There were 126 students in my HS the year i graduated. 26 in my graduating class and I went to Kindergarten with 16 of them.
I used to work in five counties: Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino (bigger than some states), Ventura and sometimes San Diego.
There were probably 20 million people there.
Now I've cut back to just a portion of Los Angeles county, and mostly within H.C.'s 25 mile radius, but there are still millions of people.
We probably have more homeless people in Los Angeles than most cities have total people (56,000?ñ)!
The StL Metro population is about 2.8M and there are about 45 surveying firms in the region. My work region though - in all honesty, extends easterly to Lexington, KY, South to Memphis, West to Topeka and North to Chicago. Unfortunately, any given day includes a commute of 350 miles. I would attempt a backflip to work only 25 miles from "home base".
N10,000, E7,000, Z100.00
PLS - IL, MO, AR, KS, MN, KY
I must be an extreme case. 95% of my work is within 6 miles with a population of 4-5K.
I have a city of 125k surrounding my office, but we only do commercial properties in town.?ÿ I actually live in an area that is a bit odd.?ÿ The county I am in an office at has about 200k people.?ÿ Next door, the county I live in, had fewer than 10k last count.?ÿ (That does allow my county to qualify for several grants, BTW, because of the vast difference between the two)?ÿ As for my actual work area, the city I office in is most likely the largest thing I see.?ÿ We have worked in Lubbock, which has more kids in college than I would ever want to live near.?ÿ I can go to a job, and literally not see anyone else unless I choose to have breakfast or dinner in the small town "down the road".?ÿ I then have a mild culture shock when I return, usually on a friday night, to my office, and am surrounded by more cars than I had been surrounded by cattle for several days.?ÿ I should note, that if I have to drive on the interstate, I do see more traffic, but many of the highways around here are just roads that don't have a city for many, many, miles along their path.?ÿ If I broke down our business, I would guess we have about 10% commercial properties, 15% working for local governments on their projects, 35% on boundaries less than 1000 acres, and the remaining 40% on boundary surveys of over 1000 acres.
We have 2 offices in SW Ontario, Canada and I work out of both as I live smack dab between them.?ÿ My commute is ~180 km round trip each day.?ÿ Each of the them, with their surrounding areas, has a population of 300 000 - 500 000.
We routinely go beyond 25 miles.?ÿ Side note--if it's within 1.5 hr of the office, we bid the job.?ÿ That opens us up to Toronto.?ÿ ?ÿ2.7 million (city itself) to 9 million (Golden Horseshoe region) for that metropolis.