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Baltimore would have consolidate Owings Mills (30k) to jump Louisville with it's new land area sitting at 89 sq/mi
If the city add Towson (55k) or Dundalk (62k) (which are physically closer then ^) it would jump Las Vegas, Memphis & Portland in one swoop and the land area would sit at 94.3 sq/mi & 93.2 sq/mi (respectively)
Cook County alone has more people than the city of LA, by over a million. Roughly, Chicago (2.7 mil) + suburbs (2.5 mil) = Cook (5.2 mil). LA is basically at 4.0 mil, so 1.3 mil of suburban Cook would have to be incorporated.
Some of these have sections in other counties, but whatever:
Elgin: 112k
Cicero: 82k
Arlington Heights: 75k
Schaumburg: 74k
Evanston: 74k
Palatine: 68k
Skokie: 63k
Des Plaines: 59k
Berwyn: 55k
Mount Prospect: 54k
Oak Park: 52k
Glenview: 47k
Streamwood: 39k
Park Ridge: 37k
Calumet City: 36k
Northbrook: 33k
Elk Grove Village: 32k
Chicago Heights: 30k
Niles: 29k
Burbank: 29k
Lansing: 28k
Wilmette: 27k
Melrose Park: 25k
Harvey: 25k
Elmwood Park: 24k
Rolling Meadows: 24k
Maywood: 24k
Blue Island: 23k
Morton Grove: 23k
Dolton: 23k
South Holland: 22k
Evergreen Park: 20k
Matteson: 19k
Homewood: 19k
Alsip: 19k
Bellwood: 19k
Deerfield: 19k
Brookfield: 18k
Bensenville: 18k
Palos Hills: 17k
Lemont: 17k
Country Club Hills: 17k
Bridgeview: 16k
Prospect Heights: 16k
La Grange: 15k
The sheer number of municipalities I had to add up to get to 1.3 mil really makes the "let's annex all of suburban Cook" movement more appealing.
Cook County alone has more people than the city of LA, by over a million. Roughly, Chicago (2.7 mil) + suburbs (2.5 mil) = Cook (5.2 mil). LA is basically at 4.0 mil, so 1.3 mil of suburban Cook would have to be incorporated.
Some of these have sections in other counties, but whatever:
Elgin: 112k
Cicero: 82k
Arlington Heights: 75k
Schaumburg: 74k
Evanston: 74k
Palatine: 68k
Skokie: 63k
Des Plaines: 59k
Berwyn: 55k
Mount Prospect: 54k
Oak Park: 52k
Glenview: 47k
Streamwood: 39k
Park Ridge: 37k
Calumet City: 36k
Northbrook: 33k
Elk Grove Village: 32k
Chicago Heights: 30k
Niles: 29k
Burbank: 29k
Lansing: 28k
Wilmette: 27k
Melrose Park: 25k
Harvey: 25k
Elmwood Park: 24k
Rolling Meadows: 24k
Maywood: 24k
Blue Island: 23k
Morton Grove: 23k
Dolton: 23k
South Holland: 22k
Evergreen Park: 20k
Matteson: 19k
Homewood: 19k
Alsip: 19k
Bellwood: 19k
Deerfield: 19k
Brookfield: 18k
Bensenville: 18k
Palos Hills: 17k
Lemont: 17k
Country Club Hills: 17k
Bridgeview: 16k
Prospect Heights: 16k
La Grange: 15k
The sheer number of municipalities I had to add up to get to 1.3 mil really makes the "let's annex all of suburban Cook" movement more appealing.
That would make for a very not-dense city of 5,500 per square mile.
If Philadelphia annexed just the municipalities bordering West Philadelphia south of City Avenue: Upper Darby, Darby, Yeadon, and Folcroft, that would put the city firmly back in 5th place with approx 1,700,000 for the next few years at least.
If Washington DC reclaimed it's old boundaries (including all of Arlington and part of Alexandria), the population would be approximately 990,000 now. Possibly even 1 million.
If Boston annexed every suburb inside I 95, that would give Boston a total population of about 2.2 million. Fun fact: In 1912 this was actually planned. The city was to annex everything within 10 miles of the city center (327 square miles), but prejudices against the Irish contributed to this not happening.
If Hartford annexed West Hartford and East Hartford, the whole city would have approximately 240,000 people, firmly making it the 2nd largest city in New England.
Raleigh has several options I suppose. The largest true suburb is Cary (168,000), which would bump us up from 41st to 29th. The largest directly adjacent municipality is Durham (274,000), which would bump us up to 19th. Both together? 12th.
As it’s only about 1,000 people behind Miami, Raleigh could add any of its adjacent municipalities to surpass it.
That would make for a very not-dense city of 5,500 per square mile.
True, but it doesn’t change how functionally urban it is. It’d also probably help a lot with regional planning. There are a lot of older cities out there that can probably do with some of the mass annexation of suburbs that many of the cities of the south have done and city-county consolidation is one way to do it.
Milwaukee would just have to add my little hamlet of Shorewood (1.5 sq miles, pop. 13,000+) directly bordering the East Side to surpass Baltimore. But that would make Milwaukee about 18 sq mi bigger than Baltimore.
It drives me crazy that some cities (I'm looking at you Indianapolis) annex HUGE swaths of land so they can pretend to belong at the adult table. There really is no point at looking at city proper populations.
Stats from Wikipedia.
ETA: Good lord, Jacksonville. How many sq mi do you need?
Pittsburgh would move SEVEN spots up the list by adding Dormont and Mount Lebanon, while adding less than 7 square miles of land area.
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