US cities that surprised you with their population. (estimates, rankings)

[kidphilly]

Originally Posted by masssachoicetts

Boston.. It feels like a city that would be 1.1 -1.4 million but its small border sizes only allow so many people.


I thought Miami would have 750-800k and Jersey City would have 400-500k.

Hudson county NJ is 46 sq miles (including JC, Hoboken etc.) and ~700K nearly 15K ppsm


If you add just Newark (it attaches to but Newark is in Essex county) its another almost 300K and another 24 sq miles


so 70 sq miles @ ~1M people


Hudson and Essex counties combined are about 1.5M (slightly smaller than Philly) and about 172 sq miles (a little larger than Philadelphia) These are the non "city" NYC NJ next set of counties, crazy how big and dense NYC extends when you think about it


Now add Bergen county NJ and the almost 1M (2.5M total in the three counties) people and 400 to sq miles (larger than the city of Houston in 33% less land) city boundaries don't mean much really but stats can always be interesting

[Boston Shudra]

Originally Posted by Maintainschaos

Phoenix. Definitely Phoenix.

It’s worth pointing out, I think, that the city of Phoenix covers about as much land as half the state of Rhode Island.

And if Wikipedia can be believed, Phoenix’s metropolitan area is ~12x the size of RI.

[Bobdreamz]

Originally Posted by masssachoicetts

Boston.. It feels like a city that would be 1.1 -1.4 million but its small border sizes only allow so many people.


I thought Miami would have 750-800k and Jersey City would have 400-500k.

Miami only has 35 square miles which is smaller than Boston & SF.
With about 450,000 residents (estimate) it's also one of the most densely populated cities in the south with a average of 12,604 people per square mile.
The structural layout of the city does make it feel like a bigger city though.

[Buckeye614]

I think many people have inaccurate perceptions of Columbus.

The MSA has over 2 million people putting in the same group as cities like Las Vegas, KCMO, Indianapolis, and Nashville.

So while it's not as "major" of a city as the city limit population might suggest it's far from being insignificant.

[908Boi]

Columbus is much bigger than i thought it would be
Atlanta and Miami are much smaller than i thought it would be.

[jbcmh81]

Originally Posted by YIMBY

Is it really that surprising? Columbus is massive in terms of land area; it's over 215 sq miles. Cities like like Minneapolis (55 sq miles) and Atlanta (133 sq miles) are smaller in terms of land area and population, but feel and look much larger.

Based on the land area size of the top 50 cities, Columbus' size is about the average- right around 200sq.m.

[jbcmh81]

Originally Posted by Matt Marcinkiewicz

Ever been to Columbus? It's about as nondescript as it gets. Even by Ohio standards it's nondescript. Can't really say the same for San Francisco.

It's an apples to oranges comparison... but based on size. SF's metro and urbanized area are significantly larger. It has nothing to do with your subjective view.

[Nn2036]

Originally Posted by eddie gein

And it's opposite in the case of Tucson. When you add in the part of Pima County that is actually nothing but an extension of Tucson the population is right at one million.

Tucson feels smaller than a 1 mil metro

[jjbradleynyc]

Definitely these--

*Greenville, SC only has 60k roughly in city, but feels like a metro of a million (as someone on here said)

*Miami city small, Atlanta city small too, relative to metro sizes

*St Louis amount of population loss over the years, so small now relative to metro size

*San Antonio so many people in city, seems maybe half that.

*New Orleans seems like it would have more people than it's current 390k roughly

[BrooklynJo]

Columbus Ohio for me. Was shocked at how much people live there. Really thought it was a city with like 100K people. Will visit this summer hopefully or fall!