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If Toronto were in the US, what place would it have in significance among US cities?
Assuming if Ontario was part of the USA, I would place Toronto in fourth place behind NYC, LA and Chicago. My thinking is that Chicago has a more strategic central location at the southern end of Lake Michigan.
If the Greater Toronto Area were to literally just become an independent city state of the US overnight and kept everything the exact same except for the Canadian flags turning into American flags, it would be considered one of the best cities in the entire world by people on this forum.
You'd all talk about how balanced, safe, thriving, cosmopolitan, sophisticated, interesting, etc, etc, it was.
Instead -- it's Canadian so it's interest is diminished and accomplishments **** on. No matter what Toronto does it always has to be "rounded down" by City-Data members to make sure that it always and no matter what must fall behind Chicago, DC, San Fran, Boston, Miami, Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta, Philly and all 5 NYC boroughs.
Really, Toronto's metro isn't that large economically or demographically, ranking around 10 in GDP and 8 in population among US metropolitan areas. Toronto's strength will largely come from its cultural pull, which is significant, but who knows how that would change if Toronto was part of the US, instead of Canada.
Canada and the U.S. use different definitions to calculate metro areas. Canadian metros are much more constrained in area compared to their sprawling American counterparts. If Toronto were an American city using U.S. census definitions, it's metro would also include the two directly adjoining metros of Hamilton and Oshawa creating an MSA of approximately 7.2 million (according to recent estimates) and the Greater Golden Horseshoe (a heavily urbanized region akin to the Bay area or Washington-Baltimore CSA) would be a CSA containing about 9.3 million, and growing at a rate of over 100,000 per year.
By urban area definitions, Toronto is ranked fourth in the U.S. and Canada (after NYC, LA, Chicago) with 6.55 million people in an area of 883 square miles.
Moderator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is not ok
Dude, chill out. Toronto is a nice city but it is still not world class. It does not have the diversity (by U.S standards) that most cities have in the the United States. I don't know of any kind of real Hispanic or black community in Toronto either.
Toronto is just simply not impressive to most. It is not a city well known on the world stage, it is not iconic. Canadians should be proud that they have quite a large city such as Toronto in a country with such a small and mostly rural dwelling population though. That is a personal accomplishment.
NYC, LA, Wash and then I'm not sure the order of the next three...Chi/SF/Tor.
Same size as SF and smaller than Chicago. Both those 2 have more head offices but Toronto has the world's 8th largest stock exchange which still counts for something. Toronto is also a provincial capitol while SF/Chicago aren't. Toronto has a larger cultural impact than Chicago or SF in terms of Theatre and Film conversely Chicago and SF are larger transportation hubs.
Due to Washington being basically the world's largest political centre I think it beats out SF/Tor/Chicago.
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