is detroit a large or medium size city

[Bluefly]

Well, if I'm not mistaken, the largest city in the US by land size is Jacksonville, Florida. It just has a lot of open space outside its median sized population that is under the city's jurisdiction. At the end of the day, though, it's kind of irrelevant. It's just land. It's the size of the population that people care most about because that is what affects funding, policies, economics, etc...

More complex, though, is the political dynamics of each city. Houston, for example, continues to expand its land size and consume its suburbs into Houston proper. With the economic and race turmoil that has afflicted Detroit over the years, the stringent boundary of the city has remained because the suburbs wanted nothing to do with the problems of the city. So, while Houston has "grown" to become one of the largest cities in the country, in reality it may not be that much bigger than Detroit IF Detroit had continued to envelope Royal Oak, Ferndale, the Grosse Pointes into its city proper.

I personally think this would solve a lot of problems in the region, but people are emotionally tied to their arbitrary political boundaries.

Detroit, however, was the 4th largest city in the country by population - that's not a lie. That's what people mean.

[ChunkyMonkey]

Actually, Sitka, Alaska is the largest in the U.S. However, the most accurate way of judging how large a city is by population is by probably by CSA. City populations are skewed by cities such as Jacksonville which annex an entire county.

List of United States cities by area - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Table of United States Combined Statistical Areas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia