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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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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