Large metro with small city limits (suburbs, area, corporate)

[mwalker96]

Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

Yes, I don't think people consider the land size of cities they compare. For cities in Upstate NY, most of the relatively decent to larger sized cities are only 10-40 square miles, if not smaller in regards to the Poughkeepsie(5 sq. mi.)-Newburgh(3.8 sq. mi.)-Middletown(5 sq. mi.) area, but there are 5 metro areas that are in the top 90-100 in the country in population from that part of the state. So, I don't know if people realize how a lot of city proper comparisons between different regions aren't necessarily tit for tat in terms of land size.

For instance, Syracuse is only 25 square miles, which is similar to Greenville SC, but has 2 and a half times as many people within its city limits. This goes for other Northeastern cities as well. So, this is something to consider when viewing different cities.

However, having a smaller, but more compact built environment might be good in terms of walkability potential for these cities as well.

It seems older and denser cites tend be to be smaller. Had NYC never annexed the other 4 Boros it would be much smaller and more crowded. Cites in the South, West, and Midwest (to some extent) have much lesser annexation laws so that's why cites like Los Angeles, Houston, and Phoenix have so much sprawl and large landmasses.

[ckhthankgod]

Originally Posted by mwalker96

It seems older and denser cites tend be to be smaller. Had NYC never annexed the other 4 Boros it would be much smaller and more crowded. Cites in the South, West, and Midwest (to some extent) have much lesser annexation laws so that's why cites like Los Angeles, Houston, and Phoenix have so much sprawl and large landmasses.

This and for many cities, much of their development came after Urban Renewal. In turn, its impact wasn't felt as hard in "newer" cities like it did with "older" cities.

[CincyExpert]

Bridgeport, CT

19.4 sq miles

939k in the metro

[aries4118]

Atlanta.

[mstnghu2]

San Francisco only covers 49 square miles. The other big cities that anchor the SF Bay Area are Oakland and San Jose which each cover more land more area than SF. San Jose also has over 100k more people than SF does. The city/county of SF itself only covers a tiny portion of the Bay Area and only contains a fraction of the residents. The population of SF is under 900k and the entire Bay Area covers nine counties and has close to 8 million residents.

[Somnifor]

Minneapolis is 56 square miles. It has 425,000 people, the Twin Cities msa is around 3.6 million.

[pnwguy2]

Alaska is home to some of the largest cities (or towns) by square miles. The largest in the lower 48 appears to be Jacksonville, FL. Scroll down this chart for the smallest...it only goes #150. Note some cities include a lot of their water areas in their boundaries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...cities_by_area

This chart goes a bit further:

https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/uni...rank/land-area

Miami may be the smallest city by land area in a large metro area.

[mjtinmemphis]

Originally Posted by Somnifor

Minneapolis is 56 square miles. It has 425,000 people, the Twin Cities msa is around 3.6 million.

Minneapolis is a gem of a city and is definitely a model city for my hometown of St. Louis imo.

[Tom Lennox 70]

Atlanta has a small population, not even 500,000 for a metro area of its size. I think Las Vegas also has small city limits, even the Strip is outside city limits. Miami has small city limits though Miami-Dade County is consolidated.

New Orleans has relatively small city limits, and due to the geography is Lake Pontchartrain some of the main suburbs like Slidell and Covington are physically very far from downtown though the inner suburbs like Metairie, Kenner, Westwego and Harvey are very dense.

[mwalker96]

Interesting responses. It seems the smallest cities by landarea tend to be older and denser while sprawling newer cities tend to be vast. Most of the biggest cites by square miles tend to be more car-friendly while the smaller cities are more pedestrian friendly. Most Southern and Western cites devolped during the automobile era but you do have cites like New Orleans which is one of the oldest cities in the US that has a pedestrian feel and Los Angeles was already becoming a major city by the 1920s even though it's classified as a modern sun-belt city it was developing well before WW2 hence why many say today it's overcrowded and gets the NYC treatment as far as cites to leave vs move to and start a family.