Major cities in a given distance

October 7, 2006 10:46 PM

An odd search question; how would I go about looking up something like, "Give me a list of major cities (100,000 population or more) with 2000km of Tulsa, OK". My googlefu is failing me.
posted by drleary to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Response by poster: Should be "within 200km of Tulsa, OK". That's what I get for not reading the preview. Sorry. Thanks in advance for everyone's help, by the way.
posted by drleary at 10:53 PM on October 7, 2006

For such a specific query, you could perform it with a map quicker than a Google query (perhaps using Google searches / Wikipedia to look up the population numbers if your map lacks them). That's a pretty small radius from Tulsa.

That's the pragmatic answer rather than the 'how you can technically do it' answer, of course.
posted by wackybrit at 11:17 PM on October 7, 2006

Find the intersection of
1) cities in the blue column on this page, and under 154 miles from Tulsa, and
2) this list of cities by population.

(What did I google? "list of major cities (100,000 population" (copied form your question, complete with the open parenthesis, no typing required) and "Mileage Table oklahoma", and to convert km to mi, "metric converter")
posted by orthogonality at 11:19 PM on October 7, 2006

Response by poster: damn it. "within 2000km."

The query should read "Give me a list of major cities (100,000 population or more) within 2000km of Tulsa, OK"

Sorry again.
posted by drleary at 11:21 PM on October 7, 2006

Go to Census.gov
posted by mad_little_monkey at 6:16 AM on October 8, 2006

It might just be simpler to do this the old-fashioned way. Most maps from, say, Rand McNally use different symbols and different font sizes for cities of different sizes, so they shouldn't be hard to pick out. I'd simply buy a road map of the U.S. and get out your compass.
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:46 AM on October 8, 2006

A radius of 2000 km about Tulsa includes most of the United States, as well as portions of Canada & Mexico. With that in mind:

The cities on this list which are farther than 2000 km from Tulsa, OK are:

• All cities in Alaska & Hawaii.
• Coeur D'Alene, ID.
• All cities in Maine except Portland.
• All cities in Orgeon except Baker, Klamath Falls, and Pendleton.
• All cities in Washington except Walla Walla.

The cities on this list which are nearer than 2000 km from Tulsa, OK are:

• Lethbridge & Medicine Hat, AB.
• All cities in Manitoba except Churchill, Flin Flon, and The Pas.
• All cities in Ontario.
• Granby, Hull, Montréal, St. Jean, St. Jerôme, Val D'Or, and Valleyfield, QC.
• All cities in Saskatchewan except North Battleford & Prince Albert.

Finally, all five of the Mexican cities listed here (Guadalajara, Merida, Mexico City, Monterrey, and Vera Cruz) are within 2000 km of Tulsa.

You'll have to cross-reference these with population, and you'll need a better list of Mexican cities, but this should get you started.

Method: copy the latitude/longitude info into an Excel spreadsheet; use spherical trigonometry to convert these into great-circle distances; filter by distances greater than 2000 km.

In conclusion, I really need a hobby.
posted by Johnny Assay at 10:40 AM on October 8, 2006

Microft's Mappoint is designed to help with problems like this, I believe you can download a demo.
posted by hatsix at 6:11 PM on October 8, 2006

P.S. the list of major cities from Johnny Assay aren't major in the quantitative sense... they're major in the qualitative sense...

For example, in South Dakota, the list has:
Aberdeen AP
Brookings
Huron AP
Mitchell
Pierre AP
Rapid City AP (S)
Sioux Falls AP
Watertown AP
Yankton

Only one of those has a population of >100,000 (Sioux Falls)... most are between 20,000 and 60,000... though they are all "major" towns.
posted by hatsix at 6:16 PM on October 8, 2006