According to ehuacom, Des Moines (pronunciation: dɪˈmɔɪn) is the capital and largest city of the state of Iowa in the United States. The city has 212,000 inhabitants and an agglomeration of 719,000 inhabitants (2021). The city is located in the middle of the state.
Introduction
According to mcat-test-centers, Des Moines is located in the geographic center of the state of Iowa, at the intersection of two major Interstate Highways. Des Moines is located 200 miles east of Omaha and 500 miles west of Chicago. It is by some distance the largest city in Iowa, as well as the largest metropolitan area. The urban region measures approximately 35 kilometers from east to west and 30 kilometers from north to south. Surrounding the city are several suburbs, such as West Des Moines, Urbandale, Altoona and Ankeny.
Des Moines is located at the confluence of the Des Moines River and the Raccoon River. The city center is mainly located on the larger Des Moines River. The banks of the rivers are somewhat wooded, the region around them is, apart from buildings, mainly flat with monotonous prairies without many differences in height. Des Moines is located 260 meters above sea level. However, the distance to the sea is more than 1,300 kilometers.
The city is known in national politics as the first primary in the race for the White House is being held in Iowa. The city has little heavy industry but does have the necessary logistics companies due to its location at a crossroads between an important north-south route (I-35) and an important east-west route (I-80). The city also has a fairly large center given the size of the conurbation, with a number of skyscrapers and a skywalk system between buildings. Des Moines is quite an important center for financial institutions.
The city is located in the heart of North America, far from the sea. The city has a hot and humid continental climate in summer, with cold winters with lots of snow. The conurbation measures 30 kilometers from east to west and 20 kilometers from north to south.
Des Moines was a slow-growing city for a long time, but growth accelerated from 1990. The growth of Polk County, which contains most of the metropolitan area, has been above the US average for 20 years. The suburb of Ankeny is one of the fastest growing larger towns in the United States.
Road network
The highway network of Des Moines.
The city is the center of the region’s major thoroughfares, with Interstate 35 running from Kansas City to Minneapolis, and Interstate 80 running from Omaha to Chicago. Both roads are double -numbered along the north side of Des Moines. Interstate 235 accesses the center of town, terminating at both ends at I-35/I-80. In addition, SR-5 forms the southern perimeter and US 65 the eastern perimeter.
The city is a typical Midwest city, and is quite spacious, but not as spacious as, for example, Kansas City. With the exception of the center, the road network is a large grid pattern, in the center there is a finer grid pattern. The grid pattern is integrated with the grid pattern throughout the state, with intersecting roads on every mile. There are 13 bridges over the Des Moines River.
History
The 2008 modernized I-235.
By 1950, Des Moines had an urban area of about 200,000 inhabitants, and was a relatively insignificant city by the standards of the time. It is, however, the capital of the state of Iowa, and was located at a major intersection of thoroughfares; US 6 as an east-west route from Omaha to Chicago, and US 65 and US 69 as a north-south route from Kansas City to Minneapolis. Due to the limited size of the urban area, Des Moines is one of the few cities where no highway was built to create the Interstate Highway system.
This changed when funding for the Interstate Highway system was released from federal funds. Direct efforts were made to build highways, with the I-35 and I-80 forming the through axes. On September 21, 1958, the first freeway was opened, part of I-35 along the west and north sides of Des Moines, mainly through suburban area. By 1960, I-35 and I-80 through what is now the urban area were completed. However, Des Moines was not yet connected to the national highway network. In 1961, the first section of I-235, Des Moines’s first and for now only truly urban highway, opened. This link was built during the 1960s, connecting the urban core of Des Moines to I-35 and I-80.
In 1970 the urban area had grown to a limited extent compared to 1950, with about 80,000 inhabitants to 280,000 inhabitants in total. Growth was quite slow, especially in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, but from the 1990s onwards the urban area started to grow faster, partly because many residents moved from rural areas to the city of Des Moines. This trend is similar to the state of Iowa as a whole. Although the population growth was certainly not very impressive, the region grew to about 575,000 inhabitants in 2010. In the mid-1990s, construction of a second ring road began, for the time being only on the south and east sides of Des Moines. In 1996, the first part of this, which has the US 65 as number, opened on the east side of Des Moines. The rest of the ring was opened between 1998 and 2002. This made the first new highway in more than 30 years a fact. Des Moines has no highways that were planned and not built in the 1960s or 1970s, for example, partly because it was clear at the time that the city was not growing particularly fast. There are currently no plans to build new highways.
Since the 1990s, I-35 has been gradually widened to 2×3 lanes through the Des Moines region. This was completed in the Des Moines region in 2014. In the period 2002-2008, the I-235 through the center was widened and modernized.
Congestion
There is not much congestion in Des Moines. I-235 is the busiest highway with 113,000 vehicles in 2×3 lanes. Like many cities in the Midwest, there are few traffic jams and the delay time is very limited.
