I have the firm belief that Los Angeles is actually the largest city by population in the USA (as opposed to NYC). Due to an accident of history, what people colloquially call "LA" is still divided politically into something like 80 independent cities. New York City consolidated into the five boroughs in the late 19th century, prior to that Queens, Brooklyn, etc. were separate cities. If you look at the city borders of official Los Angeles, it's a complex mapping of the spaces around and in-between the various independent cities.
In most of the US, unincorporated land is extremely rural. In LA, "unincorporated" land blends seamlessly into the urban landscape. Often if you're in an unfamiliar area you can't tell what "city" you're in without looking at the street signs.
While not 100% of LA county residents can be counted as living in "LA", it's a close-enough approximation. ~10 million vs NYC's 8 million.
If you're going to include all that into LA, shouldn't NYC lay claim to Yonkers, Jersey City, and dozens of other places? The New York metropolitan area is certainly larger than the Los Angeles metropolitan area, and I'd wager that there's no circle of radius R in the US, for R between 1 mile and 1000 miles, that contains more people than one centered appropriately on lower Manhattan.
A key difference is that the actual City Of Los Angeles is quite sprawling and surrounds many of the areas that are incorporated as their own municipalities.
It's amusing -- in Australia we list cities populations like this by default. I never consider the population of Melbourne to just be the area covered by Melbourne City Council - it has always included the greater metro area.
That's generally true here in the US as well. I guess the distinction is being made in this case because the city data is split into separate jurisdictions and databases... there is no "greater metro area" database for land use and population.
however, i don't think that includes large parts of orange county, which is adjacent to LA. OC has a distinctly different feel but it's all smushed together, there isn't like a large open expanse of nothing like between OC and SD.
If you're going to go down that route, you'd also have to consider sections of NJ and Westchester County. The density of say, Jersey City is 16,736.6/sq mi. There's the Hudson River in between, but so what?
Greater NYC still includes a lot of very dense conurbation well beyond the city limits. For example, some of the densest cities in the US are those in Hudson County, NJ, and some of the suburban downtowns (for example, White Plains) have skylines that rival midsized Midwestern cities. Newark, though down at its heels, is linked to NYC by a 35-minute rapid transit trip at 10-minute headways, the commuter rail network is even more extensive than that, and bus commuters come to NYC from Allentown and the Poconos in Pennsylvania.
You can't just count an entire massive county as 'LA' while cutting off NYC at its city limits. The stub-ends of the subway lines at the Bronx border are dramatic, but the city doesn't just end anywhere— I wouldn't be shocked to see the subway extended beyond NYC at some point.
You could do the same with LA. "Greater LA" also includes the Inland Empire, Orange County, Riverside/San Bernadino. Total population (according to Wikipedia) is around 18 million.
I agree that you can draw the line arbitrarily to support whichever city you prefer as "winning". My sense is that a) if the City of Los Angeles consolidated as NYC did over 100 years ago it would have the highest official population in the US, b) if you do a more fuzzy "metro area" analysis the result is up for grabs depending on how you choose to draw the borders.
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Great article.
I have the firm belief that Los Angeles is actually the largest city by population in the USA (as opposed to NYC). Due to an accident of history, what people colloquially call "LA" is still divided politically into something like 80 independent cities. New York City consolidated into the five boroughs in the late 19th century, prior to that Queens, Brooklyn, etc. were separate cities. If you look at the city borders of official Los Angeles, it's a complex mapping of the spaces around and in-between the various independent cities.
In most of the US, unincorporated land is extremely rural. In LA, "unincorporated" land blends seamlessly into the urban landscape. Often if you're in an unfamiliar area you can't tell what "city" you're in without looking at the street signs.
While not 100% of LA county residents can be counted as living in "LA", it's a close-enough approximation. ~10 million vs NYC's 8 million.
If you're going to include all that into LA, shouldn't NYC lay claim to Yonkers, Jersey City, and dozens of other places? The New York metropolitan area is certainly larger than the Los Angeles metropolitan area, and I'd wager that there's no circle of radius R in the US, for R between 1 mile and 1000 miles, that contains more people than one centered appropriately on lower Manhattan.
A key difference is that the actual City Of Los Angeles is quite sprawling and surrounds many of the areas that are incorporated as their own municipalities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_of_t...
Lists NY as ~23 million, LA as ~18 million.
It's amusing -- in Australia we list cities populations like this by default. I never consider the population of Melbourne to just be the area covered by Melbourne City Council - it has always included the greater metro area.
That's generally true here in the US as well. I guess the distinction is being made in this case because the city data is split into separate jurisdictions and databases... there is no "greater metro area" database for land use and population.
however, i don't think that includes large parts of orange county, which is adjacent to LA. OC has a distinctly different feel but it's all smushed together, there isn't like a large open expanse of nothing like between OC and SD.
The New York metropolitan area spans three or four states (depending on who you ask) which might have something to do with it.
If you're going to go down that route, you'd also have to consider sections of NJ and Westchester County. The density of say, Jersey City is 16,736.6/sq mi. There's the Hudson River in between, but so what?
Greater NYC still includes a lot of very dense conurbation well beyond the city limits. For example, some of the densest cities in the US are those in Hudson County, NJ, and some of the suburban downtowns (for example, White Plains) have skylines that rival midsized Midwestern cities. Newark, though down at its heels, is linked to NYC by a 35-minute rapid transit trip at 10-minute headways, the commuter rail network is even more extensive than that, and bus commuters come to NYC from Allentown and the Poconos in Pennsylvania.
You can't just count an entire massive county as 'LA' while cutting off NYC at its city limits. The stub-ends of the subway lines at the Bronx border are dramatic, but the city doesn't just end anywhere— I wouldn't be shocked to see the subway extended beyond NYC at some point.
You could do the same with LA. "Greater LA" also includes the Inland Empire, Orange County, Riverside/San Bernadino. Total population (according to Wikipedia) is around 18 million.
I agree that you can draw the line arbitrarily to support whichever city you prefer as "winning". My sense is that a) if the City of Los Angeles consolidated as NYC did over 100 years ago it would have the highest official population in the US, b) if you do a more fuzzy "metro area" analysis the result is up for grabs depending on how you choose to draw the borders.