Can’t get a measure of Columbus’ ‘big-city’ feel

For weeks now, I’ve been struggling with the idea that Columbus is bigger than San Francisco.

Columbus has 892,533 people, dwarfing San Francisco at a mere 883,305, according to Census estimates that came out in late May.

I will pause here to acknowledge that, by the more meaningful measure of metropolitan area population (cities and their suburbs), San Francisco’s 4.7 million people vastly outnumber Columbus’ 2.1 million.

But I wondered: Is there a better measure than population to gauge how big a city feels, as opposed to how big it is? Because no way does Columbus feel like the 14th biggest city in the country.

Let’s review possibilities:

Coffee shops per capita

I thought it might be an indicator of a certain urban energy, but no. I can’t make any sense out of an Apartment Guide list whose top 10 includes Berkeley, California, at No. 1, Salt Lake City, Utah, at No. 6 and Ann Arbor, Michigan, at No. 10.

True, Berkeley and Ann Arbor are both college towns, where people presumably spend a lot of time pondering things over a latte. But the college town of Columbus didn’t even make the top 50.

It also didn’t make the C+ R Research list of most craft breweries per

capita. Little Portland, Maine, is No. 1 on that list. Perhaps a heavy concentration of craft breweries just gauges consumer gullibility. How else to explain paying $12 for a glass of whale-testicle beer (it exists).

Cost of living I’ve been in Los

Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., in the past year. Each time I returned grateful that, in Columbus, it doesn’t cost $25 to park a car.

Our town ranks 155th in cost of living worldwide according to one list. That puts us in the vicinity of Phoenix (which seems — and is — bigger) and Louisville (which seems — and is — smaller).

The other problem with this measure is that some places, such

as cities in Alaska, are expensive because of isolation, not because of their glamour.

Population density

Maybe you need a certain degree of hustle and bustle to feel like No. 14 on the big-cities list. And maybe this explains why Columbus, 259th on Governing magazine’s list of densest U.S. cities of at least 50,000, doesn’t seem as frenetic as New York, No. 4.

But I find it hard to believe that it moves at a pace less frenzied than Watsonville, California, which Governing says is twice as dense and which I’ve never heard of.

So, I didn’t find the one measure that describes exactly how Columbus feels. But I’ll keep looking as Columbus keeps growing.

Joe Blundo is a columnist for The Dispatch. joe.blundo@gmail.com @joeblundo