Assuming 331M people in the USA, 164M (50%) live in a metropolitan area of at least 1.6M people. 189M people (57%) live in an area with at least 1M people. 230M (70%) live in an area with at least 500K people.
My conclusion is that most Americans do live in big cities. However, even if all big cities have restrictive shelving practices, there are still 3 out of 10 Americans (outside of the 500K cities) that do no experience these practices.
I'm in an area with 4M people and have seen the shelving practices. So I can concluded that at least 34% of Americans (who are in larger areas) have also experienced these restrictions.
I'm not sure how to consider the stats you're using here. Metropolitan areas aren't cities, the whole reason for the term is to include not just adjacent suburbs, but whole adjacent cities to major urban cities. Do we really consider an hour away and for cities over living in San Francisco?
I mean, from a European perspective who has been to the bay area semi-often, SF - San Mateo - Redwood City - Palo Alto - Mountain View - Santa Clara - San Jose is pretty clearly a continuous urban area and the fact that the subdivisions are considered separate towns and cities more an anomaly of historical origins and local government setup rather than something you would decide working from the definition of town or city.
In Europe, places that have been swallowed up by urban sprawl like that usually stop being called as such given time - no one persists in calling Chelsea, Charlton or Westminster cities now they're well inside the London urban area, and I suspect the same will happen to bay area towns and cities over the next 200 years unless it undergoes a significant population decline.
Hm. Maybe it's just from having grown up here but to me those cities are very different places — each with a dozen neighborhoods of their own. And they range from "urban" through suburban, to isolated neighborhoods. Especially when you want to consider them in terms of stores, crime rates, foot traffic etc.
Sure, but to stick with the London example, Canary Wharf, Chelsea, Westminster, Ealing and Croydon are all very different places with differing densities, land uses, socioeconomic makeup, etc.
The definition of an MSA is basically the "economic gravity well" of an urban areas. This is casually obvious just by looking at the nice green map they give you on that page.
If you think some guy 2hr northwest of Bangor or 3hr out of Vegas into the Nevada desert is in an urban area I'll sell you some beach front property in Arizona.
Assuming 331M people in the USA, 164M (50%) live in a metropolitan area of at least 1.6M people. 189M people (57%) live in an area with at least 1M people. 230M (70%) live in an area with at least 500K people.
My conclusion is that most Americans do live in big cities. However, even if all big cities have restrictive shelving practices, there are still 3 out of 10 Americans (outside of the 500K cities) that do no experience these practices.
I'm in an area with 4M people and have seen the shelving practices. So I can concluded that at least 34% of Americans (who are in larger areas) have also experienced these restrictions.