If NYC "deannexed" to a village of 12, it wouldn't change a thing. It would have the exact same MSA, CSA, and UA populations.

And LIC and Flushing haven't been separate "villages and towns" for 150 years. What does that even mean? Everything outside the original Dutch settlement was at one time a separate "village".

I agree. While Piemonte is the economic powerhouse of Italy, Rome is still the most culturally significant city in the country. I think Milan is a solid second city for Italy.

Politically too.

What it means is that NYC took over a city in its own right (Brooklyn) and a county (Queens) as well as for some odd reason an island that might as well be in New Jersey. Take that away and NYC and LA are similar sizes (take the San Fernando Valley away if you wanna argue that next). There's not the gap between the two as there is with Rio and SP.

And yes, I know NYC's MSA is bigger.

And Los Angeles never annexed anything, ever.

I was about to call you crazy and then I realized you ere talking "seconds"

The only one disputable would be Detroit. What about Minni? STL? Cleaveland? I feel like there are better Choices now over Detroit.

in the context of the thread, many people are using "2nd city" as the 2nd largest, or 2nd most important (as measured by GDP) city.

by the measures of size and economy, detroit is the midwest's 2nd city. but the twin cities are creeping up on the motor city, and growing faster.

st. louis and cleveland wouldn't really be in the running for #2 in the midwest.


2018 MSA population

detroit: 4,326,442
twin cities: 3,629,190
st. louis: 2,805,465
cleveland: 2,057,009





2010-2018 MSA pop. growth

detroit: +0.70%
twin cities: +8.37%
st. louis: +0.64%
cleveland: −0.97%





2017 MSA GDP

detroit: $260.612 Billion
twin cities: $260.106 Billion
st. louis: $161.281 Billion
cleveland: $138.980 Billion

I don't understand the point. City size (or population) have nothing to do with relative metro size.

Are you aware of any major city in existence that is the exact same size as at its founding? NYC is actually odd in that there have been no territorial expansions since the 19th century. Only a few big U.S. cities have had such longstanding fixed limits.

LA had massive 20th century expansions, up until WW2. That's really a more typical U.S. scenario.

The point was silly and almost not worth responding to... But since we are, it's also worth pointing out that Los Angeles has a significantly larger land area than NYC. If NYC extended its borders into New Jersey to match LA's land area, the city would easily be over 10M in population.

for ohioans, there is no second city. well of course technically there is, but not in the state mindset. most ohioans think of it as there are the three C's, cleveland, columbus and cincinnati, in no order really, and then there are three red-headed step sister cities so to speak, toledo, akron and dayton. and even after that there is quite a broad mix of suburbs, small cities and towns and country villages and the like. so ohio state is really most notable for its variety and not for having one big city and one second tier city, maybe kind of like california and texas i would say.

ohio is like the anti-illinois.

neither state has a clear-cut "2nd city", but for very different reasons.

both states have similar overall populations/sizes, however, in illinois 75% of the people are crammed into one single super-metro in the far NE corner of the state, with nothing but small cities/towns and cornfields spread across the rest of the state, while in ohio the population is MUCH more widely distributed across a vast array of small, medium, and large cities that span from one end of the state to the other.

Toledo is Michigan's second city, silly.

*bass-y/garbled pre-recorded auditorium/voice actor voice*

As the ancient capital of the Mississippian Civilization , and later settled in the late 1600s by Canadien explorers, the St. Louis region is home to the primate metropolis of the lands stretching from the Appalachian uplift to the slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Poised to reach 17 million by 1997, St. Louis has....

*pipe noise*

Who really won the Toledo War?

Hint: It wasn't Ohio.

Hindsight is 20/20.

Excellent read, I love the second and third cities. There were a lot of cities in the UAE and people must visit there.
Thanks for a beautiful input about the second cities.

Melbourne passed Sydney in both population and economy not long after its founding due to the Victorian Gold Rush of the 1850’s through 70’s.

Today, the two cities are evenly matched economically. For example, of the ten largest Australian corporations by revenue:

Wesfarmers ($69 billion) - Perth
Woolworths ($56 billion) - Sydney
Commonwealth Bank of Australia ($45 billion) - Sydney
BHP ($39 billion) - Melbourne
Westpac Banking Corporation ($38 billion) - Sydney
Rio Tinto ($35 billion) - Melbourne
ANZ Banking Group ($34 billion) - Melbourne
NAB ($32 billion) - Melbourne
Telstra ($28 billion) - Melbourne
NSW Health ($21 billion) - Sydney

I always found that interesting about Ohio. What if in alternate history, one of the "C's" became a 5m+ mega city at the expense of the other two remaing the size of Toledo or Dayton? Our province of Ontario is cut up a little differently.It has 14m residents, but doesn't have any metros as large as any of the C's. It has one juggernaut, 1 metro over a million, 1 just under, and a handful of Toledo sized metros.

From somebody from another Country's POV, Detroit is definitely your Midwest's 2nd city..It just has that legacy status. Being the centre of the car industry plus having that iconic Motown recording scene from decades past attributes to that.

You’re basically describing Ohio’s neighbor to the north. Lower Michigan has one “juggernaut” over 5 million (Detroit if you include Windsor), 1 city with a metro pop just over 1 million (Grand Rapids), and a bunch of smaller metros in the 100-400k range. Everything south of M-20 is essentially urban punctuated with corn fields (only slightly exaggerating).

States with one dominant big city:
Alabama: Birmingham
Arizona: Phoenix
Colorado: Denver
Georgia: Atlanta
Louisiana: NO
Maryland: Baltimore
Massachusetts: Boston
Minnesota: Twin Cities
Michigan: Detroit
Oregon: Portland
New York: NYC
Washington: Seattle

States with 2 big cities domination debatable:
Tennessee
Oklahoma
Missouri
Pennsylvania

States with multiple big cities, domination debatable:
California
Florida
Ohio
Texas