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How did so many people get so confused about urban sprawl? Los Angeles is one of the densest cities in the US. It is the opposite of sprawl. Neither Houston nor Dallas sprawl. In both those cities development goes from the center out to the edge and then stops. Same story with Las Vegas and Phoenix. The cities that sprawl are Boston, NY, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, Atlanta, St Louis, Detroit and to a lesser extent Chicago. Sprawl means that development leapfrogs itself and extends out into the countryside with undeveloped patches in between.
The first cities that sprang to mind are consolidated city/counties: Jacksonville, Augusta, Nashville, along with cities like OKC and KC which - during the 1960s annexed hundreds of square miles, in anticipation of development that never happened. With some of these, you're talking about cities that encompass 600-800 square miles, much of which is undeveloped rural land, but also speckled with long-distance suburbs surrounded by countryside.
Suffolk and Chesapeake, VA would also fit the description in the above paragraph. They are both "independent cities" (like Baltimore, Carson City and St Louis, along with all "cities" (not towns) in Virginia. suffolk was created when the town of Nansemond merged with Nasemond County (which no longer exists), and the newly consolidated county then merged with the city of Suffolk, which was the center of population. at 700+ square miles, Suffolk is starting to become speckled with widely scattered exurb-development, though at least 80% of the city of Suffolk remains rural.
Likewise next door in Chesapeake, which was created ~1970 via a merger between the city of South Norfolk and the remainder of Norfolk County. as is as the case with Suffolk, both cities were then declared independent cities, and the "counties" became extinct. And in both of those cities, far less than half of their land area is urban. There a fair bit of suburban cookie-cutter stuff, especially in Chesapeake. But the majority of both is rural land, speckled with small, exurb commuter neighborhoods.
Among large cities Atlanta has the lowest percentage of MSA population living within its UA; think Houston is second. Though this is also imperfect but somewhat interesting. Miami on the other hand has 100% of the MSA population contained within the US; only large citiy in the US to have this.
No New York City metro or Chicago land on the list? Huge sprawlers.
I'd say it goes like this, in terms of urbanized/suburban built-up area, in terms of shear area covered:
1) New York City
2) Los Angeles
3) Chicago
4) Atlanta
5) Dallas-Fort Worth
6) Philadelphia
7) Houston
8) Detroit
9) Phoenix
10) Washington D.C.
Next: San Francisco Bay, Seattle, Boston, Minneapolis-St.Paul, Miami
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