Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

PopStat found an article in USA Today highlighting the Trump Tower Tampa, and reporting on the popularity of high-rise living. The main thrust of the piece (Nice view: Cities of all sizes embracing high-rise living) is that small towns (such as Tampa) want these super-luxurious condos. From my perspective, most of the cities mentioned are not what I would consider small. I don’t think their objective was to slight Tampa specifically, but they were intent on making this place sound like a tiny town.

…city of 321,000 is perhaps best known nationally for its Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who won the Super Bowl two years ago, and tourist attractions such as Busch Gardens. It might be the last place one would expect to find people living among the clouds… (emphasis mine)

Certainly population is the best way to compare areas, but to limit the comparison to within city limits is misleading. I think you can find a better comparison using television markets. Our “city of 321,000” is part of the nation’s 13th largest DMA (TV market) which includes well over 1.6 million TV homes. The article goes on to include other small towns that are jumping on the high-rise residential bandwagon, namely Denver (city pop. 554,000, #18 DMA), Milwaukee (597,000 #32), Portland, ME (#75), Seattle (573,000 #12), Miami (362,000 #17), and Las Vegas (559,000 #51). Even if you know nothing about market share, you do recognize that most of those listed are able to support pro sports franchises, so one can hardly call them small. If not for the association with gambling, there would be at least one franchise in Vegas, too. Portland, Maine (city population 64,000) (the Trail Blazers are in Oregon) is the last place I’d expect to find people living in luxurious condos, not Tampa. I suppose USA Today considers anything outside Chicago, LA, and Manhattan to be small.