Metropolitan/urban population by state/province
 

How urbanized is your state/province and what percentage of the population lives in the largest metropolitan area?

The Toronto Census Metropolitan Area has a population of around 6.5 million, 44% of Ontario's population (14.5 million) Using a US "MSA"-type definition that would take in Hamilton, around 7.5 million live in the Toronto-Hamilton area, just over half the population.

Other metros over 500,000 include Ottawa (1.1 million in Ontario part), Kitchener-Waterloo (584,000) and London (545,000). Altogether about 2/3 live in metro areas of 500,000 or more.

82% live in Census Metropolitan Areas (100,000 or more).

86% of the population of Ontario lives in urban areas.

85% of Texas lives in urban areas

Dallas-Ft. Worth (7.6 million), Houston (7.1 million), San Antonio (2.6 million), Austin (2.2 million), McAllen (868,000), El Paso (844,000) = ~21 million out of 29 million in Texas (metros over 500k)

A not insignificant portion of our metropolitan areas’ populations are not urban at all. The census bureau has a totally different methodology for UAs and you’ve listed MSA numbers.

This is annoying to calculate for Illinois (Without resorting to the crappy MSA definitions) since three of the largest urbanized areas in Illinois are cross-border (Chicago, Quad Cities, Metro East). The counties making up Chicagoland are about 2/3 the population of Illinois, but not quite all of that is really urban.

According to the 2010 census, 88.5% of the Illinois population is urbanized, which I think is based on a minimum population density.

Some Canadian provinces:

Quebec (8.485,000): 51% live in Montreal (4.3 million), 61% live in Montreal or Quebec City (824,000). 81% urban.

Manitoba (1,369,000): 62% live in Winnipeg (845,000). 72% urban.

Alberta (4,371,000): 68% live in Calgary (1,515,000) and Edmonton (1,447,000). 83% urban.

British Columbia (5,071,000): 57% live in Vancouver-Abbotsford (2.9 million). 86% urban.

For Québec, as of July 1st 2020, it's 8,574,571 , 80.6% urban

couple small red states:

missouri - 6.1 million people
63.1% “urban” as defined by mo dept of health and senior services.

thats about 3.8 million people.

kentucky - 4.4 million people
55% “urban” as defined by the kentucky league of cities

thats about 2.4 million people

The table on this page has the percentage of each state at each census since 1970: https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/...ban-pct-states

I noticed several interesting things. First, Utah has a much more urbanized population than I would've imagined, and western states in general are more urbanized than average. Second, there was a drop in urbanization between 1970 and 1980 across many states. I counted 18 states where that occurred in the 1970s, versus only four in the 2000s. Third, Maine is the only state that got less urban all four decades between 1970 and 2010. But Michigan and Rhode Island got less urban 3 out of 4 of those decades. Lastly, Texas appears to be the only Sun Belt state that experienced an urbanization drop at any point since 1970.

Ohio increased every year, from 75.3 in 1970 to 77.9 in 2010. Makes sense, since the rural areas/small towns have been absolutely bleeding people - even more so than the urban areas.