Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl
It sounds more like a college town than a real city. 100,000 is a small city by modern definitions, so I really do not see it as being that important unless it is a college town. If it possesses a major university, the university will be the primary employer of the area, as it would presumably possess a student body of 30,000 people and employ around 12,000 people, making it the equivalent of UNC Chapel Hill in the USA (which is surrounded by an urban around of 100,000, made up of the cities of Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and Hillsborough).
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I'd agree with this assessment. Boulder, Colorado, had a population of 97,000 and change within the rather tight city limits. The home of the University of Colorado, Boulder froze its town limits nearly 30 years ago, bought all of the surrounding farm land, and declared it open space in perpetuity.
That means the city's population hit a hard upper limit (given zoning restrictions) by the late '90s, and bedroom towns began to spring up outside its open space. That's because, in addition to the university, Boulder has a cluster of federal offices (including a large NOAA facility); numerous information technology firms that sprouted in the dot-com years, a large number of outdoors outfitters, and all the entertainment and shopping venues you'd expect, given its combination of affluent professionals and college students.
If you include all of Boulder County, much of which serves as (effectively) suburbs of Boulder, the population exceeds 300,000. That makes Boulder a small city with a much more diverse economy that's still heavily skewed toward STEM and knowledge industry sectors.