True as far as it goes, but it has the same problem a lot of the Oregon coastal towns do, of being well sited and having room, but not being at all accessible on the land side.
American Cities that could have been more prominent
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True as far as it goes, but it has the same problem a lot of the Oregon coastal towns do, of being well sited and having room, but not being at all accessible on the land side.
@ Caliboy
Denton,TX has potential but really unless it usurps Dallas for being a financial center, attracts EDS, TI, and so forth in much greater numbers (they do have Boeing and a TI workshop) as Garland and Richardson did or usurps Fort Worth's railroad/stockyards before 1900, there's not really much reason to pick it over what did grow to 300K or so like DFW suburbs did.
Also keep in mind Denton didn't have the Trinity River (chuckle, snort, more like a muddy creek most months) as a ready water source until the Corps of engineers dammed it up to create Lake Lewisville and Lake Dallas.
Montana has resources out the yin-yang and very pretty country, but it's kinda out in the middle of nowhere and dry, plus the weather sucks six months a year so without some major land rush most folks don't see a reason to stick around.
You could make an argument of Helena or Butte becoming a booming metropolis based on another silver/copper strike or being a major hub of a northern IC RR or some big railhead to Calgary or somesuch.
Omaha has a major hub of the UP RR, meatpacking, insurance companies and a very diversified economy, so it's doing really well. IDK what you want it to be.
Nashville suffers from the same problem of the North Carolina cities across the Piedmont. They grew up as markets for the farms surrounding them that didn't trade outside their region terribly well b/c they didn't have ready river or RR access until after the ACW, and that area's a nightmare to build and maintain roads with all the Appalachian hills/mountains.
Following another development path (something where the South industrializes much earlier and had a much more friendly attitude toward public works from 1800-present) Nashville could be a much more industrialized city.
IDK what to say about Tillamook- nice cheese?
Here's a thought. WI the Mormons colonized Oregon as heavily as they did Utah and Tillamook become the place where they put the Temple??
Denton,TX has potential but really unless it usurps Dallas for being a financial center, attracts EDS, TI, and so forth in much greater numbers (they do have Boeing and a TI workshop) as Garland and Richardson did or usurps Fort Worth's railroad/stockyards before 1900, there's not really much reason to pick it over what did grow to 300K or so like DFW suburbs did.
Also keep in mind Denton didn't have the Trinity River (chuckle, snort, more like a muddy creek most months) as a ready water source until the Corps of engineers dammed it up to create Lake Lewisville and Lake Dallas.
Montana has resources out the yin-yang and very pretty country, but it's kinda out in the middle of nowhere and dry, plus the weather sucks six months a year so without some major land rush most folks don't see a reason to stick around.
You could make an argument of Helena or Butte becoming a booming metropolis based on another silver/copper strike or being a major hub of a northern IC RR or some big railhead to Calgary or somesuch.
Omaha has a major hub of the UP RR, meatpacking, insurance companies and a very diversified economy, so it's doing really well. IDK what you want it to be.
Nashville suffers from the same problem of the North Carolina cities across the Piedmont. They grew up as markets for the farms surrounding them that didn't trade outside their region terribly well b/c they didn't have ready river or RR access until after the ACW, and that area's a nightmare to build and maintain roads with all the Appalachian hills/mountains.
Following another development path (something where the South industrializes much earlier and had a much more friendly attitude toward public works from 1800-present) Nashville could be a much more industrialized city.
IDK what to say about Tillamook- nice cheese?
Here's a thought. WI the Mormons colonized Oregon as heavily as they did Utah and Tillamook become the place where they put the Temple??
Didn't the Mormons mostly go to Utah because they thought no one else would see much value in it? If anything Oregon (in the historic sense that encompasses the whole Pacific Northwest) was generally considered to have more more potential than it proved to (though I would argue that it's more a question of still not having lived up to how important it will prove to be)
What about Concord, NH, or New Bedford, MA? Concord was home to the #1 wagon maker of the 19th Century, producer of the famous Concord stage, while New Bedford was a major whaling & fishing port (#1 in world?). New Bedford could easily have become a major oil producer (whale & cod oil), if it wasn't already, & Concord could've been big in bicycles &, later, automobiles. (No reason it had to be Detroit--tho the Dearborn area was very big in wagon-making...).
Or, what about Anaheim? If film studios had located there, instead of Burbank....
Or, what about Anaheim? If film studios had located there, instead of Burbank....
FDW
Banned
Actually, It's more likely that Seattle would be far less prominent is most ATLs. I've discussed why earlier in the thread.
Well, that's assuming a different border with Canada. Might it not be considerably more prominent if for one reason or another Oregon was settled before California or less than all of California ended up American? It seems to me (though I'm not really impartial on this) that there are a lot of things that make the Pacific Northwest more attractive to someone looking to settle than California.
If KU was at Topeka I guess it would have been a Austin of the North
Terre Haute, IN. It's pretty dead now, but at one time it was a major crossroads for the country (in fact, Terre Haute was originally called "The Crossroads of America"; Indiana/Indianapolis stole the slogan later). There was plenty of industry and railroad work, as well as mining and trade along the Wabash. It's got a decent location (one hour from Indianapolis, three from Chicago and St. Louis by interstate). Had the industries stayed afloat, it could've been bigger.
