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[Road Hog]

New Boston, Texas is much bigger than Boston.  New Boston is a city that now covers the unincorporated place of Boston, but Boston still exists in law because it's the county seat.  In Texas, a county seat can't be changed except through an election.  Usually an unincorporated town becomes a neighborhood of a city it's annexed into, but this one will always have a separate status.  New Boston, Texas is also much bigger than Old Boston.  Old Boston is within 2 miles of the city limit of New Boston and will probably eventually be annexed and no longer exist as a separate place.

The original county seat is Boston, at the location of Old Boston.  In an election, a supermajority voted to move the county seat to a location not near the center of the county, Texarkana.  Later, a majority voted to move it back near the center of the county.  (Old) Boston was a little too far south, so the new seat was a few miles to the north.  They couldn't get a post office with a name they wanted, so they decided to move the Boston post office and use that name for the new county seat.  Boston then became Old Boston.  New Boston was built before the county seat was moved the first time.  The railroad bypassed the original county seat, and New Boston was built at the point on the railroad closest to Boston.  Then the county seat moved, and was moved back but a little further north, and was eventually annexed into New Boston.

A child city consumes its parent, while the parent is also its younger sibling.  It then continues to grow and threatens to consume its other parent and grandparent-because-it's-the-parent-of-its-younger-sibling/parent.  This is what Greek mythology/Freudian nightmares are made of.

I was going to mention New Boston. The Bowie County Courthouse sits right off of I-30. I mentioned it on a thread I started on non-traditional county courthouses a few years back.

[GenExpwy]

The city of North Tonawanda NY has about twice as many people as the city of Tonawanda, but less than half as many as the town of Tonawanda (which does not include the city).

[GaryV]

New Amsterdam is much bigger than Amsterdam

New York is much bigger than York

That settlement by the Dutch, then the English in the New World has done OK for itself

Boston MA is also much larger than Boston UK.  (This probably applies to a number of New World cities named after their Old World counterparts by the settlers who moved from the old town.)

Toledo OH is larger than Toledo Spain - but it's not clear if the Ohio city was named after the one in Spain.

Troy MI is larger than Troy NY - and I'm sure both are larger than Troy (of the Trojan war) in now-Turkey ever was.

[SkyPesos]

Portland, OR is bigger than Portland, ME. The former is named after the latter from a coin flip. If the coin landed on the other side, it would’ve been named Boston, OR.

[kurumi]

In CT
Old Lyme and East Lyme are more populous than Lyme
East Haddam is larger than Haddam and has a slightly higher population
Southington, formerly known as South Farmington, is bigger and is more populous than Farmington

East Hampton (12,717) is much larger than Hampton (1,728)  (facetious; the towns are not adjacent, and East Hampton was originally named Chatham)
North Canaan (3,211) is larger than Canaan (1,080). To muddle things, the village of Canaan (at US 7/44) is in North Canaan.

[bing101]

San Jose is the largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area.  San Francisco is by far the most densely populated.

Central Valley: Fresno is the largest inland  city in California while Sacramento gets more attention as California's most notable inland  city.

[lepidopteran]

In NJ, the townships of East Windsor and West Windsor are much larger than the unincorporated hamlet of Windsor.

[DandyDan]

East Bethel, MN has a much larger population than Bethel.

West Concord, MN has only 782 for a population, but Concord is little more than a dot on a map.

[index]

Mount Airy is bigger than Dobson.

Charleston, SC is the largest city in SC ... Mount Pleasant ....

Not really sure if this counts because they’re a little ways away from each other, but what about San Jose (pop. 1,013,000) being larger than San Francisco (pop. 873k)?

San Jose is the largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area.  San Francisco is by far the most densely populated.

None of these are child/parent.

The Presidio of San Francisco and Mission San Francisco de Asis do predate Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe.  Without the Presidio of San Francisco the Spanish development of San Francisco Bay would have come much later.  So, I'm going to disagree with you there that there isn't a parental community relationship between San Francisco and San Jose.

Not in the same terms as the OP.

I'm not really seeing anything of the like explicitly stated by the OP, I'm just seeing his/her examples.  Considering this is the Off Topic board why would I assume we are only restricting this to what is being used for control cities on modern highways?

Not too many contributors on your side of the line on this one...

Is this even worth arguing over?  I feel like you guys often just suck any fun out of these threads. 

Following the rules is fun.

If you all want a verdict, the suburb-main city relationship isn't something I was looking for, correct, but I think it fits reasonably well now that I see it.

[webny99]

If you all want a verdict, the suburb-main city relationship isn't something I was looking for, correct, but I think it fits reasonably well now that I see it.

