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I think I like your definition better than my previous attempt, but I would make a few slight changes.
Small city metro population: 250,000-1 million
Medium city metro population: 1 million-5 million
Big city metro population: 5 million-10million
Super city metro population: anything over 10 million
To combine the two definitions:
Small city metro: 150,000-300,000
Medium city metro: 300,000-1 million
Large city metro: 1 million-3 million
Nation city metro: 3 million-10 million
World city metro: anything over 10 million
I think I like your definition better than my previous attempt, but I would make a few slight changes.
Small city metro population: 250,000-1 million (Albuquerque, Asheville, Madison)
Medium city metro population: 1 million-5 million (Minneapolis, Portland, Nashville)
Big city metro population: 5 million-10 million (Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dallas)
Super city metro population: anything over 10 million (Chicago, LA, NYC)
Chicago only has 9 million people in its metro area, I believe, with 33% living within city boundaries and 66% in the 'burbs.
I guess I'd have to visit every metro area to be sure I'm right on this, but for the most part I'm guessing that I would consider the core zone of any area large enough to qualify as a metro area to be a city. It's impressive the abundance of at least the basic amenities and services that can be found in even a fairly small population center if it is the biggest place in the area, so that it has to serve a surrounding population. Some places located within large metros which would qualify as their own metro areas if they stood alone will have quite a bit less business and infrastructure than a place of similar size that stands alone. Maybe some small metros could be a bit too spread out to seem like real cities to me, but for the most part, I'd guess that if it qualifies as a metro, I'd think it felt like a city. The cores of small metros would seem like small cities, but still like cities.
What is a place considered with a metro of, say 50,000 to 100,000? A big town?
Few if any metros will fall into this range. The urban core has to have a minimum population of 50k for an area to qualify as a metropolitan area, by U.S. Census Bureau standards. With counties as the components of metro areas, the county containing that urban core is always included. That means that at minimum the population of a metro area will be at least 50k in the urban core, plus the surrounding population of the county. It's doubtful that many such areas have populations under 100k.
There is the term "micropolitan area" and I believe the census uses it. It covers areas where the core area has between 10,000 and 50,000 people. It might cover those with a metro-area under 100,000.
Then again "metropolitan area" itself seems to do that going by smallest metropolitan areas I see in the census list.
Interestingly this means there are metropolitan areas that are smaller than micropolitan ones. The Hilo, Hawaii micropolitan area is larger than any of those as are several others. There are about 370 micropolitan areas smaller than Carson City though. The smallest being Pecos, Texas at about 11,200.
Last edited by Thomas R.; 07-09-2009 at 04:04 AM..
Reason: expansion
Um... a place can have less than 100,000 people in it's "metro" and still be a city. My place of residence has an urban core of a little over 50,000 and a metro of about 70,000 and it's very much a "city" as opposed to a big town. It gained city status in 1925.
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