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?
In: 6
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.
Latest Answers