Holy crap! a "town" in NY bigger than boston &amp

Re: Holy crap! a "town" in NY bigger than boston

Patrick said:
there is a town in new york that i have never heard of before with almost a million people. it is called hempstead and by population it is bigger than seattle, boston, san fran, washington DC and baltimore. although it has about 2.5 times as much land area as boston, this is still impressive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Hempstead,_New_York#Demographics

This isn't really a town per say. It's on long island and nobody really claims they're from hempstead. Rather there are individual villages that comprise this pseudo county. Rockville, Oceanside, Baldwin to name a few. The area is a very dense and would suck to live or grow up in. Boston is such a better place to live than NYC, not only in the city, but in the suburbs. There are actually fields and woods. not strip malls, congestion, endless grids and bagel shops everywhere.
 
EDIT: BosDev beat me to it, but I'll leave in all the now-redundant statements in my post...

It's somewhat misleading, because the "town" label doesn't mean much anymore. The list of villages at the bottom of the wiki page are really what any normal person would call a regular town/village (some are almost mini cities) and people refer to their locale by those names. For instance, 90% of my friends from Long Island live in either Hewlett, Woodmere or Oceanside, not, "The incorporated village of Hewlett in the town of Hempstead in the county of Nassau" ect.

But for statistical purposes, yeah it is pretty impressive. Even more impressive is how dense development is down there, primarily in Nassau County. It is decidedly suburban, but it's the densest American Suburban you'll ever see. For miles in any direction, there isn't a single undeveloped tract of land. Just strip malls, the occasional turn-of-the-century downtown area, and lots of single-family detached housing on quarter-, maybe half-acre lots.

This is Nassau County in a nutshell
 
ah, thanks for clearing that up. i ran across it when i was looking up framingham, mass, which is sometimes called the largest town in america. then wikipedia said that was incorrect because of hempstead....very odd they should call it a 'town.'
 
is Hempstead governed by a representative town meeting, like Framingham? Do any of its villages have their own elected governments?
 
Yes, the town of Hempstead has a Supervisor and 6 council members. Judging by their website ( http://toh.li/ ) it seems it functions in the same way as any township would. And yes, most, if not all, of the villages and hamlets have their own mayors, trustees, and all the typical boards (zoning, landmarks, housing, ect). But ultimately, the Nassau County government is what is most influential down there. They have a County Executive and a 19-member legislature.

..As it turns out, there's only 3 "towns" in the entire county: Hempstead, North Hempstead and Oyster Bay.
 
There is a Hempstead town- I grew up there. I moved to NH when I was still pretty young though, so I'm not entirely ruined, haha. But there is also the Hempstead township or something like that, which I don't really get since there is also Nassau County... it seems redundant. But I haven't been there in a long time so I don't really know that much about it. And yes, Nassau County is unbelievably developed- sickeningly so.

Hempstead (the town) has a population of about 55,000 I think. I could be wrong though.
 
Town of Hempstead, New York: Hempstead is a town in Nassau County, New York, United States. As of the 2000 census, the town population was 755,924. The 2004 population estimate is 755,785.

The Town of Hempstead is one of the three towns in Nassau County. There are twenty-two incorporated villages completely or partially in the town. Hempstead is the most populous town in the state and the nation with a population about the same as San Francisco and larger than Boston, Baltimore, or Seattle. It occupies the southwest part of the county.
 
^ is there a 'town' named hempstead in addition to the one posted above, that is smaller?
 
Yes, it's rather confusing. There is the Town of Hempstead, one of three "towns" in Nassau county. But really the "villages" are what people would say is the "town" they are from. For example, nobody from Seaford would say they are from the Town of Hempstead, I bet many people on LI don't even know what town they are in. To make it more confusing, there is a village of Hempstead in the Town of Hempstead. They should just get rid of the town system on Long Island and give whatever responsibilities the town has to the county. Nassau County, where I grew up, is a pretty terrible place to live, it is just all concrete, strip malls, malls, parking lots, highways, and subdivisions. But on the other hand, it is pretty safe, middle class, OK schools. Nassau county actually had a pretty good park system at one time, but they are not woods, fields, wetlands, etc.; more just the playground and baseball field variety park. Growing up there has made me despise sprawl and angry as I see the same patterns repeating itself here in New England. The only nice thing about LI are the beaches.
 
Yeah just to make it completely clear, there is an Incorporated Village of Hempstead in the Township of Hempstead, one of three townships in Nassau County.....got that!?


Joe_Schmoe said:
Growing up there has made me despise sprawl and angry as I see the same patterns repeating itself here in New England.

Yep, New England is no exception. Long before I ever set foot on Long Island, I had been visiting my grandparents who live in Danvers and Peabody (my mother is from the Beverly area), and I was always amazed at how dense it was up there. But now that I'm first-hand familiar with LI, I almost view the development patterns of Danvers as kiddie stuff compared to the hyper-suburbia of the Island. One strip mall with purple neon after another.....
 
kz1000ps said:
Yeah just to make it completely clear, there is an Incorporated Village of Hempstead in the Township of Hempstead, one of three townships in Nassau County.....got that!?

yes, finally, thanks.
 
Ron Newman said:
is Hempstead governed by a representative town meeting, like Framingham?

I doubt it, since the Selectmen/Town Meeting form of government that we're used to is almost non-existent outside of five of the six New England states (Rhode Island towns are governed by councils). Also, the terms "Town" and "City" are have specific legal definitions in Massachusetts and are used more loosely outside of New England.
 
Joe_Schmoe said:
....The only nice thing about LI are the beaches.

That's all LI was to me...a way of escape from Manhattan to the beaches, and to go to concerts at the Coliseum.
 

Back
Top