to pick up. So I'd say no, NWA will not be the largest metro in the state in our lifetimes.

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  • 1 month later...

Not sure if this is exactly the right topic to put this in, but, according to the AP, new figures showing growth from 2000-2006 are in and of the top ten in AR, six are in our area, percentagewise. Bentonville is over 32k total, Rogers over 52k, and Centerton was the fastest, percentagewise, in the whole state.

http://www.baxterbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dl.../706280302/1002

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Well, I guess I missed out on the crime discussion for the most part, but I didn't want to say anything to make it any more heated than it already was.

Regardless, here's what I think:

Essentially, perception of safety in this case is a two-way street.

The argument that LR is dangerous essentially leads from the attitude of sheltered white people who have no perspective on racial issues, and so get riled up by news accounts of scary black folks. My first major contact with NWA residents was at Arkansas Governor's School, where I met quite a few white people who told me they were scared of the black people at AGS. Since many of those black people were my friends from Central, and all of them acted VERY educated and were very friendly, that kind of pis.sed me off.

In my experience, I feel much safer in Little Rock than in NWA. Some of this has to do with the unfamiliarity of the area, some of it with prejudices, and some of it stems from what people tell me. I have plenty of black friends who don't like visiting anywhere much north of Conway because they think 'some redneck' is gonna blow them away.

I, since I dress hipster-ish, have gotten rude looks from people in northern Arkansas (not nearly as true in NWA, however), and have often felt unwanted. It was easy for me to see them thinking, 'what's that liberal city boy doing out here?' and I can't blame them, because when I see really redneck people in LR I have the same reaction.

This extends for me beyond LR/NWA. In Chicago, I feel much more at home on the statistically EXTREMELY dangerous SouthSide, than I do in Lincoln Park or Lakeview, where I feel like any time I get off the Red or Brown line, I'm in a sea of white people who all look the same.

In conclusion, OF COURSE you feel safer in NWA as a white person surrounded by white people; it's what you're used to. In the same why, I feel safer surrounded by people from a mixture of backgrounds, as that's what I've always been around. You can tout statistics, and claim that anecdote doesn't matter, but you're wrong. Perception matters a lot; perception is what keeps me from--say--moving to Detroit (that and the cold) or Trenton, or somewhere else. Sure people moving to a new city may go and look up crime statistics, but IMO they're much more likely to ask their friends or locals what they've heard about the city.

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Well, I guess I missed out on the crime discussion for the most part, but I didn't want to say anything to make it any more heated than it already was.

Regardless, here's what I think:

Essentially, perception of safety in this case is a two-way street.

The argument that LR is dangerous essentially leads from the attitude of sheltered white people who have no perspective on racial issues, and so get riled up by news accounts of scary black folks. My first major contact with NWA residents was at Arkansas Governor's School, where I met quite a few white people who told me they were scared of the black people at AGS. Since many of those black people were my friends from Central, and all of them acted VERY educated and were very friendly, that kind of pis.sed me off.

In my experience, I feel much safer in Little Rock than in NWA. Some of this has to do with the unfamiliarity of the area, some of it with prejudices, and some of it stems from what people tell me. I have plenty of black friends who don't like visiting anywhere much north of Conway because they think 'some redneck' is gonna blow them away.

I, since I dress hipster-ish, have gotten rude looks from people in northern Arkansas (not nearly as true in NWA, however), and have often felt unwanted. It was easy for me to see them thinking, 'what's that liberal city boy doing out here?' and I can't blame them, because when I see really redneck people in LR I have the same reaction.

This extends for me beyond LR/NWA. In Chicago, I feel much more at home on the statistically EXTREMELY dangerous SouthSide, than I do in Lincoln Park or Lakeview, where I feel like any time I get off the Red or Brown line, I'm in a sea of white people who all look the same.

In conclusion, OF COURSE you feel safer in NWA as a white person surrounded by white people; it's what you're used to. In the same why, I feel safer surrounded by people from a mixture of backgrounds, as that's what I've always been around. You can tout statistics, and claim that anecdote doesn't matter, but you're wrong. Perception matters a lot; perception is what keeps me from--say--moving to Detroit (that and the cold) or Trenton, or somewhere else. Sure people moving to a new city may go and look up crime statistics, but IMO they're much more likely to ask their friends or locals what they've heard about the city.

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  • 4 weeks later...
We've talked about this before, but I have no idea which topic it was. I think many of us thought at least one Oklahoma county would probably be added at some point in the near future. That second one could happen as well. I think we also wonder if another Missouri county could be added at some point as well. I'm still wondering if we can ever get Carroll County added. But I don't know if people are moving that direction. There might be some cheap land, but with Eureka Springs being a big tourist destination. It helps keep prices up there enough to make some people look elsewhere for cheaper real estate.
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Mith, this is like lightning striking twice for me (the first time was yesterday in my response to the "Rogers / Design Center" thread when I learned of "Get Juiced" creative last night by accident).

I got on mapquest.com to find out the location where the church with that big cross will be built (it's over by the Griffin Realty / General Mills building west of I-540 south of Pinnacle Hills Promenade). Then I got to "surfing" the map...I was curious how many new NWA streets have been added to Mapquest's database. Then I surfed to Siloam Springs, then west to Kansas, OK, where I made this discovery on the Delaware / Adair County borders...move the "hand" icon southeast of Kansas, OK, and zoom in enough to where you can see all the streets but not their names.

Does anyone know what the hey that huge cluster of streets and culdesacs on the Adair/Delaware border are? If there are people settled on them the nearest big "city" is Siloam Springs (and NWA).

Mith, if Adair and Delaware County OK join the NWA metro that will be very significant (and not surprising). If they join the FSM/Fayetteville DMA that will be a significant pickup from the Tulsa DMA as well, and should (if McDonald County, MO comes in) push the FSM/Fay television DMA into that mystical "Top 100" territory and more $$$ for the television stations (which hopefully means better sets for KHBS-TV and KFSM-TV)...

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Mith, the big area with all the streets and cul-de-sacs on the Adair-Delaware County line is the Flint Ridge Resort...just found that out this evening. It's something like 13 miles from Siloam Springs.

Siloam now advertises its population at 13,900. Add in West Siloam Springs, OK; Gentry and the unincorporated areas between the latter city and Siloam has a "metro" population of around 17,000 which by itself would make SS the 13th or 14th largest city in Oklahoma were it in the Sooner State.

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