7 ms·

Actually, apart from the largest US cities your average european city is larger. The US doesn't even have 10 cities which are above 1 million people.

mc32 3y ago
That’s only if you count within strict city limits. Metro areas, not to mention MSAs consists of larger pops.
- alephxyz 3y ago
  Right. That factoid is only true because cities in the US tend to avoid mergers. The US had 62 statistical areas with a pop. over a million in 2020 (plus San Juan, PR).
Beijinger 3y ago
"The US doesn't even have 10 cities which are above 1 million people. reply" I did not believe this and googled it. It is true. 1 Million would be tiny in China. Province.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  There is no significance in counting only the people within an arbitrary geographic boundary that is a city’s legal jurisdiction. An airport serves a metropolitan region, composed of many cities, and there are at least 50 with 1M+ people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Counting "city population" is nearly a pointless exercise. What matters is the metro area, otherwise you get some pretty useless results. Austin, TX is tenth by city size in the US, with just under a million people, while San Francisco is 17th, with about 800k. But Austin is a much bigger percentage of the total Austin metro area, while the Bay area is ~8-10 million people total. As such, SF feels like a much bigger city in nearly every capacity.
  - _fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
    Yeah, it is basically always is a bit pointless without context. Same with e.g. Paris. Paris itself is "tiny". But Île-de-France (the Paris region) has over 12 million people.
    - walthamstow 3y ago
      Another one: just 7000 people live in the City of London
      - Ekaros 3y ago
        And Vatican has population of 524... With Rome's metropolitan area being 4,3 million... But maybe that is stupid comparison.
        kirubakaran 3y ago
        Vatican also has 5.9 Popes per square mile, highest in the world
      - myrmidon 3y ago
        This is disingenuous; "City of London" is a tiny, central district of London. It is most emphatically NOT "London, the city", in exactly the same way that Civic center is not the city of San Francisco. It's just confusingly named.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        walthamstow 3y ago
        There is no other definition of London, the city. There's the Greater London region, which is 9m people, but that's it. Parliament, for example, is in the City of Westminster, one of 32 boroughs which (+ the City) make up Greater London.
- rockostrich 3y ago
  Part of it is our definition of cities versus metro areas. Boston's population is technically only 650k but Boston proper doesn't even include Cambridge which is like not including one of the boroughs when talking about NYC's population. Granted, we still have a lot less metro areas with over 1 million people but there are still ~50 of them.
  - dividefuel 3y ago
    Is this something fairly unique to the US or do other countries do this too? that is, having a city boundary that's relatively small compared to the metro area.
    - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
      I don't know if it's common to other countries, but a big factor in the US is race and class. There was a ton of "white flight" in the US starting in the 60s with white middle class and above fleeing cities to the suburbs. As such, they specifically did not want their adjacent town to be annexed by the major city. In plays out pretty comically in Austin TX in my opinion. You have these teeny affluent enclaves (search for "Sunset Valley", "Rollingwood" and "Westlake Hills" near/inside Austin) that anyone else would consider "part of Austin", but they don't vote in city elections or pay city taxes (but they certainly take advantage of all the benefits of being close to Austin...)
    - ghaff 3y ago
      Well, Paris is either very dense or not very depending on what arrondissements you're counting. London has The City, that doesn't even have many residents and then there's really the city core and greater London.
    - Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
      In Spain it happens as well. The official city population numbers quoted by most sources are actually the population of the city's municipality. Sometimes municipalities are large, including rural areas and small towns close to the city, while other times they are smaller and leave outside areas that are effectively boroughs of the city (you walk down a street and are in a different municipality, without even going through any non-urban area). Some years ago there was a project to merge municipalities, focusing especially on cases like that, but it failed spectacularly because it required consent from all municipalities involved and the smaller ones never wanted to merge (partly because it's advantageous for them to not pay big city taxes but still use their services, but I suspect mainly because mayors don't want to just give up their position and go find another job). This makes rankings by population rather biased and spawns many endless discussions on whether city X is bigger than its rival city Y (and sometimes it might actually have real-life consequences, say, when the central government comes up with some funds for cities of size greater than some threshold).
- throwup238 3y ago
  That’s because Chinese cities are bigger than US counties let alone individual cities. If you look at the list of most dense “cities proper” [1] China doesn’t even make the list because all of their cities include huge swathes of rural land. Beijing for example is over 6,000 square miles while NYC is only 300 sq mi and the city of LA is only 470 sq mi. The US has dozens of counties with more than a million people [2] and most are much smaller than Beijing or other Chinese cities. The only city that is comparable to an American one is Hong Kong, the rest are much bigger. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population_density https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_pop... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_populous_counties_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_populous_co...
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sremani 3y ago
You are missing the forest for the trees. US cities are smaller in a pedantic sense. That is why planners and intelligent people use Metro area statistics for population, traffic, infrastructure planning etc. Dallas population about 1 million. Dallas metro - 7.7 million. This is an important distinction missed out.
- werdnapk 3y ago
  That just goes to show you how sparse american cities are built... the sprawl just builds up outside of the city with low density.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
    Not that I disagree with the sprawl assessment, it’s just that I think many cities have comically small boundaries on the map.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    The sprawl isn't always low density. Normally it is but some have dense areas.
- dotps1 3y ago
  European airports have train service to most destinations. Nobody cares if the airport is 45 minutes away because going back and forth is made seamlessly easy, and you can eat or read the news during the trip.

mc32 3y ago

That’s only if you count within strict city limits. Metro areas, not to mention MSAs consists of larger pops.

alephxyz 3y ago
Right. That factoid is only true because cities in the US tend to avoid mergers. The US had 62 statistical areas with a pop. over a million in 2020 (plus San Juan, PR).

