Largest Metropolitan region, by area

[Giligone 10]

Im just curious. Does anyone here know what the largest single metropolitan city by area? I'm thinking in terms of contiguous built area, not political bounderies...

[jvlm.123 0]

I think it's the New York Metropolitan Area, followed by Tokyo, but I'm not too sure.

Edit:

Rank	Metropolitan Area	Size	Population
1	Dallas/Fort Worth (USA)	23,283km²	5,819,475
2	Houston (USA)	23,124km²	5,280,077
3	New York (USA)	17,405km²	18,747,320
4	Brasilia (Brazil)	14,400km²	~3,341,000
5	Tokyo (Japan)	13,500km²	~35,197,000
6	Miami (USA)	13,275km²	5,422,200
7	Los Angeles (USA)	12,562km²	12,923,547
8	Sydney (Australia)	12,140km²	~4,331,000
9	Paris (France)	12,012km²	~11,264,000
10	Philadelphia (USA)	11,991km²	5,823,233

[Giligone 10]

Ahh, cool. Thanks. I totally would have figured Atlanta be right near the top.. with Dallas and Houston... **shrug

[ILL Tonkso 1,236]

Thats wrong, London is WAY Above Paris

[montrouge 2]

London has no definited metropolitan area 

but  ILL Tonkso is right London metro area is larger than Paris metro area

In urban area London is larger per size but Paris per population.

another error

This is the population of the Ile De France for 2004 but not the population of Paris urban area

11,264,000

this is the real number for the metro area of Paris

11,633,822 

and this is the real number for the Ile de France in 2005

11,362,000

[ILL Tonkso 1,236]

Actually, London is larger in both lol.

[manman99 2]

Dallas and Houstan are big cities, but those facts that are provided are wrong

The 3 largest Marto areas are NYC Metro, Tokyo, and I think Mexico City.

                        Manman99                 

there are so many  sites for this,  why doesent anyone just look it up, really and provide the site, because all the sites i have been to on this subject have Tokyo, NYC, and Mexico city, I always see Dallas and Houstan in the late twenties if Im correct.  But the true largest is NY Metro.

                              Manman99                    

[KingTitan 6]

http://www.citypopulation.de/ go there. LOL. thats too easy to find out to make it a discussion.

[Giligone 10]

Originally posted by: KingTitan http://www.citypopulation.de/ go there. LOL. thats too easy to find out to make it a discussion.quote>

I cant find anything useful on that site. I figured it was a legit question... So far it seems we have not yet actually figured it out...

[bkmh88 0]

Ok, so Los Angeles is the largest city in terms of land area, but New York is the largest in population in the United States. In the world that would be Tokyo, Mexico City, then New York in terms of Population, but I don't know about land area. This is according to a UN Census.

BK

[ilikehotdogsalot 307]

Sao Paulo, Brazil should be there too. There's like 30 million people in the metro area. It comes in second only to Tokyo.

[Giligone 10]

Based on a very informal Google Maps survey of the cities mentioned thus far It seems to me as though Tokyo is... Although I can't read the japanese characters to know where tokyos suburbs end and another cities begin... It was the only city I could find that required me to zoom out to a 20km scale.

[Micah 16]

Btw, just to clearify, this isn't population, this is area. *wink wink at ilikehotdogsalot*

As for Paris & London:

population: London 11,624,807 > Paris 11,264,000

However, area: London 8,920 km < Paris 12,012 km

But that list is correct. Dallas and Houston have massive metropolitan areas. Houston's skyscapers go out for miles upon miles to the north, south, east, and west. The Houston metropolitan is the size of Massachusetts and includes 10 counties. 

Here are some scale maps to show you the area that Houston encompasses:

The state of Massachusetts (which is about the size of the Houston metropolitan area):


The actual Houston metropolitan area:

[SpecialEddie 3]

Originally posted by: manman99 Dallas and Houstan are big cities, but those facts that are provided are wrong

The 3 largest Marto areas are NYC Metro, Tokyo, and I think Mexico City.

                        Manman99                 

there are so many  sites for this,  why doesent anyone just look it up, really and provide the site, because all the sites i have been to on this subject have Tokyo, NYC, and Mexico city, I always see Dallas and Houstan in the late twenties if Im correct.  But the true largest is NY Metro.

                              Manman99                     quote>

 

Just a suggestion, why don't YOU post the websites where you get your information? And please, read the thread title before coming to New York City's defense. It's a great city and all, but you're so obsessed with NY you tend to shun other cities, favoring NY above them.  

[manman99 2]

specialeddie: yes I do really like NYC very dearly, but I do not shun any other cities, it may seem like that, but I really am not prejudice of other cities.  I love Chicag, LA is okay, Ive never been to Tokyo, but it would be nice to visit someday, I only talk about NC because its the city I really have only lived with throughout my life.  Everything is about NY over here.

