CITY POPULATION RANKINGS!! !! !! !! !! !! !

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The City of Saint Louis has a population of about 350,000, but Saint Louis County has a population of about 1 million. The metropolitan area, as the Census Bureau defines it, has a population of about 2.9 million. As a metropolitan area, St. Louis is the 16th largest in population in the United States (source). I, for example, live in St. Louis County, which does not include the City of St. Louis (the City seceded from the County after the Civil War, following Baltimore's example).

City population figures are pretty useless for most purposes as a city is merely a political unit. (The City of London, for example, has a population of around 8,000... Yes, eight thousand.)

In the US, the figure that is most useful is that of the primary census statistical area. Here are the top 25:

1. New York-Newark-Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA - 21,961,994
2. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside, CA - 17,755,322
3. Chicago-Naperville-Michigan City, IL-IN-WI - 9,745,165
4. Washington-Baltimore-Northern Virginia, DC-MD-VA-WV - 8,241,912
5. Boston-Worcester-Manchester, MA-RI-NH - 7,476,689
6. San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA - 7,264,887
7. Dallas-Fort Worth, TX - 6,498,410
8. Philadelphia-Camden-Vineland, PA-NJ-DE-MD - 6,385,461
9. Houston-Baytown-Huntsville, TX - 5,729,027
10. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Gainesville, GA-AL - 5,626,400
11. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL - 5,413,212
12. Detroit-Warren-Flint, MI - 5,405,918
13. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ - 4,179,427
14. Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia, WA - 4,038,741
15. Minneapolis-St. Paul-St. Cloud, MN-WI - 3,538,781
16. Denver-Aurora-Boulder, CO - 2,998,878
17. San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA - 2,974,859
18. Cleveland-Akron-Elyria, OH - 2,896,968
19. St. Louis-St. Charles-Farmington, MO-IL - 2,866,517
20. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL - 2,723,949
21. Orlando-Deltona-Daytona Beach, FL - 2,693,552
22. Pittsburgh-New Castle, PA - 2,446,703
23. Sacramento-Arden-Arcade-Yuba City, CA-NV - 2,397,691
24. Charlotte-Gastonia-Salisbury, NC-SC CSA - 2,277,074
25. Cincinnati-Middletown-Wilmington, OH-KY-IN - 2,176,749

The full list of 719 primary census statistical areas is here.

My town has just over 50,000 people, and is part of the Austin metro area.

My county has just under 100,000 people.

Last edited by Tim_Tex on 17 Sep 2008, 5:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

the DC metro area is huge and quite busy- 8,241,912 people in 6.447.3 sq. mi.! making it about 1,278.4 people per sq. mi. My county alone houses over 1Million of those people! (fairfax)

Though the metro area isn't a city, the traffic is far worse than some cities that I've been to- St. Louis, MO is one. I don't like going to cities mainly because the feel of it is bad- tall buildings, to many people...

I think that population per SQ km/mile is more important than total population.

Largest cities in the world ranked by population density (1 to 125)

http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html

I tried to paste this but it went all weird

That's not particularly useful, or important. The top three cities are all Indian sub-continent and cities in the developing world dominate the list, because they are more crowded than those in the developed world, with USA and Canada bunched right down at the bottom, for no other reason than urban form. The top US city in this list is 90th! Out of the world's three 'Alpha' global cities (the three most dominant economically, culturally and politically) London is 43rd, Tokyo 50th, New York 114th!

As for the original list, covering the US, cities in the western half of the country have an advantage over those in the eastern half. This is because in the east they were settled earlier, with more cities nearby that had and sometimes still have separate city limits. These cities have not had as much space to grow. In the west they were settled later and had more space to grow, giving an advantage to cities like Phoenix, San Antonio and Houston whose metropolitan areas are not necessarily always bigger than eastern ones.

[quote="dougn"]City population figures are pretty useless for most purposes as a city is merely a political unit. (The City of London, for example, has a population of around 8,000... Yes, eight thousand.)]

That's right,and for anyone wondering I can add that Greater London is made up of the
relatively small City of London plus 32 other
units.Most of the well-known tourist attractions
in London are technically in the City of
Westminster.

And the London metropolitan area is considerably larger than Greater London.

Eurostat estimates the population of Greater London in 2004 at 7,429,200 and that of the London Larger Urban Zone at 11,917,000.

Check out City-Data.com it's an awesome city info site with forum!

We are studying the discrepancies between city limit and metro area populations in my urban geography class.

...Huh .

In your list, the list uses CMA ("the Metropolis") populations while the first list uses the city proper.

I remember National Geographic having a map back in the day called 'the Reaches of New York'..which included a good part of CT, NJ, etc...

El Paso is probably considering actual inhabitants. It's surrounded by something called 'colonias', where people have taken plywood, corrugated metal, junk, set up bootleg water and power, and live in something like a Mad Max sort of world (only with gas). Back in the 90s, when I last visited there, they said the population was about 600,000.

Raleigh is growing into a glom of a metropolis, with Chapel Hill and Durham growing together, surrounded by Cary (Containment Area for Relocated Yankees... When they become a single unit, there will be over a million there...

because what you have posted up there would be the greater metropolitan area as opposed to the inner city area.
all the cities in you post will have bigger populations written next to them than in the OP

in fact i think the rankings you put are quite old as Sydney actualy has 4.1 million people and Melbourne has 3.8 million and doesnt rank in your list

I lived in Augusta, GA years ago. For lack of better terminology Augusta took the cheesy way out to attain big city status. It originally had a population of around 45,000 or so and was the 2nd largest metropolitan area in Georgia. For a city of around 45,000 it had one heck of an impressive skyline. So how did it go from a city of around 45,000 to a city of about 185,000? It simply merged with Richmond County.