So, aside from the Palo Alto result, this is clearly a greatly preferred spec. I think N>=12 (just over half of the 23 years) is fair as a cut off. Also Portland, OR, maximizes at 4 hulls on both measures with N=15...
=====Revisiting Portland=====
Portland doesn't have 4 clusters for any year before 2000, or for 2007 and 2009. For 5 year multiples the layers are as follows:
2000 15
2005 19
2010 19
2015 33
[[File:Portland4HullsLowestHighest.png|right|300px]] The resulting map has much more adjacency than overlap. Measuring the nearest hull edge and center distance for each hull in a year to each hull in the next year and averaging would compute two measures of hull persistence. The overlap area from year to year, either in total or as a fraction of the second year's (or smaller years) total area, would provide another measure of persistence.
===Image Analysis===