What is a major city?

[golden eagle]

Exactly what constitutes a major city? I've been trying to figure that out after seeing that term on the Internet earlier.

[Dr Frankenstein]

In the United States, I'd say that it's anything that is the centre of a Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The definition probably varies between people though.

[golden eagle]

In the United States, I'd say that it's anything that is the centre of a Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The definition probably varies between people though.

Only problem is that a number of central cities are quite small. For instance, places like Benton Harbor/St. Joseph, MI and Ft. Walton Beach, FL are essentially small towns, but the surrounding areas are large enough to make them metro areas. Benton Harbor itself barely has 10K. It's twin city, St. Joseph, doesn't even have 9,000. No one would confuse those with major cities.

[triplemultiplex]

I'd say a major city is any city where the metro area is at least a million and/or the city itself is at least a couple hundred K.
And I'm not talking strictly MSA's necessarily.  Just whatever most reasonable people would consider the "CITY A area".

Mid sized cities are probably 50 or 60K on up into the 100k's.  But they have to be stand alone.  Suburbs don't count; they're part of their parent city's area.  And they usually have an inset in Rand McNally.  (Unless they're in California.)

Everything else, for the purposes of breaking down American towns into three categories, can be a small town.

But there's always those cities that are right on the edge between major and mid.  Ohio has a bunch of 'em.  Places like Toledo and Akron and Dayton.  And twin cities always throw a wrench into the works.  Wilkes-Barre/Scranton?  Midland/Odessa?  Bethlehem/Allentown?  Are those mid or major?  Individually they're mid, but together they might be major.  I think most of us would still say mid for those examples.

[NWI_Irish96]

I'd say a major city is any city where the metro area is at least a million and/or the city itself is at least a couple hundred K.
And I'm not talking strictly MSA's necessarily.  Just whatever most reasonable people would consider the "CITY A area".

For the US, if you do use MSA's, there are 51 of them over 1 million, and 48 of those have at least one city over 200K, with several having 2+ cities over 200K.  If you subjectively look at lists of cities, that criteria seems to do pretty well.  Salt Lake City is one city that I think most would call 'major' even though it's only 186K, and Rochester is one city that I think some would not consider to be major despite being 211K.  There are also many cities that are thought more of as suburbs to larger cities even though they are over 200K (Long Beach, CA; Mesa, AZ; Henderson, NV; Aurora, CO; Arlington, TX).

So I guess if you wanted a purely objective criteria for a major US city, I would say:

1) City is > 200K
2) City is in a MSA > 1M
3) If a city is not the largest in its MSA, it must be at least 40% of the size of the largest city in its MSA.

[berberry]

Exactly what constitutes a major city? I've been trying to figure that out after seeing that term on the Internet earlier.

I like cabiness's definition.  But I'm intrigued by the idea of center cities that meet cab's second criterion but maybe not the first:  what would be the largest variance anyone knows of between the size of a major metro area and the size of its core - or largest - component city?  Put it another way, what's the largest metro with the smallest center city?  Twin or multi-cities are fine, so long as the comparison is to the largest city within the area.

[agentsteel53]

Put it another way, what's the largest metro with the smallest center city?  Twin or multi-cities are fine, so long as the comparison is to the largest city within the area.

my guess would be the Bay Area.  945,000 people live in San Jose.  7.4 million people live in the Bay Area.

as for Los Angeles - it depends on how you define the metro area.  If you include San Diego and Tijuana, you'll likely break that record, but that's really stretching the definition.  that said, anyone who's ever driven in Southern California can tell you that it's basically one large blob of urbanization, with the traffic patterns to match.

[berberry]

...anyone who's ever driven in Southern California can tell you that it's basically one large blob of urbanization, with the traffic patterns to match.

Yeah, I have driven through it; I know exactly what you mean.  But that's more of what I would call a megalopolis.  There are so many large cities, and many of them can claim certain areas as their own satelites and thereby claim their own metro area, but they overlap other metro areas so much that they become very difficult to define.

You're probably right about the Bay Area, though.  Pretty dramatic example, it is.

[agentsteel53]

There are so many large cities, and many of them can claim certain areas as their own satelites and thereby claim their own metro area, but they overlap other metro areas so much that they become very difficult to define.

the Bos-Wash corridor is effectively the same idea.  All urbanized along I-95 from Kittery, ME to ... approximately Richmond, VA at my eyeballing.  of that area, NYC would have the greatest population, at 18.9 million people.  So, in order for the Bos-Wash corridor to beat the San Jose example, the entire area would need a population of 148 million people.  It isn't quite that populous. 

Wikipedia gives 49.6 million people for Boston to Washington, DC - adding the NH/Maine and VA periphery wouldn't change things by much.