AND.......... not to be shrude, but I was just saying about those websites.  I stated that there are so many sites about this.  I cant be at the computer 24/7 I have a life, I cant provide everything for everyone.

                             Manman99             

But if you would like me to provide you with something, the here
http://www.listsofbests.com/list/8696     It only lists the population, but I think you can figure it out from there.   But the best site is Wikepedia for this type of research.

[ilikehotdogsalot 307]

I don't know how these places know how big a city is and where the urban area ends, but whatever floats your boat.

[Odainsaker 2,134]

Note that the question within the original post also asked for contiguous built area and not political boundaries, which is actually different than a "metropolitan area," though that was also asked. Unfortunately, the terms and concepts are not the same and are not interchangeable, and so the answer will not be short nor easy.  "Largest" is also vague in it can mean either largest population or largest land area, which obviously will give us different rankings.  To answer the question, we must carefully refine our terms.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government's jurisdiction includes several islands far out in the Pacific, while it also excludes huge junks of contiguous built areas that lie across the political borders of neighboring prefectures. Metropolitan areas, at least in the United States, are still pieced together by counties, which themselves are still primarily political subdivisions of which many have irregular sizes, non-uniform areas, varying densities, different expanses of open areas, and uneven commuter and economic ties. The Los Angeles-Anaheim-Riverside Consolidate Metropolitan Statistical Area (a combination of several closely linked metropolitan areas) stretches all the way across southern California, covering almost a quarter of the state of California and reaching from the western coastline to the borders of Nevada and New Mexico, but there is a lot of empty land, mountain ranges, and desert in there. Just Riverside and San Bernardino counties, only 2 of the 5 counties which make up the bulk of this overblown swath, are each themselves their own metro areas and also themselves several times larger than the entire Houston-Galveston-Brazoria area, and indeed they larger than many New England states. This is all too out-of-whack to make useful or intelligible comparisons.

A better system for this question is to use the "Urban Area" measurement, which in the U.S. is based on tiny census blocks, many of which are often no larger than a physical street-defined city block in area. Though not always perfectly uniform, they are still infinitely better in refining an area than using whole giant counties. Each census block must reach a certain uniformly predefined threshold in population and density to be considered "urban," and all those census blocks that can be considered urban are mapped together to find contiguous urban blocks, which are then called "Urban Areas."  Because of growth, the more carefully defined Urban Area sizes and maps are more likely to change than the vast areas of metropolitan areas, making their lists harder to keep up with.

It may take some digging and navigating, but the US Census website has data on U.S. Urban Areas and defining thresholds, and includes maps of the resulting areas.  I remember for Census 2000 the New York contiguous built Urban Area was by far the largest. Because it is based on census data, it will now be a few years dated until the next decennial census, but many of the major cities maintain their own up-to-date and projected urban area statistics.

I do not know how other nations organize their Urban Area measures in comparison to the U.S., as their census block arrangements and urban population and density thresholds may likely be different. However, I would suspect Tokyo will likely be the largest in land area, for the region around Tokyo Bay and the vast Kanto Plain beyond are very heavily built-up, with very little open undeveloped areas, and the contiguous urban areas will include and engulf many other large contiguous satellite cities like Yokohama, Kawasaki, Chiba, and Saitama. In just raw population, it is a good certainty that Tokyo still remains the most populous.  Of course, there are lots of other sprawling monster megacities in the world, so I could easily be wrong.

Edit:  Ah ha!, Wikipedia was nice enough to compile and organize the Urban Area lists from the U.S. Census websites, and has some international threshold comparisons.  Note that while the U.S. requires a census block to have a density threshold of 500 people per square mile (193 per square kilometer) to become part of an Urban Area, in Japan, their census enumeration districts must reach 4000 people per square kilometer be be part of their urbanized areas, which tells us how hard (and perhaps pointless) such international comparisons really are.  Check it out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_area

There is a worldwide list linked there, but my poor system doesn't tolerate large PDF files...anyone want to post the results.  

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

Given the last U.S. census in year 2000, the largest and most populous U.S. contiguous Urban Area is New York-Newark with a land area of 8683.2 square kilometers and population of 17,799,861.  New York-Newark is followed in area by Chicago (5498.1 sq km), Atlanta (5083.1 sq km), Philadelphia (4660.7 sq km), Boston (4496.7 sq km), and then second-most-populous U.S. urban area Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana (4319.9 sq km, population 11,789,487).

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

The European Union 2005 list estimated and projected Paris as the most populous in the EU (10,136,000), with London in close second and Madrid third, but the list does not provide land areas.

If you have read this far down, you should now know what I suspected all along, this is all like comparing apples to oranges to watermelons to cherries, and then ranking them all by their acidity.

[petriknl 15]

How about Randstad Holland??

[EAST #87 1]

All he asked was a simple question, he didnt mean to cause an arguement over metropolitin areas.

