That’s a good illustration of how comparing cities by specific governmental entities and not by metro area is total meaningless. I’ve heard people say stuff like “Minneapolis is a smaller city than Albuquerque!“, while in real life, the Minneapolis metro area is about five times as large in population.
Within the city limits, Albuquerque is more populous than Minneapolis, but Albuquerque is also over 3 times as large physically as Minneapolis. Yes metro area Minneapolis is larger by 3.7 times as much. But that is like asking how many people live in your house and you saying “well there are 120 people in my neighborhood”.
Usually when people talk about “larger”, they mean population. If you are talking specifically about geographical area, sure, but it’s usually explicitly named. If you compared the metro area of Mpls to Albuquerque, I bet it’s way larger geographically as well. So really my point is that when someone says somewhere is a big city, they don’t mean the central city, but rather the metro area. The population or geographical size of the central city has little to do with what it’s like to live in or visit a metro area, in terms of cultural variety, economy, and so on.
That’s a good illustration of how comparing cities by specific governmental entities and not by metro area is total meaningless. I’ve heard people say stuff like “Minneapolis is a smaller city than Albuquerque!“, while in real life, the Minneapolis metro area is about five times as large in population.
Within the city limits, Albuquerque is more populous than Minneapolis, but Albuquerque is also over 3 times as large physically as Minneapolis. Yes metro area Minneapolis is larger by 3.7 times as much. But that is like asking how many people live in your house and you saying “well there are 120 people in my neighborhood”.
Usually when people talk about “larger”, they mean population. If you are talking specifically about geographical area, sure, but it’s usually explicitly named. If you compared the metro area of Mpls to Albuquerque, I bet it’s way larger geographically as well. So really my point is that when someone says somewhere is a big city, they don’t mean the central city, but rather the metro area. The population or geographical size of the central city has little to do with what it’s like to live in or visit a metro area, in terms of cultural variety, economy, and so on.