U.S. cities with bloated city proper populations due to annexation
 

For example, Houston is more than double the land area of NYC, three times the land area of Chicago. Same with Phoenix OKC, Jacksonville, and Nashville to name a few.

These cities are among the Top 20 largest cities in terms of populations outranking other major cities like Atlanta which only has a third of the land area within the city limits, yet receive flack from not having high populations within the city limits.

What other cities come to mind?

Memphis is a very extreme example. It's city proper is basically it's entire metro area.

I can't speak to which cities are large strictly due to annexation; or whether that is particularly excessive; but I can link to a list of U.S. cities by area:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...cities_by_area

The largest are in Alaska, then Jacksonville, then 2 in Montana.

Thereafter, in addition to those cities named above, you would find San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, Los Angeles, San Diego and Indianapolis among those larger than NYC in land area.

I overwhelmingly tend to perceive under-annexation as more of a problem in the U.S.

I think of Detroit, Buffalo, Atlanta and Miami as cities that are obviously under-sized relative to their urban area.

Columbus, OH

Indianapolis takes up its entire county. Marion County. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_County,_Indiana

If Chicago did the same with Cook county it would bloat over 5 million people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_County,_Illinois

Memphis is hardly the worst offender though. At 315 square miles it's definitely amongst the larger cities in terms of square mileage but more or less on par with places like Kansas City, Austin, Charlotte, and San Diego. It is true that Memphis has done it's fair share of annexation over the years. In 1970 the city was 'just' 217 square miles compared to it's 315 today, for example. However, the city also already had 623,000 residents by 1970, so it's not like it's further annexation over the past five decades makes up a very significant part of it's current overall population.

Also, the main reason the city proper accounts for so much of the metro's population is because there is really nothing of significance in the metro outside of Memphis. There is Memphis, it's few suburbs, and then basically a bunch of agricultural land.

I posted this before but Anchorage Alaska is huge in size but it matters little in any gain in population though.




I know most of Anchorage Alaska is mostly not urban but that is probably the largest footprint of city limits in the USA that I know of on a per capita basis.


1,944.05 sq mi


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchorage,_Alaska


it is Alaska's most populous city and contains 39.37% of the state's population; among the 50 states, only New York has a higher percentage of residents who live in its most populous city. The Anchorage metropolitan area, which includes Anchorage and the neighboring Matanuska-Susitna Borough, had a population of 396,317 in 2019, accounting for more than half the state's population. At 1,706 square miles (4,420 km2) of land area, the city is the fourth-largest by area in the United States and larger than the smallest state, Rhode Island, which has 1,212 square miles (3,140 km2)

The city limits span 1,961.1 square miles (5,079.2 km2),

A good way to attempt to quantify this would be the cities that have the largest percentage of their urban areas in their city limits. Here's the leading metros over 1,000,000 by percentage in the city center (using MSAs which are bloated but easier to find the 2019 numbers for):

San Antonio - 60.7%
Jacksonville - 58.4%
(Fresno - 53.2%) - 999k in 2019 estimates
Tucson - 52.3%
San Jose - 51.3% (Yes, I know San Jose MSA is silly)
Louisville - 48.8%
Memphis - 48.4%
Oklahoma City - 46.5%
Austin - 44.0%
New York City - 43.4% (the lingering effects of 1898)
San Diego - 42.7%
Columbus - 42.3%
Indianapolis - 42.2%

Two sub-million examples
El Paso - 80.6%
Anchorage - 72.7%

Huntsville, AL is great example as well. The city has annexed land in Madison (county seat of), Limestone, and Morgan (part of a separate MSA). It could be the largest (by population) city in Alabama as of the 2020 Census.

The largest city (in area) in the Province of Ontario, Canada, or anywhere outside the Province of Quebec, in Canada is Sudbury.

• City (single-tier) 3,228.35 km2 (1,246.47 sq mi)

But Quebec has some a wee bit bigger.

La Tuque, Quebec

• City 28,098.60 km2 (10,848.93 sq mi)

Senneterre

• Total 16,323.70 km2 (6,302.62 sq mi)

Almost 11 million square miles?

Wtf?

Where did you see 11 million square miles ? :???:
It's 11 thousand square miles.

Anyway because those towns are located in empty land, those huge areas don't really inflate the population figure.
Context is everything when comparing data.

Not surprised at all. I live in SA and it’s MUCH worse than Houston in this respect.

Yep. Same with Houston. It would double its population to 4.7 million.

It has been 25 years since Houston made any large annexations. In that time the metro population has added 3 million people, nearly doubling its size. The city itself has added 500k since then.

Good point... context aside tho, I still cant believe Canada has a city with an area of 11 billion square miles

And the last area Houston did annex (Kingwood) back in 1996 probably had 60k people back then. About 80k now. Small potatoes compared to Houston's overall population and they're still pissed about it around here.

setting aside somewhat irrelevant statistical dick measuring, i have to wonder if some of the inefficiency and waste in US government has to do with this hyper-balkanization of urban boundaries.

i grew up in silicon valley. in a 300 square mile area there are 10 or more independent cities. saratoga, los gatos, sunnyvale, cupertino, santa clara, san jose, mountain view, palo alto, fremont, milpitas, etc, each with a more-or-less complete governance structure. a scant few things are handled on the county level, and there are even too many of those.

the actual number of employees might not be all that different at the rank-and-file, but the number of "leaders" and leadership structures and different rules and regulations would be far lower. there would be one mayor, one city council, one planning commission or board, one chief of police, and so on, instead of dozens of each.

is it a coincidence that regions which are generally regarded as more efficient or business friendly have proportionally larger boundaries?

what would a bay area look like with the same 7-8M people but 3 fewer counties (6 instead of 9) and 50 fewer municipalities (50 instead of 100, with most of the combinations being in the urban core)?

I don't know the answer but I'd bet it could be found by studying the history of Toronto.