Demographia's 2013 urban areas ranked.

[softee]

This list just shows urban areas in the U.S./Canada/Mexico. For complete list, see link below.
City name/Population/Land area/People per square mile

01. New York: 20,673,000 (4,495/4,600)
02. Mexico City: 20,032,000 (790/25,400)
03. Los Angeles: 15,067,000 (2,432/6,200)
04. Chicago: 9,104,000 (2,647/3,400)
05. Toronto: 6,184,000 (883/7,000)
06. Dallas: 6,022,000 (1,998/3,000)
07. San Francisco: 6,020,000 (1,080/5,600)
08. Miami: 5,804,000 (1,239/4,700)
09. Philadelphia: 5,508,000 (1,981/2,800)
10. Houston: 5,485,000 (1,793/3,100)
11. Washington: 4,825,000 (1,322/3,600)
12. Atlanta: 4,707,000 (2,645/1,800)
13. Guadalajara: 4,567,000 (270/16,900)
14. Boston: 4,514,000 (2,056/2,200)
15. Phoenix: 4,044,000 (1,265/3,200)

http://demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf

[tayser]

Sydney 3.9 mil and Melb 3.7 mil?

doesnt give explanation on their population method (well not with a brief glance it doesnt).

[dc_denizen]

Wait are the 2013 US urban areas released by the census yet?

[ChiSoxRox]

Overall top ten:

1. Tokyo: 37,239,000
2. Jakarta: 26,746,000
3. Seoul: 22,868,000
4. Delhi: 22,826,000
5. Shanghai: 21,766,000
6. Manila: 21,241,000
7. Karachi: 20,877,000
8. New York: 20,673,000
9. Sao Paulo: 20,568,000
10. Mexico City: 20,032,000

For being such a goliath, you hear so little about Jakarta.

[Mr Roboto]

The density numbers vary so much from country to country. Bangladesh and India's density is incredible.

[isaidso]

What strikes me is that 20 million doesn't get you into the top 10 these days.

[Jasonhouse]

An easy task for one of you population stat geeks...


I was thinking it would be interesting to see how many of the world's largest metros it takes to add up to roughly the same population as the entire US. (like maybe the top 17-20 metros combined?)... But also, what the land area and resultant density of that 'nation of cities' would be...

[hudkina]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

Wait are the 2013 US urban areas released by the census yet?

The census bureau doesn't release inter-census population estimates for urban areas.

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by Jasonhouse

An easy task for one of you population stat geeks...


I was thinking it would be interesting to see how many of the world's largest metros it takes to add up to roughly the same population as the entire US. (like maybe the top 17-20 metros combined?)... But also, what the land area and resultant density of that 'nation of cities' would be...

Top 15 give 321 million in an area of 20,411 square miles, for a density of 15,700 people per square mile.

[StethJeff]

I'm sure that every city gets butchered somehow based on how they define these urban areas. On just a quick glance, Antioch is left off of SF, Simi Valley/Thousand Oaks/Murrieta and arguably Oxnard/Lancaster are left off of LA.

[mhays]

It's hard to take demographia seriously given that it's run by a guy whose mission is to push suburbanization over urbanity.

[Doady]

Apparently, Toronto is denser than all urban areas in US and Canada, even NYC? Considering Toronto's massive sprawl, I find that hard to believe.

Canada's density numbers overall seem to be extremely inflated compared to Australia and US. According these stats, Canadian urban areas are even as dense as French urban areas, if not denser. Urban areas like Saskatoon, Regina, Kitchener, London, Red Deer, Guelph, Kamloops, etc. are denser than those of Bordeaux, Lyon and Marseille? Really? Seems like BS to me.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Doady

Apparently, Toronto is denser than all urban areas in US and Canada, even NYC? Considering Toronto's massive sprawl, I find that hard to believe.

This is unweighted density. Massive sprawl generally aids unweighted density, because you're just dividing the whole urban area by the number of residents.

Areas with high density and relatively empty areas will have a lower overall unweighted density.

I don't think Toronto is among the sprawliest cities, really, but it does have a pattern of consistent development of roughly equivalent density over a large area, similar to, say, LA, and dissimilar to, say, NYC.

If you look at the NYC numbers, the size of the urbanized region is ridiculous, but half of that area is ultra-low density. You could cut half the area while barely touching the population. It's just dissimilar development patterns across metro areas.

