Originally Posted by New Brisavoine
Actually for London the core city (into which people commute) is not Greater London. It's larger than Greater London, as it also includes Thurrock, Basildon, Chelmsford, and Gravesham. It's an area of 2,284 km².
Regarding the FUAs, the London FUA has a land area of 6,954 km², and the New York FUA has a land area of 21,915 km². London's FUA is smaller because London is located inside a very densely populated country, where other urban centers form their own labor markets largely separate from London, whereas New York sprawls into empty forests and fields basically.
In England, it would make no sense to include Brighton as part of a "London metro area", because Brighton is completely separate from London, whereas in the US a city as distant from downtown LA as Brighton is from the City of London may be included in the LA metro area, just because of US sprawl that extends over largely virgin territories without preexisting urban centers in their own rights.
For the same reason, although the Toulouse and the Lille FUAs have the same population (1.5 million people), one (Toulouse) extends over 6,520 km², whereas the other (Lille) extends only over 1,666 km². It doesn't mean the comparison is "unfair". It just means both cities are located in different environments. Toulouse sprawls into en empty rural desert, whereas Lille is located in a very dense urban region where other urban centers resist its pull. A place like Lens, only 28 km from Lille, forms its own metro area separate from Lille, whereas 28 km from Toulouse its only some exurbs of Toulouse.
Last but not least, the furthest areas of the New York metro area have a very low population density, so even if we took only the 6,954 km² at the center of the New York FUA, you'd find most of the foreign-born population of the New York FUA living in those 6,954 km².
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