[english si]

Put it another way, what's the largest metro with the smallest center city?  Twin or multi-cities are fine, so long as the comparison is to the largest city within the area.

Metropolitan London is between 12.3 to 14 million, largest city is Westminster at 236k (and the city of London has 11.5k). The Mayor of London relates to the region of Greater London (not the county - slightly different as the City is it's own county, but is part of the region and it's the 33 boroughs that are more like county/city equivalents), which covers about 8 million. Effectively it's like the Welsh Assembly, but in London and with an executive branch. The Lord Mayor of London, while ceremonial, is just for the city proper.

I think this disparity is more to do with the completely different - and totally messed up - local government structure - city status is a rare-ish honour to receive and local government barely exists anyway. If you treated all the London boroughs, surrounding districts/counties, etc, as cities then we're looking at 350k for the largest one that's truly all part of the London met area.

I think 'major' doesn't just depend on population - Bradford in the UK has a large population and isn't really a major city as Leeds is not that far away and is the regional focus - ditto Sunderland next to Newcastle or Wolverhampton or Coventry not that far from Birmingham. Derry is pretty small (80k), yet you'd have to count it as much more important than most places twice the size in Britain - same for Galway. Also, despite having half (or perhaps a wee bit less) the met population, Edinburgh is more important than Glasgow.

[Coelacanth]

Put it another way, what's the largest metro with the smallest center city?  Twin or multi-cities are fine, so long as the comparison is to the largest city within the area.

my guess would be the Bay Area.  945,000 people live in San Jose.  7.4 million people live in the Bay Area.

The Bay Area is a combined statistical area; San Jose and San Francisco are separate CBSAs. Even so, with the numbers you cite San Jose is about 12.8% of the Bay Area.

Taking a quick look at some census estimates for 2009, and considering only CBSAs, I came up with:

Miami 433K out of a CBSA of 5.5M (about 7.8%)
Atlanta 540K out of 5.4M (9.9%) - this one surprised me
Washington DC 600K out of 5.5M (11.0%)
Minneapolis 385K out of 3.3M (11.8%)
St Louis 357K out of 2.8M (12.6%)

There may be better examples but I think Miami's the winner.

[NWI_Irish96]

Put it another way, what's the largest metro with the smallest center city?  Twin or multi-cities are fine, so long as the comparison is to the largest city within the area.

San Francisco/Oakland and San Jose are distinct MSAs, as are Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Diego.  

Among the MSAs over 1M:

Miami has 7.18% of the population of the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL MSA
Riverside has 7.19% of the population of the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA MSA
Atlanta has 7.97% of the population of the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA MSA

On the other extreme:

San Antonio has 61.96% of the population of the San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX MSA
Jacksonville has 61.07% of the population of the Jacksonville, FL MSA
San Jose has 51.50% of the population of the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA MSA

[jgb191]

Boston city (~600K) is less than 8 percent of the Boston/Manchester/Worcester/Providence, MA-NH-RI CSA, which is all together is almost 7.5 million.

I am also quite shocked to see that my home town of Corpus Christi, Texas has the same city population as Pittsburgh, PA, just over 300K.

Another thing, I don't know why Houston has a CSA when its MSA is almost the identical size.....its MSA is at 5.95 million and CSA is at 6 million.  Dallas/Fort Worth isn't too far off either with a 6.4 million MSA and a 6.8 million CSA.  

If you look at the Rio Grande Valley area in Texas (where I grew up), Brownsville and McAllen are only 60 miles apart with Harlingen being practically midway between the two, would it be going out on a limb to combine those two MSAs into its own CSA?  If so they would combine for more than 1.2 million if you unite the two neighboring MSAs.

[berberry]

I am also quite shocked to see that my home town of Corpus Christi, Texas has the same city population as Pittsburgh, PA, just over 300K.

So Pittsburgh is another good example of a small city / big metro.

It's been so long since I've been to Pittsburgh that I've pretty much forgotten it.  For some reason,  I remember it as a mostly dirty, smoggy place.  Is there a reason for that or is it a mistake?  A friend visited there a couple years ago, and told me that it's a beautiful city with very clean air.  I want to go back within the next year or so, among other reasons to see Falling Water, which isn't far from there.

I probably remember a lot of smog because it was much more common in the 70s than it is today, and certainly not just in Pittsburgh.  Although there were other factors involved, the size of a city was a good indication of how bad its smog problem was, back in the day.  So a lot of cities had to be worse than Pittsburgh was.

[Mr_Northside]

As for Pittsburgh being "dirty & smoggy", yeah... that is pretty much a thing of the past.  

As for the "small city / big metro" thing, that is also exactly the case.  When it comes to municipalities, there is always talk about consolidation to increase efficiencies in gov't services, or to somehow merge Pittsburgh with Allegheny County, but nothing ever happens... so the City of Pittsburgh, land-wise, has been the same size for decades.

