Quote:
Originally Posted by The North One
Memphis is a very extreme example. It's city proper is basically it's entire metro area.
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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.