[Giligone 10]

Hahaha, wow, thats quite the post there odainsaker. Thanks for finding those links, I couldnt find anything useful on wikipedia when i looked, guess i just didnt look in the right places. In my original question i tried to differentiate between contiguous urban areas and largest contiguous metropolitan area. I'll use an example to illustrate what I meant. Washington D.C. and Baltimore are 2 distinct metropolitan areas each with their own CBD's and suburbs. However, they have both sprawled so much that they now form a single contiguous urban area. I hope this clarify's my original question for anyone who was confused.

I think we seem to have come to some sort of agreement that the answer is either Tokyo or New York. Thanks for everyones help in solving my query.

[Micah 16]

EAST #87: LOL! Exactly

He only asked for the largest metropolitan region by area.

Edit: Giligone: That's if you are going by population.  The largest in the world by area is still Dallas & second is Houston.

[hamsterTK 93]

Uncyclopedia.org wrote:

Dallas is a proud city in name only that claims a 12 county region as one city.quote>

\

[BEJA 2]

....So, now for Canada.....in area, which is the largest city? Be careful and think about it!

BEJA

[st louis dude 6]

Toronto...hands down

[Giligone 10]

Originally posted by: BEJA ....So, now for Canada.....in area, which is the largest city? Be careful and think about it!

BEJAquote>

If you are keeping with the topic of this thread then Toronto. But if you are trying to be sly and talk about political bounderies it would be something like Greater Sudbury or Halifax...

[BEJA 2]

Well, Giligone, you caught me! Yes, I'm trying to be sly....the largest city in area, (political boundaries), is Timmins, Ontario. The largest metro built up area is correctly Toronto or the GTA, also including parts of the 'Golden Horseshoe'.

BEJA

[football_fever 6]

I remember a professor talking about the east coast of the US and how it has grown (like Baltimore and Washington DC) into one big nearly contiguous urban area, especially the strip between Boston and Washington DC. There is probably as much empty space in that corridor as there is in Riverside county, CA alone. It seemed like there was open space everywhere in the LA-Riverside-Orange-San Bernadino-Ventura county area. Although if you don't count that east coast corridor, I'd say that 5 county area in southern California - at least in the US. I don't know enough about Mexico City, Japan, Manila, Brazil, or Europe to make an intelligent argument about that.

[Micah 16]

I remember a professor talking about the east coast of the US and how it has grown (like Baltimore and Washington DC) into one big nearly contiguous urban area, especially the strip between Boston and Washington DC. quote>

Same here... my teacher talked about it as well. It is called BosWash or Bosington. The scientific name for that is a megalopolis which is several cities that form a single united urban segment. Boswash is the only major megalopolis in America. Here is a full article about them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalopolis_%28term%29

However, it isn't a single metropolitan region. It is many different ones that are connected.

[_MostlyHarmless 17]

^^^ Some say that San-San (San Francisco to San Diego) is of comparable size.

EDIT: jvlm.123, where did you get that info, I would have thought Tokyo or Sao Paulo would have had the largest.

[Rochefort 13]

Tokyo and its surroundings (grouped as "Greater Tokyo") are quoted as the world's largest urban area with an estimated 35 million+ inhabitants, followed by Seoul National Capital Area at 22.7 million, then Greater Mexico City at 19.4 million, but this is based on population and all depends on where you draw your information from. Geographical areas are very much up for contention with each contending city/area/nation vying for supremecy and willing to "stretch" boundaries to reach the pinnacle.

I know from experience that population and geographical estimates vary dependant on the criteria you use...for instance, you could add together the entire Eastern Seaboard and call it a continuous connobation, but is it really?? Where do you stop??

A couple of recent reports issued by the Australian Bureau of Statistics have quoted Sydney at a population of both 4.4million and 80,000...again dependant on what you class as Sydney. Add in Fairfield (pop 190k) and other such towns and yes, 4.4million sounds about right..but just add up the population of the historical centre and you're leaning towards the 80k mark.  I live in Manchester, UK..population 440,000, but ascribed urban population of 2.5million...do the people of Bolton, Wigan, Stockport or Rochdale consider themselves "part" of Manchester? Like hell they do? but included they are, despite the fact that there is no historical basis for inclusion.

Geographically, Houston and Dallas are (apparently) the largest by area but it would be interesting to hear from anyone who lives within either of these defined areas but not within a stone's throw of the cities themselves and see whether or not they consider themselves to be part of either Houston or Dallas??

If you then consider this in geographical terms its easy to expand the boundaries of an urban area to whatever extent you may feel you want to. In addition, there are often political reasons for urban definitions that have little to do with the actual make up of a geographical area. We often see electoral boundaries altered to favour a political party here in the UK...this in turn gives rise to a change in the statistical boundaries of an area....all of a sudden Luton Airport is renamed London Luton Airport !! ....for those who don't know...its nowhere near London for christ's sake !! (apologies to the christians at Christmas)

Its all nonsense really and extremely subjective if you ask me..which you didn't.

Rochefort