I'm sure we have done this before, but...what are the biggest metropolitan areas in the world?

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The internet gives me a lot of confusing and contradictory information!

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:24 (twenty years ago)

Mexico City? Tokyo?

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:25 (twenty years ago)

What is the biggest in N. America? Or Europe?

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:25 (twenty years ago)

This would be in surface area, btw.

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:26 (twenty years ago)

Come on, info junkies! Donut bitch, gabbneb, gygax to thread!

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:27 (twenty years ago)

I want facts and figues and pie charts!

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:27 (twenty years ago)

Surface area? Anchorage, maybe?

― M. V. (M.V.), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:28 (twenty years ago)

no, you know, in terms of LAND!

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:29 (twenty years ago)

Houston is up there, I believe.

― The Ghost of Black Elegance (Dan Perry), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:30 (twenty years ago)

Ah, it would seem that the largest metro areas in Europe are London, Paris, moscow. But how big are they?

xp yes, how big is Houston? LA?

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:31 (twenty years ago)

jacksonville?

― W i l l (common_person), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:32 (twenty years ago)

Wikipedia says that Greater London is 1579 km² and Moscow is 1097.12 km².

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:33 (twenty years ago)

Jacksonville, at 2,264.5 km², is the largest contigious US city in terms of land area. I didn't know that.

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:34 (twenty years ago)

New York City is 1,214.4 km², but 414 of that is water!

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:35 (twenty years ago)

Wikidepia: Greater Tokyo is the largest metropolitan area in the world by population (33,418,366 in 2000), and one of the largest in terms of built-up or urban function landmass at around 4,400 to 5,200 km2.

― Good Dog (Good Dog), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:37 (twenty years ago)

Houston is 1,558.4 km².

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:37 (twenty years ago)

I'm going to GUESS and say HONG KONG, a city I've NEVER EVEN BEEN TO. For SHAME.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:39 (twenty years ago)

This is kind of surprising - Greater LA is only 1,290.6 km².

It's not bigger than that? Or is there some kind of weird boundary definition thing going on? Or is it just the fucking traffic?

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:39 (twenty years ago)

Hong Kong is just densely populated, only 1,103 km².

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:40 (twenty years ago)

Come on, info junkies! Donut bitch, gabbneb, gygax to thread!

I work for an encyclopedia, dammit!

I can't find any info for world, but here's a chart for the U.S. (Note that this is for the entire metropolitan area; otherwise, Anchorage and Jacksonville are the largest within city boundaries.)

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:40 (twenty years ago)

That's really confusing, jaymc.

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:41 (twenty years ago)

Anchorage: 5,079.2 km²

(Are you sure surface area is a good measure?)

― M. V. (M.V.), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:41 (twenty years ago)

San Francisco is only 121.0 km²!!!

xp Not really, no!

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:42 (twenty years ago)

I think Paris might be slightly bigger than London, but those are the top two in Europe.

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:43 (twenty years ago)

Is "urbanized area" the same as "metropolitan area"?

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:43 (twenty years ago)

What's confusing about it, Adam?

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:43 (twenty years ago)

Anchorage weirdness: This includes a huge state park east of town, and some wilderness even farther east.

― M. V. (M.V.), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:43 (twenty years ago)

see above

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:44 (twenty years ago)

Ooooh!

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:45 (twenty years ago)

that is interesting.

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:47 (twenty years ago)

Adam - you may be getting hung up on the distinction between a metro area (which ignores political boundaries and includes urbanized outlying areas) and a city (which does not). the NY metro area, for instance, includes areas that are not in New York State.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:50 (twenty years ago)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Greater Toronto Area (called the GTA by local residents) is the largest metropolitan area in Canada and is centred around the fifth largest city in North America, Toronto, after Mexico City, New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago [....] The GTA consists of 25 municipalities and four regions in a total area of over 7,000 square kilometers with a population of 5 million.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:51 (twenty years ago)

According to that chart I linked to, these are the only "urbanized areas" over 1,000 km²:

1. New York
2. Tokyo
3. Chicago
4. Atlanta
5. Philadelphia
6. Boston
7. Los Angeles
8. Dallas
9. Houston
10. Detroit
11. Washington, DC
12. Miami
13. Nagoya
14. Buenos Aires
15. Paris
16. Rhine-Ruhr-Wupper

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:53 (twenty years ago)

Jacksonville and Indianapolis are way up there on the city measure because they have extended their city limits to cover much of the metro area

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:53 (twenty years ago)

Yes, I think Im am. And I think that the internet doesn't understand the difference either! I don't think anyone really knows the answers!

What are the biggest CITIES then?

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 18:54 (twenty years ago)

Having lived in Jacksonville for 20 years, I can vouch for it's massive size. The entire county is the city.