[jgb191]

Let's compare:

Corpus Christi, TX (my hometown):  305,215 city and 461,000 metro
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania:  305,704 city and 2.35 million metro.


Corpus Christi is practically devoid of suburbs.....exit the city limits and immediately see rural fields of farmland.

[huskeroadgeek]

Orlando is another small city/big metro. It is has a metro area population of over 2 million, but the city is only 238,300. I wouldn't consider Orlando alone a major city, but I would definitely consider it to be a major metro area.

An example of a large city/small metro area would be El Paso-the city is 649,121, but the metro area is only 800,647. Of course that is somewhat misleading as neighboring Juarez, Mexico would put the metro area at about 2 million

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

Cincinnati's population is now less than 300,000 (296,943 to be exact) while their metro population is still 2,130,151
In comparison, Toledo's population is 287,208 but their metro is 651,429

[DTComposer]

In going back to defining a major city, I would also consider market influence, perhaps using the Ranally system:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranally_city_rating_system

On that page I think everyone would consider the "1" cities to be major, and then the 2-AA, 2-BB and 2-CC cities I would consider major as well.

Other factors that might be considered:
-Professional sports team
-Nationally recognized arts organization (symphony, art museum, opera)
-Newspaper circulation
-Airport passengers
-Convention center traffic

[jgb191]

Salt Lake in Utah is another small city example.....the city is ten percent of it's own CSA.  They have the Utah Jazz and hosted the 2002 Olympic Games.  They are also a hub for one of the world's major airlines.  Compare that to Tucson in neighboring Arizona.

Salt Lake, Utah:  190K city and 1.8 million metro
Tucson, Arizona:  520K city and 980K metro

[golden eagle]

Orlando is another small city/big metro. It is has a metro area population of over 2 million, but the city is only 238,300. I wouldn't consider Orlando alone a major city, but I would definitely consider it to be a major metro area.

I would consider Orlando a major city, if you go by DTComposer's criteria. Think about it:

1. Why do people go to Orlando? For Disney World, the biggest single tourist attraction in the country (and with all the airport and convention traffic that goes along with it)

2. Professional sports with the NBA's Orlando Magic

3. The Orlando Sentinel is a nationally-known paper, primarily because of columnists Charley Reese and Myriam Marquez

I don't know about their arts community. 

[jgb191]

Isn't Walt Disney World in St. Cloud or Kissimmee, which I think might be almost an hour south of Orlando?  Are they part of the Orlando metro?  Just wondering.

[huskeroadgeek]

Orlando is another small city/big metro. It is has a metro area population of over 2 million, but the city is only 238,300. I wouldn't consider Orlando alone a major city, but I would definitely consider it to be a major metro area.

I would consider Orlando a major city, if you go by DTComposer's criteria. Think about it:

1. Why do people go to Orlando? For Disney World, the biggest single tourist attraction in the country (and with all the airport and convention traffic that goes along with it)

2. Professional sports with the NBA's Orlando Magic

3. The Orlando Sentinel is a nationally-known paper, primarily because of columnists Charley Reese and Myriam Marquez

I don't know about their arts community. 

With #1, you're basically confirming my contention that Orlando is a major metropolitan area, but not a major city. Disney World is not in the city of Orlando, but it is in its metropolitan area. Thus its metro area is more important than the city itself.

My point is with most major metropolitan areas, you can separate out its central city from its suburbs, and that city is a major city by itself. Separate out Orlando from its suburbs(and particularly Disney World), and it's really not a major city by itself. Yeah, Orlando has an NBA franchise and its newspaper may be a major newspaper, but does any of that happen if Disney World doesn't locate in the area? I doubt it.

So whether you want to call it a major city or not, you still must recognize it is quite different from other major cities. Those cities have had suburbs that have grown up due to outgrowth from the central city. Orlando has been the opposite-a city that has grown because of something that grew up in the surrounding area.

[NE2]

Isn't Walt Disney World in St. Cloud or Kissimmee, which I think might be almost an hour south of Orlando?  Are they part of the Orlando metro?  Just wondering.

It's in Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, two cities controlled by Disney, and lying within the Reedy Creek Improvement District, another Disney creation. It's only about 15 miles southwest of downtown Orlando.

[6a]

Other factors that might be considered:
-Professional sports team
-Nationally recognized arts organization (symphony, art museum, opera)
-Newspaper circulation
-Airport passengers
-Convention center traffic

I've always thought a city has made it when its name can be mentioned on its own (without attaching the state/country).  St. Petersburg makes me think of Russia, the one in FL is Tampa/St. Pete to me.  In this regard, I'm afraid my own hometown will never get out of its own shadow.