Other than cities getting more funding at 50,000 population does any other difference occur in a city? Is their a need for a bus system?
Other than cities getting more funding at 50,000 population does any other difference occur in a city? Is their a need for a bus system?
Are you talking about CDBG entitlement communities? You are entitled to receive funding directly at 50,000 population but the amount you get is based on a formula of various factors (poverty, age of housing stock, etc.)
Things like whether you need a bus system are unrelated to entitlement.
50k is the threshold for an MPO. It is where Section 5307 FTA funding kicks in. nearly everywhere needs transit, but smaller areas may not require a scheduled bus line. With the greying and sickening of america this is getting to be more important.
We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes - Fr Gabriel Richard 1805
Yeah that answered those questions. Nothing else happens at 50k? It always seems to be a prestiguous number.
Nothing "happens" at 50,000 population. Politicians decide to explore possibilities and planners and other professional staff make what's possible happen, if we're lucky. It could be becoming an entitlement community, it could be becoming part of an MPO, It could be a lot of things. It could also be nothing at all.
It's not like a level of achievement on a game where you suddenly get new powers or whatever for passing some threshold. You have to make a conscious decision to do, or not do, some thing.
2,500 would be a prestigious number for Greensburg. 100,000 or 1,000,000 are prestigious numbers for others. At 50,000 one has the opportunity for federal programs that could generate $200-500K for the community. But as Gedunker mentioned, only with planning.
Exactly. There are no laws or mores or anything of nature, sociology, philosophy, law, religion, etc that cause reality to change at 50k pop. It is politics that makes change. The next politician can change any arbitrary population level.Originally posted by Gedunker
That tends to be a key threshold with a number of state laws regardless of state in addition to it being a tipping point for CDBG entitlement (and perhaps even HOME participating jurisdiction status if the economic & housing demographics are really bad). Examples of state law triggers might include changes in transit funding (similar to the MPO item mentioned earlier), larger extra-territorial jurisdiction (ETJ), placing the city under new environmental/storm water management regulations, procurement/contracting regulations, audit standards, changing the relationship between the local police department and state highway patrol, among other things. There is also a colloquial belief that 50,000 is a magic number that "puts you on the radar" for certain retailers, though with the increased sophistication of GIS I think that is less the case.
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
- Herman Göring at the Nuremburg trials (thoughts on democracy)
I can't think of any large retailer that I usually see radar cities that hit 50,000 population. Maybe in most cases you see a Target and Lowe's in cities with 50,000 population. Wal-Mart, Kohl's, and Home Depot I see in really small populated areas.
There's a Lowe's Warren, PA -- population about 10,000. I think it's less about the actual population of a city and more about the population of the marketing area. The closest Lowe's to Warren is in Erie, PA, which is easily an 1 1/2 or 2 hour drive over country roads (there's no direct access by interstate). The Warren Lowe's draws from a large area of southern NYS and northern PA because, aside from the Home Depot in Jamestown, there are probably no other big-box home improvement stores within 50+ miles, and it's closer to 100+ miles to the east.
In Texas, above 50k population the City will usually have to take over installing and maintaining traffic signals within their limits. TxDOT handles the smaller municipalities since almost all of the signals will likely be on state routes anyways in small places.
Quote