TS: Lynard Skynard vs. Limp Bizkit

― pappawheelie II, Monday, 29 August 2005 18:59 (twenty years ago)

metro area may be the better measure, because the city boundary, as above, may be rather arbitrary. do you want to make comparisons using san francisco, oakland and san jose, or the metro area that encompasses all 3?

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Monday, 29 August 2005 19:01 (twenty years ago)

Whichever is easiest.

― Adam In Real Life (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 19:04 (twenty years ago)

NorthAm, the continent-spanning city of the 41st century, is completely run by, and completely dependent on, robots which obey a variant of Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics. Forseeing this dangerous trend, a Yoda-like robot named A1 (does that sound like AI?) raises an orphan human named Magnus to fight robots should the need arise. He trains his body as a well-oiled machine until he can deliver karate chops with "steel smashing strength." For various reasons, some robots turn against humans and try to destroy NorthAm, often in the employ of a human dictator, and Magnus is called out as a man on a mission. In the style of early 'sixties sci-fi, Manning always closed with a moral, that we must never become too dependent on technology, and that it is meant to be the servant of man.

We have a winner.

― M. V. (M.V.), Monday, 29 August 2005 19:33 (twenty years ago)

My pile of unsorted laundry

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Monday, 29 August 2005 19:35 (twenty years ago)

How old is that chart above then? Greater London is some 1600 km2, twice the size of NYC and that doesn't even include the commuting suburbs beyond. Paris proper, within the Periferique [sp?] (which follows the old customs wall) is tiny, well under 100. Tokyo and around is probably the biggest. Sao Paulo is the biggest in south America.
But the real winner, every time, is Mount Isa in Australia, so big that its population density works out at about one per square kilometre. A bit like Jacksonville.

― snotty moore, Monday, 29 August 2005 21:52 (twenty years ago)

I actually meant "sq mi," not "sq km."

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 29 August 2005 21:54 (twenty years ago)

As far as I'm concerned, London is the biggest city in the world.

― Yes, I have heard of pizza (nordicskilla), Monday, 29 August 2005 21:55 (twenty years ago)

Not really specifically related to the question, but here's a fun graphic I made for another thread:
http://www.rotovibe.com/images/la_sf_mh.gif

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Monday, 29 August 2005 21:58 (twenty years ago)

What did you do, poop on L.A.?

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Monday, 29 August 2005 22:04 (twenty years ago)

You circumcized Manhattan!

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 29 August 2005 22:07 (twenty years ago)

Castrated it too!

I remember the city of LA as being 450 sq mi (I'll leave the conversion to sq km as an exercise). I also remember reading once that Honolulu city limits are the entire island of Oahu, which may be ~4000 sq mi.

― nickn (nickn), Monday, 29 August 2005 22:57 (twenty years ago)

The metropolitan area is a strange type of measurement. For example the New York metropolitan area merges over into other states but I think some people don't count Orange County as part of the LA metropolitan area. If the Bay Area including San Jose can count as one large metropolitan area then shouldn't the LA area include everything from the Valley down through Orange County?

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Monday, 29 August 2005 23:08 (twenty years ago)

i thought berlin was much larger than paris...

― carly (carly), Monday, 29 August 2005 23:21 (twenty years ago)

For some people, the New York metropolitan area includes, say, Boston and Philadelphia.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 30 August 2005 03:21 (twenty years ago)

that's not a metro area, it's a conglomeration of metro areas, which is a megalopolis or metroplex

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Tuesday, 30 August 2005 03:26 (twenty years ago)

Well I'd agree with that, but that's different from what I was suggesting these people believed.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 30 August 2005 03:27 (twenty years ago)

According to this: http://www.worldflights.com/guide_melbourne/melbourne.htm
Melbourne is 1,700km sq (it is a very spread out city). Mt Isa is, as mentioned above, also well known as one of the biggest towns/cities (in the world?) by measure of km/sq. I'm pretty sure Melbourne is bigger than a lot of the cities mentioned in this thread, which is weird.

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 30 August 2005 03:36 (twenty years ago)

Everyone thinks their city is the biggest!

― Yes, I have heard of pizza (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 30 August 2005 03:37 (twenty years ago)

I like how the link says Melbourne is Australia's "cultural sensitivity" too. Explains so much... (xpost)

― Nag! Nag! Nag! (Nag! Nag! Nag!), Tuesday, 30 August 2005 03:55 (twenty years ago)

Mt Isa is always the answer I've heard. Brisbane will be up there when the spaces between it and the Gold and Sunshine coasts are completely zoned and it becomes a Los-Angeles esque megalopolis, too.

― edward o (edwardo), Tuesday, 30 August 2005 03:58 (twenty years ago)

Hahah Nag yes, I laffed at that comment on the site as well =)

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 30 August 2005 05:55 (twenty years ago)

I thought so (xpost)

― W i l l (common_person), Tuesday, 30 August 2005 08:41 (twenty years ago)

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