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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To add to the other comments, the *reason why* a metro area is useful is that different areas are organized differently. For example, I live in the Boston metro area. Boston proper is actually relatively small: only about 675k people. That population puts it #24 in the country, but it’s because the various municipalities are more fractured than in other cities. Boston is about 48 sq miles in area, but its surrounding cities “feel like” what other cities would just call the outskirts of the city proper.
Some points of comparison:
– Boston is 675k people, 49 sq mi
– Phoenix is 1.66M people, 517 sq mi
– Boston metro is 4.9M people, 4.67k square miles
– Phoenix metro is 4.9M people, 14.5k sq mi
So if you looked at just the cities, you’d conclude that Boston is significantly smaller than Phoenix; but when you look at the metro areas, you see that they’re roughly the same in population, with Phoenix a lot more spread out.
Of those two perspectives, the second is the one most people would instinctively say feels right.
Or to put it visually, look at this (just randomly pulled from google images): https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tGR_ha5-stKsP4IDMTfHqIxZqBU=/0x0:2048×1315/620×413/filters:focal(861×495:1187×821):format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/58607531/14000848519_cad422a1a3_k.0.jpg . Only the lower part of the picture (below the river) is actually Boston, so the metro area captures what it’s like to live in the picture as a whole.
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