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As several have pointed out, it's all a matter of personal perception. Before I caught on to the effect that metro area population has on the apparent size of the area's principal city, I used to think of a population somewhere around 300-350k as roughly the point where a city usually would begin to be a big city. This was based on my perception of a few cities I was familiar with. Now that I'm aware that metro area population has a substantial effect on a city's apparent size, I tend to think of 2-2.5 million as roughly the cutoff point. This fits well with the cutoff of 300-350k for the city population, since, unless one is slipping my mind, all U.S. metros with populations in the low two millions also have primary cities of at least 300k population. I also think some cities with smaller metro area populations can seem basically like big cities, but below the two million/300k threshold this varies from case to case, while every city above that threshold which I'm familiar with seems to me like basically a big city.
There are features besides population which indicate that a city tips the scales into the "big" category. A city may not have to have every one of these characteristics to be at least minimally "big," but the fewer it has, the less likely that it is truly a large, major urban center. A few of these features:
1) A large and varied downtown. The downtown usually will have a significant skyline, something beyond just two or three or four skyscrapers. There are exceptions, such as Washington, which of course by design is not a high-rise city, but most big cities have reasonably impressive skylines. If it's an older city, the kind with most commercial activity concentrated in and around downtown, this central area is likely to contain several distinct districts each characterized by a predominant commercial activity. For example, a big city may have a distinct financial, retail, and/or entertainment district, not just a hodgepodge of all these activities in a single small downtown district.
2) A varied economy. A big city will most likely have several major economic functions. It might not be one of the very top centers for any one industry, but it will have several activities, not just one or none, in which it is at least a notable player.
3) Cultural activities. Big cities usually will have a variety of cultural activities. Their cultural venues may or may not be world-class, but they will generally be substantial, and recognized as significant. An example would be an art museum housed in an imposing edifice, with a large and varied collection, rather than a little building not much larger than the average mansion with three or four little galleries containing just some basic paintings by little-kown artists.
4) Transportation center. A big city almost certainly will stand at the convergence of several major highways, not just have one interstate passing through. It may or may not be a truly major air hub, but at least this city will be served by full-sized planes, not those little turbo-props nor even the small jets like Embraers and Canadairs. If the city has Amtrak service, there's a good chance that its train station will be a large terminal with multiple platforms, not just a little depot sitting by the tracks.
5) Education center. There may be a few exceptions, but most larger cities are home to at least a few major universities, rather than maybe only one fairly well-kown large university and perhaps a few little-kown small colleges scattered around.
6) Top-level entertainment. Major league sports, a regular stop for top rock performers, etc.
A city that has just a basic presence of these features is not The Big Apple, but a city with these features feels much more substantial and alive than a little small or mid-sized urban center. There is a threshold you cross when you get into the territory of a city with the features I've listed above. A city like this just looks and feels like way more of a city than something lacking most of the above characteristics. A city that has these features is in the major leagues. If this city has these features at a minimal level, it might be more like the equivalent of a journeyman ballplayer in the major leagues, but it's still the major leagues.
Pittsburgh has all of the above features, and some of them beyond the minimal level, so, yeah, I'd say Pitssburgh is a big city.
"City" boundaries are political and nothing more. Urbanized area should be used instead as a benchmark as it includes the dense urban core of the region.
Using your logic, Jacksonville Florida would be a much bigger city and at the same time a much smaller metro than Pittsburgh. This is because Jacksonville's "city" boundaries are massive, including most of the sprawl of the metro inside its city limits. But you would be laughed at by most people if you considered Jacksonville to be a "big city".
Urbanized area constitutes the scientific boundaries of the city by using population density. In that statistic Pittsburgh would have over 1.5 million within the "urbanized area", which is more than Jacksonville's entire metro. So would that now qualify it as being a "big city" to you?
Several people have made this point, and made it well, but I'm quoting this particular post because it was made recently. I especially like the example of Jacksonville which several people have cited. You're talking about a city with a population of somewhere around 800k, which many people would consider to be quite a large city if they look only at city proper population, without considering the metro area, or how the city proper population is distributed. Yet the one time Jacksonville hosted the Super Bowl the city was criticized for lacking too much in big-city facilities to properly handle the event. Contrast this with cities like New Orleans, Miami, and Tampa, which have repeatedly hosted the Super Bowl without any problem with being "too small" for the event, despite the fact that their city proper populations are significantly smaller than J'ville's.
The images linked to below give a picture of the point people are making here. These are pictures of Boston and vicinity. I chose Boston for three reasons: 1) I live there, so I'm familiar with the territory, and know which suburbs have a very urban character; 2) Boston is a good example of the way that city limits do not always mark the boundaries of a true urban center, since this city has a core of densely populated, quite urban suburbs spreading over an area larger than the city of Boston itself; 3) the Charles River is an especially well defined visual marker of one city limit, making it possible to see clearly how the urban character spreads beyond the city limits.
So . . .
In the first three pictures, Boston is in the foreground, and Cambridge is across the river.
Following are pictures of scenes in several inner suburbs. There are some pockets of medium-density suburbia scattered through this inner core, but for the most part the scenes in these pictures are typical of the area spreading out from downtown Boston within a radius of about ten miles, both in the outlying sections of the city proper and in the inner suburbs.
Cambridge, MA; across the Charles River from Boston:
What does this have to do with Pittsburgh? I'm unfamiliar with Pittsburgh's suburbs, so I don't know the towns to show in pictures in order to demonstrate that the primary city of the metro area is only the central section of a larger urban area. I'm sure that someone familiar with the Pittsburgh metro area would be able to choose pictures from that area which show what I've tried to show here with pictures of Boston's inner metro area. City limits are an accident of history, the history of political wheelings and dealings back when the cities acquired their modern boundaries, which determined the official divisions of urbanized, and often very urban, areas extending beyond what happened to be negotiated as the official boudaries of the principal cities proper. As these pictures show, in a practical sense, "the city" often extends well beyond the legal city limits. Therefore, the official population of a city often gives a poor picture of the actual effective size of that city.
Being from Chicago, I'd say that Pittsburgh is NOT a big city. Maybe to someone born in Boalsburg, PA it is.
Umm that's a really random place, why not just say State College? Since the Pittsburgh metro is larger than all but 21 metros in the U.S. then the majority of the country outside of those metros probably thinks that Pittsburgh is a good sized, if not "big" city. That would include people from cities such as Jacksonville, FL and Charlotte, NC... let alone some joke of a little town with like 50 people in it.
Umm that's a really random place, why not just say State College? Since the Pittsburgh metro is larger than all but 21 metros in the U.S. then the majority of the country outside of those metros probably thinks that Pittsburgh is a good sized, if not "big" city. That would include people from cities such as Jacksonville, FL and Charlotte, NC... let alone some joke of a little town with like 50 people in it.
I named Boalsburg to illustrate a point...and quite effectively it appears.
What is a "big city' is purely subjective. I personally don't care what someone else from Jacksonville, Charlotte, or even Chicago thinks.
So your criterion of "being from Chicago" is not a particularly reliable one.
Not as reliable as my own subjective determination, perception, and experience. Being from Chicago is a part of my determination. I could've named 15 other reasons, but I don't have the time or the interest to do so. But I did mention one.
I named Boalsburg to illustrate a point...and quite effectively it appears.
What is a "big city' is purely subjective. I personally don't care what someone else from Jacksonville, Charlotte, or even Chicago thinks.
Well, your example was kind of ridiculous and it failed to illustrate much of a point.
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metro area and urbanized area significance
