What is the least celebrated or noted big city in the US?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Most big US cities often have robust histories and songs, plays, movies etc. celebrating them. They usually have noteworthy cuisines and art movements associated with them, famous shopping districts, noted scholars and personalities etc.

What is the least noted or celebrated big city? “Big” cities defined in this context as having populations over 500,000.

Here is the list of over 500K cities. What is the least celebrated municipal schlub in this line up?

1 Seattle
2 New York
3 Charlotte
4 Nashville
5 Portland
6 San Diego
7 Indianapolis-Marion
8 Houston
9 Los Angeles
10 Jacksonville
11 San Jose
12 Austin
13 San Francisco
14 Boston
15 Dallas
16 San Antonio
17 Washington, DC
18 Chicago
19 Philadelphia
20 Phoenix
21 Baltimore
22 Columbus
23 El Paso
24 Milwaukee
25 Memphis
26 Cleveland
27 Detroit

2

I thought “Charlotte” before I evvn opened the thread, and I used to live near there.

Some people can’t even remember which Carolina it’s in.

3

I’d say Phoenix. It probably wouldn’t make most people’s top-ten list of big cities, yet it’s the 5th largest city in the US: List of United States cities by population - Wikipedia
It’s a new city, so there is little history or music or other culture.
Still, the weather’s nice.

4

I live near Jacksonville, and I’m hardly even aware of it.

5

I’ve never heard anything good about El Paso.

6

The method of calculating fame by the number of songs about a city doesn’t really work, because arguably Washington DC is more famous than Charlotte, but there’s about as many songs named for each — zero that I know of.

New York, San Jose (“Do You Know The Way To…”), San Francisco (“I Left My Heart In…”), Phoenix (“By The Time I Get To…”), Philadelphia ("… Freedom"), and El Paso (Marty Robbins) have famous songs about them. Dallas had a TV show named for it; Seattle had “Frasier” famously set in it. Indianapolis has the Indy-500, which makes a bit of news, as well as the Colts. Other cities with current or former major sports teams include Charlotte, San Antonio, Memphis, Portland, San Diego, Houston, L.A., Jacksonville, Boston, Milwaukee, DC, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Detroit. Nashville is famous for country music (if little else).

I’m tempted to narrow it down to Austin and Columbus.

7

C’mon, dude, El Paso.

That one video puts it ahead of most cities on the list.

8

I would have to vote for Charlotte, NC first. It is kind of like the Delaware of cities. I was surprised at how big it is when I found out. I know something about all the rest of them even if it is bad (Detroit, I am looking at you) but I know little about it except for knowing about some banking operations there. Columbus, OH is a meh as well.

9

Austin has country music connections as well (“Austin City Limits”, etc), and a reputation for being kind of a hip place. Stick with Columbus.

10

Oklahoma City, population 550k. The only thing anyone knows about it is the bombing: it was almost completely obscure to non-Sooners until 1995.

11

Moving to IMHO from GQ.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

12

That lists cities by population within the city limits only of the named city, which isn’t a very meaingful way of measuring the size of a city and its influence, of you see what I mean.

I’d have to go with Columbus. I mean, when the heck does anyone talk about Columbus? It’s Ohio’s capital, anda big city, and yet for most people it’s just the city between Cincy and Cleveland.

13

Charlotte. Famous only for the desegregation case back in the 70s.

14

If you restrict yourself to the top TEN, I think San Jose is the Rodney Dangerfield, in spite of the old Dionne Warwick song (it’s doubtful how much Bacharach and David actually knew about San Jose when they wrote the song). Top ten lists differ, of course, but by 2007 estimates:

1 - NYC
2 - LA
3 - Chicago
4 - Houston
5 - Phoenix
6 - Philadelphia
7 - San Antonio
8 - San Diego
9 - Dallas
10 - San Jose

In spite of billing themselves as “The Capital of the Silicon Valley”, most of the country does not really associate “San Jose” when they hear “Silicon Valley”, and they don’t get much cachet from it. I think people mostly view San Jose as an appendage of San Francisco, in spite of the fact that they are about 50 miles apart, and San Jose is actually the largest of the Bay Area cities. The airport probably doesn’t help either, directly or indirectly:

Directly - It strikes you as incredibly small for a major city airport.

Indirectly - San Jose is one of the few remaining cities with its airport close to the downtown, and the flight paths are directly over it. For this reason, there are height limits on downtown buildings, and San Jose doesn’t have an imposing skyline.

15

Detroit surely is the least celebrated lately. Everybody seems to be having a grand old time shitting on Detroit.

16

To give you a foreigners perspective on the matter, I’d say Charlotte. I had no idea where it was until I read the other posts.

All of the others, I can connect to something or other.

17

I’d go with Columbus. It’s a big city but it barely makes the list for Top Five Most Famous Cities in Ohio.

18

Albuquerque. We don’t exist.

19

Huh, the only reason Minneapolis/Saint Paul didn’t make the list is beacuse one is under 400k, and one is under 300k. No respect I tell ya, no respect!

20

I live in Charlotte now and I’d say we’re definitely in the running. I moved here from NYC and was quite surprised at the lack of “identity.” There’s been tremendous growth here in the last 20 years (if you don’t know, Charlotte is the 2nd largest banking center in the U.S. these days.) I’m not sure anything happened here before that growth since the Revolutionary War though. There’s no real local cuisine they can call their own. I suppose NASCAR counts for something. Even our NFL team is named for two states, not the city they play in. No major college presence (UNC Charlotte is here, but gets over-shadowed by Chapel Hill, Duke, NC State and even Appalachian State University.)