[J. Will]

Toronto doesn't really have massive sprawl for it's size. The UA is only 883 square miles. The most populous American UA under 1000 square miles is Seattle, with less than 3.2 million people.

[J. Will]

2011 weighted densities courtesy memph (these are not Demographia's UA's obviously, I guess they are the United Nations UAs):

1. New York: 33,029 (17,799,861)
2. San Francisco-Oakland: 15,032 (2,995,769)
3. Toronto: 14,853 (5,178,773)
4. Montreal: 14,128 (3,299,497)
5. Los Angeles: 12,557 (11,789,487)
6. Vancouver: 12,093 (2,189,688)
7. Honolulu: 11,989 (718,182)
8. Chicago: 10,270 (8,307,904)
9. San Jose: 8,766 (1,538,312)
10. Philadelphia: 8,457 (5,149,079)
11. Ottawa: 7,747 (1,022,490)
12. Hamilton: 7,743 (693,793)
13. Boston: 7,711 (4,032,484)
14. Winnipeg: 7,643 (673,856)
15. Calgary: 7,228 (1,101,023)
16. San Diego: 7,186 (2,674,436)
17. Baltimore: 6,952 (2,076,354)
18. Washington: 6,835 (3,933,920)
19. Miami: 6,810 (4,919,036)
20. Quebec City: 6,759 (704,772)
21. Las Vegas: 6,662 (1,314,357)
22. Edmonton: 6,457 (878,827)
23. Victoria: 6,145 (303,963)
24. London, ON: 6,106 (376,032)
25. Regina: 5,992 (193,100)
26. Kitchener: 5,872 (462,262)
27. Milwaukee: 5,830 (1,308,913)
28. Oshawa: 5,820 (297,808)
29. Saskatoon: 5,686 (222,079)
30. Halifax: 5,472 (328,962)
31. St Catharines-Thorold: 5,375 (150,967)
32. Phoenix: 5,238 (2,907,049)
33. Denver: 5,231 (1,984,887)
34. Windsor: 5,193 (283,940)
35. Sacramento: 5,043 (1,393,498)
36. Cleveland: 5,033 (1,786,647)
37. Detroit: 4,955 (3,903,377)
38. Seattle: 4,747 (2,712,205)
39. Dallas-Fort Worth: 4,641 (4,145,659)
40. Riverside-San Bernardino: 4,514 (1,506,816)
41. Houston: 4,514 (3,822,509)
42. Portland: 4,383 (1,583,138)
43. Minneapolis-St Paul: 4,196 (2,388,593)
44. San Antonio: 4,090 (1,327,554)
45. Austin: 3,904 (901,920)
46. Virginia Beach: 3,883 (1,394,439)
47. Pittsburgh: 3,698 (1,753,136)
48. St Louis: 3,566 (2,077,662)
49. Tampa: 3,558 (2,062,339)
50. Cincinnati: 3,274 (1,503,262)
51. Kansas City: 3,041 (1,361,744)
52. Atlanta: 2,362 (3,499,840)

[Urbanguy]

According to the US Census 2010 the Urban Area populations for US Cities were a bit different from that.

1. New York--Newark, NY--NJ--CT 18,351,295
2. Los Angeles--Long Beach--Anaheim, CA 12,150,996
3. Chicago, IL--IN 8,608,208
4. Miami, FL 5,502,379
5. Philadelphia, PA--NJ--DE--MD 5,441,567
6. Dallas--Fort Worth--Arlington, TX 5,121,892
7. Houston, TX 4,944,332
8. Washington, DC--VA--MD 4,586,770
9. Atlanta, GA 4,515,419
10. Boston, MA--NH--RI 4,181,019

11. Detroit, MI 3,734,090
12. Phoenix--Mesa, AZ 3,629,114
13. San Francisco--Oakland, CA 3,281,212
14. Seattle, WA 3,059,393
15. San Diego, CA 2,956,746
16. Minneapolis--St. Paul, MN--WI 2,650,890
17. Tampa--St. Petersburg, FL 2,441,770
18. Denver--Aurora, CO 2,374,203
19. Baltimore, MD 2,203,663
20. St. Louis, MO--IL 2,150,706

21. San Juan, PR 2,148,346
22. Riverside--San Bernardino, CA 1,932,666
23. Las Vegas--Henderson, NV 1,886,011
24. Portland, OR--WA 1,849,898
25. Cleveland, OH 1,780,673
26. San Antonio, TX 1,758,210
27. Pittsburgh, PA 1,733,853
28. Sacramento, CA 1,723,634
29. San Jose, CA 1,664,496
30. Cincinnati, OH--KY--IN 1,624,827