As discussed here (unabashed plugTheMann said:
), a big reason is the mortgage deduction, enabling & encouraging construction of bigger houses in 'burbs, which suck the life out of city centers. The G.I. Bill was also a big issue, since it gave lo-interest loans on new houses, but not on existing ones...And how about another: don't build the Erie Canal, NYC becomes less prominent. IIRC, that means Boston &/or Philadelphia are bigger.
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How about Anderson, Indiana? It had an NBA team for one season (1949-50) that folded after a year for financial concerns despite being one of the better teams in the league.
But let's say that Anderson High School star and 1946 Mr. Basketball Jumpin' Johnny Wilson manages to get into a Division I school for basketball (IOTL he tried to get into Indiana but the Big Ten didn't take black players). He has four good years and joins Chuck Cooper, Nat Cliffton, and Earl Lloyd as one of the first black players to enter the NBA, joining the Anderson Packers in 1950 and keeping the team afloat for another season. They get into the playoffs behind the play of Wilson and beat the New York Knicks to win the 1951 Finals, generating more interest in and money for the team. If the Packers become a basketball powerhouse it could generate some serious business interest in Anderson and it could become another Green Bay, Wisconsin.
But let's say that Anderson High School star and 1946 Mr. Basketball Jumpin' Johnny Wilson manages to get into a Division I school for basketball (IOTL he tried to get into Indiana but the Big Ten didn't take black players). He has four good years and joins Chuck Cooper, Nat Cliffton, and Earl Lloyd as one of the first black players to enter the NBA, joining the Anderson Packers in 1950 and keeping the team afloat for another season. They get into the playoffs behind the play of Wilson and beat the New York Knicks to win the 1951 Finals, generating more interest in and money for the team. If the Packers become a basketball powerhouse it could generate some serious business interest in Anderson and it could become another Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Something you should always keep in mind when thinking of Canadian cities: how big would it be if it was an American city? That is, compared to total population. In U.S. terms, Vancouver amounts to a city of about 25 million.
The Toronto metro area, commonly referred to around here as the "Golden Horseshoe" for how it looks on a map, is 8.7 million according to the 2011 Canadian Census. Account for that for a population the size of the US and you get (gulp) 78 million people.
78 or 87,TheMann said:The Toronto metro area, commonly referred to around here as the "Golden Horseshoe" for how it looks on a map, is 8.7 million according to the 2011 Canadian Census. Account for that for a population the size of the US and you get (gulp) 78 million people.
it's pretty staggering...CaliBoy1990 said:
Why do you presume this is a good thing?
Actually, sprawl doesn't have to happen (unabashed plug).
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Something you should always keep in mind when thinking of Canadian cities: how big would it be if it was an American city? That is, compared to total population. In U.S. terms, Vancouver amounts to a city of about 25 million.
That seems an awful lot like you're just taking percentage of population, and really I don't think that's going to get you a reasonable approximation. Yes, there are some regions that would be significantly bigger if American, but in a lot of places our population density is pretty comparable and there aren't any strong reasons to believe that being American would drive immigration to any area specifically.
I guess what I'm saying is bigger Vancouver, definitely. But really what is there to differentiate Toronto from other lakefront cities if Ontario is a state? I rather suspect that we'd be a lot smaller and a lot worse off economically. Calgary Edmonton might have grown somewhat more from oil, but the rest of the prairie cities are pretty comparable in absolute terms to what you'd get in the States. Ottawa probably wouldn't even really exist at all without being a capital and Winnipeg doesn't have much reason to attract development without a border.
The only other big winners I can see are Halifax, by way of being a port significantly closer to Europe than Boston (and while I think Halifax would be bigger if it had been American I think it would mostly be at the cost of Boston) and Montreal, by way of increased Francophone immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries (assuming it managed to stay French speaking, which is a big if with a State of Quebec). Other than that I suppose the Yukon and Northern BC would be more developed, but a good deal of that might be at the cost of less going into Alaska (though reducing Alaska's isolation is probably going to bring more people to the entire far northwest).
Actually, the idea of writing a TL centred on what happens to a Canada that ends up American during either the revolution or 1812 is appealing more than it probably should...
I don't mean it would attract that much of a U.S. population. I mean, look at it in perspective as if it attracted an equal fraction. Vancouver has the same fraction of Canada's total pop as a city of 25mil in the U.S. If you want Vancouver to be bigger, you need to imagine it as if it's New York City, not Detroit.Bureaucromancer said:
That said, had the CPR gone on the northern route & ended in Prince George (unlikely?), Vancouver could be quite a bit smaller than it is. (Saskatoon & Calgary would probably be larger.) Also, if Saskatchewan, Alberta, & BC were divided along lines of latitude, with capitals in north & south, the area north of 55 would be more developed...
Charleston, SC could've been the social, political and transportation capital of the South ala. Atlanta had the Carolina & Cincinnati railroad been completed in the 1840's.
Mobile, AL is centrally located between Tampa and Houston, but its proximity to New Orleans prevented it from becoming the major port in the Gulf of Mexico.
During the early part of the 20th century, real estate brokers thought that the Bronx would become the heart of the Midtown commercial district. Imagine how different things in New York would be if that had come to pass!
Mobile, AL is centrally located between Tampa and Houston, but its proximity to New Orleans prevented it from becoming the major port in the Gulf of Mexico.
During the early part of the 20th century, real estate brokers thought that the Bronx would become the heart of the Midtown commercial district. Imagine how different things in New York would be if that had come to pass!
The number of railroad lines built to Omaha was already astonishing considering its size.