As usual, I don't follow your logic. Many people don't know Atlanta is bigger than FW, they assume it is after visiting because it looks and feels bigger.
It looks and feels bigger because it IS bigger! Don't pay attention to technicalities, Atlanta for all practical intents and purposes has 5 million people. People DO know that Atlanta is bigger even if they don't realize it, because they don't see the political boundaries that cut off Atlanta from the metro area it alone has spawned.
And I don't know how its impressive skyline has anything to do with people knowing it's bigger than FW. A city's skyline make an impression on people and speaks of a city's vision and influence. Atlanta experienced huge growth in the late 80's and early 90's. And it's skyline grew as well.
People see the big skyline, and they get the image of a big place, I would think you would realize this seeing as how you're so caught up with Fort Worth's skyline or lack thereof. If you're defining "Atlanta" as the 425,000 people who live in the City of Atlanta, then Atlanta did NOT experience huge growth in the 80's and 90's, yet its skyline grew substantially. Also consider that Fort Worth's skyline grew considerably during the 80's, yet Fort Worth wasn't as booming as it is today. I'm not sure if I see a correlation between skyline growth and municipal population growth.
And sorry, people do pay attention to populations of cities and you can't change the fact that people will always compare cities and expect certain things from cities with large populations.
Yes, people pay attention the the populations of "cities", but they don't really pay attention to the populations of "municipalities". Ask the average American which they think is larger, Boston or San Antonio, and I highly doubt you will hear anyone say San Antonio, though technically San Antonio has more than twice as many people in its city limits. Boston has a metro area of 5 million people, and that is reflected in the services and attributes that give the impression of size to the general public. Thus, they think (rightfully so) that Boston is bigger.
It's not that people are expecting FW to be just like other cities, but there are things people do expect from a city of 600,000 in a metro area of 6 million.
You can't use the metro area argument for Fort Worth though, because Fort Worth isn't the only primary city in this region. Don't cut your city short, Dallas takes a hefty piece of our 6 million person pie. My arguments for metro stats rather than city stats only applies to cities that have full reign over their metro areas, when you start getting in to multi-polar areas like our own, you're opening up another can of worms. People, being the general public, don't expect much from Fort Worth anyway, because they don't see the 600,000 figure and they connect the metro figure with Dallas.
Whew, sorry about that. I think, barring any truly thoughtless responses, I'm done with the issue.