31. Kansas City, MO--KS 1,519,417
32. Orlando, FL 1,510,516
33. Indianapolis, IN 1,487,483
34. Virginia Beach, VA 1,439,666
35. Milwaukee, WI 1,376,476
36. Columbus, OH 1,368,035
37. Austin, TX 1,362,416
38. Charlotte, NC--SC 1,249,442
39. Providence, RI--MA 1,190,956
40. Jacksonville, FL 1,065,219

41. Memphis, TN--MS--AR 1,060,061
42. Salt Lake City--West Valley City, UT 1,021,243
43. Louisville/Jefferson County, KY--IN 972,546
44. Nashville-Davidson, TN 969,587
45. Richmond, VA 953,556
46. Buffalo, NY 935,906
47. Hartford, CT 924,859
48. Bridgeport--Stamford, CT--NY 923,311
49. New Orleans, LA 899,703
50. Raleigh, NC 884,891

51. Oklahoma City, OK 861,505
52. Tucson, AZ 843,168
53. El Paso, TX--NM 803,086
54. Urban Honolulu, HI 802,459
55. Birmingham, AL 749,495
56. Albuquerque, NM 741,318
57. McAllen, TX 728,825
58. Omaha, NE--IA 725,008
59. Dayton, OH 724,091
60. Rochester, NY 720,572

[memph]

Originally Posted by J. Will

2011 weighted densities courtesy memph (these are not Demographia's UA's obviously, I guess they are the United Nations UAs):

They were US Census Bureau UAs and Statscan UAs (with a few minor modifications to make them more comparable to US UAs).

The US numbers are from 2000 though, it's only the Canadian numbers that are from 2011.

I compared data with an Australian who was looking at weighted densities of Australia, and although there aren't any units equivalent to census tracts, it seems like their urban areas are in fact less dense. If they did have census tracts, Sydney would probably have around 12k ppsm weighted density, Melbourne around 8k ppm and the others 4-6k ppsm weighted densities.

Australian cities seem to have considerably less highrise apartments and somewhat less dense suburbs with more bungalows as opposed to the close together 2 storey houses of Canadian cities.

As for those smaller Canadian urban areas vs French urban areas, yeah, they're probably not very apples to apples. French urban areas would still be relatively low density though since they often have a large scattering of single family suburbs that are quite low density, even though their cores are denser. The development is much more patchy too, whereas with Canadian cities it's just one big blob of development, which could affect things depending on how the French UAs are deliniated.

Just from a quick look though, the French Urban areas look like they're actually closer to Metro Areas. Avignon's urban area has a density of 800 ppsm. Canadian UAs which require a minimum density of 1036 ppsm so clearly Avignon's urban area includes a lot of (rural) areas that shouldn't be included, and it's probably the same for most of the UAs. It looks like they've done the urban areas at the commune level, so you get a lot of stuff included that wouldn't be if they were to do it as the census block (or was it block group?) like Census Bureau and StatsCan do. And even so, it seems like a lot of communes that are well detached from what we would consider the "urban area" are part of the French "equivalent" for whatever reason... The area of Bordeaux equivalent to US/Canadian urban areas would probably be around 5000 ppsm rather than 1800 ppsm.

Yeah... I wouldn't take demographia very seriously, this is not the first time they've compared apples to oranges.

[Urbanguy]

I thought that the US numbers were from 2000 but wasn't 100% sure so for some of these UAs using the most current figures there's probably quite an increase in weighted densities.

[memph]

Originally Posted by Urbanguy

I thought that the US numbers were from 2000 but wasn't 100% sure so for some of these UAs using the most current figures there's probably quite an increase in weighted densities.

Not always. If most of the growth is greenfield development of similar densities to previous greenfield development, the weighted densities won't increase and might even decrease if you're causing an increase in the proportion of people living in these low density suburbs.

Chicago for instance would have seen a decrease in weighted density. Although there was growth in the downtown, most of the tracts there are still not super dense and don't have the "Manhattan effect" since much of the land is dedicated to offices. There was some growth in other areas, but the South and West side mostly lost population, and while these aren't as dense as the North side, it still represents a large decrease in the proportion of the population living at moderately high densities. On top of that, Chicago had a fair bit of low density sprawl on the outskirts.

[ssiguy]

I went to the population lists and I couldn't find Ottawa.