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Top 10 Most Populous Cities & Metros in America
The list of the top 10 city populations is an often-discussed topic among many of the people I know. Since the 2010 Census figures were released recently, I figured I would post the updated lists of top cities and metros here. These graphics are directly from a US Census Bureau fact sheet.
Top 10 Cities:
2010 Census, Top 10 Most Populous Cities (US Census Bureau)
My observations:
- It still impresses me that Phoenix, San Antonio and San Diego have grown as large as they are (over 1.3 million).
- I am surprised that San Jose is still less than one million.
- Houston may overtake Chicago as the country’s 3rd largest city by the 2020 Census if these trends continue.
- What is going on in San Antonio? With a 16% jump, they must have annexed another county!
Top 10 Metro Areas:
2010 Census, Top 10 Most Populous Metros (US Census Bureau)
My observations:
- Philadelphia may be at the bottom of the list, just above Boston, by the 2020 Census.
- I find it odd that New York and Los Angeles have such large individual metros covering large regions with other primary cities, but the San Francisco Bay area is split into three metros, none of which are listed here.
I plan to post some other observations as separate posts over the next few weeks.
San Antonio is an interesting case because the city’s 1.32 million people spread across probably 90 percent of Bexar County. The MSA, however, includes an eight county region and illustrates that SAT is really an urbanized area with a relatively small gravitational pull, so to speak, compared to the more important metro areas in Texas. San Antonio’s city population figures belie the truly small size of its overall metro, which includes about 2.5 million people, compared to the other top 10 metros. Conventional wisdom might lead one to think that a city’s population ranking correlates with its overall importance and metro size, but, that’s not the case with SAT. It’s kind of the antecedent to Atlanta, whose city population is less than 500,000, but its metro is 5.2 million, illustrating that the city’s importance and overall gravitational pull are much greater than the city’s population would imply.
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