I just watched a video that said new York city had a population of 8.8 million as of the 2020 census but had a metro population of over 26 million? I don’t really understand where they got that 26 million from. Another example, LA, had a population of around 3.8 million but a metro population of over 9 million. Where do they get those metro area figures from?
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Basically there’s the area that’s legally called part of the city, but if there’s skyscrapers on both sides of the city line it’s obviously still realistically part of the same city, even if it isn’t legally. So they call that whole part the metro area.
“Commuter belt” isn’t far off. So where there are transport corridors like highways and express trains metro areas can have strange shapes.
A metro area is s city+surrounding areas that share lots of things like culture, economy, and infrastructure, but are not the same political area. Dallas is a different city from Arlington, it has a different government, taxes, policies, and so on, but Arlington is part of the Dallas metro area.
Pretend your parents decide to throw a BBQ. Your mind might jump to ribs, burgers, brats, brisket, and whatnot that they need to buy. That’s the city. That’s the core concept.
The thing is, that’s not all you eat. You eat corn on the cob, collard greens, some bread, maybe some sauces. But it’s not just what you eat, you also need the grill, plates, charcoal/propane, etc. These are the other things that make your BBQ party a BBQ, and these are the metro areas.
A city has a defined area. Next to the city are other towns, each with their own defined area. Due to their proximity to the city, much of life in these towns is intertwined with life in the city. The city and the surrounding towns are collectively referred to as the metropolitan area of the city.
Cities can grow so big that they expand beyond their *official* borders. The area connected to them and around them is called their “metro area”. Take for example the city you looked up, New York City.
What people usually think of when they say New York City is “Manhattan” where the skyrscapers are. That’s where the city started, but it kept growing in the areas around it. So now Manhattan is just 1/5th of the whole official city. Around it and interconnected to it are the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. All those areas are now “New York City”.
BUT IT DOESN’T END THERE. Once those areas were filled in with people and houses and roads, more people moved in on the outskirts and the area kept growing. Sometimes there were smaller disconnected and far away cities that were surrounded by the growing bigger city and basically became part of it. So much so that now the “city” covers an area that takes up large parts of 3 different states (New Jersey, New York & Connecticut).
So, there are 8.8 million people living withing the official city boundaries, but the continuous area of people and streets and subways and sewers that are all interconnected to it and around it contains 26 million people.
And that is a Metro Area.
A major city is often surrounded by smaller cities, all of that combined is the metro area. Think when you drive in a city and you are unsure of where the boundary between the major city and the next city lies.
If you look at a map of Chicago you can see several cities between Chicago and O’Hare airport, that is all Chicago Metro. Also a lot of small cities to the south and West that are all built up as a densely populated area.
So its a bit of an arbitrary designation. Or at least, not rigorously defined.
A metropolitan area broadly means an area with a core city that is the economic, political and cultural center, surrounded by suburbs, smaller towns, cities, and communities whose economies are heavily dependent on or interlinked with the core city. For people living here, the core city is a source of identity, even if they don’t live in the city proper. People who live in the suburbs of NYC, LA, SF, Washington DC etc will often say they live in that city. Not only is that for convenience (people are more likely to know LA than Glendale) but its because they are substantially influenced by the cultural of the core city.
However, determining what exactly counts as part of a metro area is a subjective question. Usually the core city is fairly easy to identify, but it can be hard to decide which suburbs and small towns count, and different metrics are used. By US standards, to be included, an adjacent area must have substantial social and economic integration with the core, as measured by commuter rates.
Some countries merely say that any city with a certain population is its own metro area. Others say that the city has to have a certain population *and* have a certain number of people in adjacent communities which are economically dependent on the core.
There are (at least) two definitions of what a city is.
On one hand, from an administrative point of view, a city is a place that has its own authorities voted by the people that live within defined borders, and pays for its own things (depending on the location they may pay for parks, schools, police, road maintenance, etc.).
But, from an economic and social point of view, a city is also a place that people live close together, and they take advantage of it by doing things they couldn’t do (or they would be harder to do) if everyone lived separated from each other, things like working specific jobs, buying specific things, or enjoying specific experiences.
So, while administratively a city has defined limits, people doesn’t care about it in their everyday life. For instance, let’s say you found a job in downtown LA, and you want to find a place to live close by. You find a place on [Centinela Avenue](https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0358321,-118.4645286,3a,75y,130.44h,81.34t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s8vRMt1v_dTmGwXMpXedXpw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192). One of those sides is the city of Los Angeles, and the other is the city of Santa Monica. Do you care which side do you end up living in? It’s not like you cannot commute to work because you ended up being “on the wrong side”.
This idea of “I don’t care which side I’m living in” is basically why there are things called “metro areas”, where people from (technically) different cities do things regularly in other cities in the region.
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