Indeed. I actually had the opposite view when I first read the thread title; to me something like Tonawanda/North Tonawanda is more of a sibling relationship, whereas I view the city/suburb relationship more like a parent/child one.

[golden eagle]

I’m not sure if this counts, but Cape Coral is grown to be much larger than Fort Myers. Cape Coral was a planned community.

[BlueOutback7]

Also in Florida, West Palm Beach has a larger population than Palm Beach, with West Palm having 117K vs Palm Beach’s 9K people.

Edit: Just realized upthread that this was already mentioned. Oops.

[BlueOutback7]

This one doesn’t really count, but there’s Kingston, RI and South Kingstown, RI. So close and yet so far.

[epzik8]

East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania

[Molandfreak]

West Concord, MN had a major railroad running through it, and it’s bigger than Concord, MN today.

Mendota Heights, MN is urban sprawl that the city of Mendota wasn’t interested in annexing for some reason, so it’s the more populated while Mendota is really just the historic part.

[JKRhodes]

Prescott, Arizona has recently been surpassed in population by Prescott Valley with the former having a population of 45,827 and the latter having 46,785 per the 2020 census.

Prescott Valley had a population of around 1500, back in 1978 when it incorporated. It has the advantage of having more room to expand, while Prescott proper is somewhat landlocked by forest land, indian reservations, terrain, etc.

[DTComposer]

Covina, CA was incorporated in 1901 and West Covina, CA was incorporated in 1923. By 1950 West Covina was bigger than Covina, and today it is over twice as large (106K vs. 51K).

On the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the city of Palos Verdes Estates was the first to be developed/incorporated (1939), but is only about 13K people; Rancho Palos Verdes was the most recent to be incorporated (1973) but is the largest at 41K; Rolling Hills Estates (incorporated 1957) is only about 8K people, but is far and away the commercial center for the area; the simplest-named Rolling Hills (incorporated 1957) is the smallest (less than 2K) and is residential-only. FWIW people usually just refer to the whole area as "Palos Verdes" (or more locally, "the hill").

****

If accepting the concept of San Francisco/San Jose (i.e., the historically dominant city of a metro being passed in population) you may also consider these geographically closer pairs:
-Riverside being larger than San Bernardino (although they're probably equal now in terms of commercial importance)
-Anaheim being larger than Santa Ana (again, they're probably equal from a business standpoint; Santa Ana is the governmental center, while Anaheim is the tourism center)

[Avalanchez71]

New Tazewell is slightly larger than Tazewell, TN.

[mgk920]

Before the great Amalgamation of a few decades ago, the suburban City of North York, ON was more populous than the the adjacent City of Toronto, ON.

Mike

[bing101]

Quezon City, Philippines is larger than Manila itself but is referred to as the Metro.

[TheGrassGuy]

Might be an edge case, but...

New Territories population = 3.6M
Hong Kong Island population = 1.3M

[skluth]

Virginia Beach is larger than Norfolk and was once considered a minor suburb after Portsmouth, Hampton, and Newport News. It had under 10,000 population as recently as 1960 when Norfolk had over 300,000 people. The metro is now listed as the Virginia Beach–Norfolk–Newport News, VA–NC Metro area. The child passed the parent in population in the 1990 census so is now considered the parent. I don't know of any other metro areas that have gone through this transition.

[Takumi]

Virginia Beach is larger than Norfolk and was once considered a minor suburb after Portsmouth, Hampton, and Newport News. It had under 10,000 population as recently as 1960 when Norfolk had over 300,000 people. The metro is now listed as the Virginia Beach–Norfolk–Newport News, VA–NC Metro area. The child passed the parent in population in the 1990 census so is now considered the parent. I don't know of any other metro areas that have gone through this transition.

Part of that is Virginia Beach consolidating with Princess Anne County in the 1960s, greatly increasing in physical size as well as population. Chesapeake, which is the former Norfolk County and is what I describe as “several smaller communities connected by mutual sprawl”, has also passed the city of Norfolk in size.

[jgb191]

Is Cleveland, Ohio larger city than Cleveland, Texas?  Also which is the largest Springfield:  the one in, Illinois, Missouri, Massachusettes, Ohio, or Oregon?

[Flint1979]

In Michigan, Saginaw Township is almost the same size as Saginaw (city). In fact it's bigger in area, about 26 square miles for Saginaw Township and 18 square miles for Saginaw (city). Not sure about 2020 but in 2010 Saginaw Township had 40,840 for a population while Saginaw had 51,508 in 2010 but had an estimate of 48,115. Saginaw Township hasn't really grown much but hasn't lost population while Saginaw (city) has lost half it's population over the last 60 years.