Beijinger 3y ago

"The US doesn't even have 10 cities which are above 1 million people. reply" I did not believe this and googled it. It is true. 1 Million would be tiny in China. Province.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
There is no significance in counting only the people within an arbitrary geographic boundary that is a city’s legal jurisdiction. An airport serves a metropolitan region, composed of many cities, and there are at least 50 with 1M+ people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Counting "city population" is nearly a pointless exercise. What matters is the metro area, otherwise you get some pretty useless results. Austin, TX is tenth by city size in the US, with just under a million people, while San Francisco is 17th, with about 800k. But Austin is a much bigger percentage of the total Austin metro area, while the Bay area is ~8-10 million people total. As such, SF feels like a much bigger city in nearly every capacity.
- _fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
  Yeah, it is basically always is a bit pointless without context. Same with e.g. Paris. Paris itself is "tiny". But Île-de-France (the Paris region) has over 12 million people.
  - walthamstow 3y ago
    Another one: just 7000 people live in the City of London
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      And Vatican has population of 524... With Rome's metropolitan area being 4,3 million... But maybe that is stupid comparison.
      - kirubakaran 3y ago
        Vatican also has 5.9 Popes per square mile, highest in the world
    - myrmidon 3y ago
      This is disingenuous; "City of London" is a tiny, central district of London. It is most emphatically NOT "London, the city", in exactly the same way that Civic center is not the city of San Francisco. It's just confusingly named.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - walthamstow 3y ago
        There is no other definition of London, the city. There's the Greater London region, which is 9m people, but that's it. Parliament, for example, is in the City of Westminster, one of 32 boroughs which (+ the City) make up Greater London.
rockostrich 3y ago
Part of it is our definition of cities versus metro areas. Boston's population is technically only 650k but Boston proper doesn't even include Cambridge which is like not including one of the boroughs when talking about NYC's population. Granted, we still have a lot less metro areas with over 1 million people but there are still ~50 of them.
- dividefuel 3y ago
  Is this something fairly unique to the US or do other countries do this too? that is, having a city boundary that's relatively small compared to the metro area.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    I don't know if it's common to other countries, but a big factor in the US is race and class. There was a ton of "white flight" in the US starting in the 60s with white middle class and above fleeing cities to the suburbs. As such, they specifically did not want their adjacent town to be annexed by the major city. In plays out pretty comically in Austin TX in my opinion. You have these teeny affluent enclaves (search for "Sunset Valley", "Rollingwood" and "Westlake Hills" near/inside Austin) that anyone else would consider "part of Austin", but they don't vote in city elections or pay city taxes (but they certainly take advantage of all the benefits of being close to Austin...)
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Well, Paris is either very dense or not very depending on what arrondissements you're counting. London has The City, that doesn't even have many residents and then there's really the city core and greater London.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
    In Spain it happens as well. The official city population numbers quoted by most sources are actually the population of the city's municipality. Sometimes municipalities are large, including rural areas and small towns close to the city, while other times they are smaller and leave outside areas that are effectively boroughs of the city (you walk down a street and are in a different municipality, without even going through any non-urban area). Some years ago there was a project to merge municipalities, focusing especially on cases like that, but it failed spectacularly because it required consent from all municipalities involved and the smaller ones never wanted to merge (partly because it's advantageous for them to not pay big city taxes but still use their services, but I suspect mainly because mayors don't want to just give up their position and go find another job). This makes rankings by population rather biased and spawns many endless discussions on whether city X is bigger than its rival city Y (and sometimes it might actually have real-life consequences, say, when the central government comes up with some funds for cities of size greater than some threshold).
throwup238 3y ago
That’s because Chinese cities are bigger than US counties let alone individual cities. If you look at the list of most dense “cities proper” [1] China doesn’t even make the list because all of their cities include huge swathes of rural land. Beijing for example is over 6,000 square miles while NYC is only 300 sq mi and the city of LA is only 470 sq mi. The US has dozens of counties with more than a million people [2] and most are much smaller than Beijing or other Chinese cities. The only city that is comparable to an American one is Hong Kong, the rest are much bigger. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population_density https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_pop... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_populous_counties_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_populous_co...

deleted 3y ago

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sremani 3y ago

You are missing the forest for the trees. US cities are smaller in a pedantic sense. That is why planners and intelligent people use Metro area statistics for population, traffic, infrastructure planning etc. Dallas population about 1 million. Dallas metro - 7.7 million. This is an important distinction missed out.

werdnapk 3y ago
That just goes to show you how sparse american cities are built... the sprawl just builds up outside of the city with low density.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  Not that I disagree with the sprawl assessment, it’s just that I think many cities have comically small boundaries on the map.
- bluGill 3y ago
  The sprawl isn't always low density. Normally it is but some have dense areas.
dotps1 3y ago
European airports have train service to most destinations. Nobody cares if the airport is 45 minutes away because going back and forth is made seamlessly easy, and you can eat or read the news during the trip.