Cities
See also: List of United States cities by population and Cities and metropolitan areas of the United StatesThe United States has dozens of major cities, including 8 of the 60 "global cities" of all types, with three in the "alpha" group of global cities: New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. As of 2011, the United States had 51 metropolitan areas with a population of over 1,000,000 people each. (See Table of United States Metropolitan Statistical Areas.)
As of 2011, about 250 million Americans live in or around urban areas. That means more than three-quarters of the U.S. population shares just about three percent of the U.S. land area.
The following table shows the populations of the top ten metropolitan areas, as of the 2010 Census.
| Leading population centers |
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| Rank | Core city | Metro area pop. | Metropolitan Statistical Area | Region | New York City Los Angeles |
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| 1 | New York | 19,015,900 | New York–Northern New Jersey–Long Island, NY–NJ–PA MSA | Northeast | |||
| 2 | Los Angeles | 12,944,801 | Los Angeles–Long Beach–Santa Ana, CA MSA | West | |||
| 3 | Chicago | 9,504,753 | Chicago–Joliet–Naperville, IL–IN–WI MSA | Midwest | |||
| 4 | Dallas | 6,526,548 | Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington, TX MSA | South | |||
| 5 | Houston | 6,086,538 | Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown, TX MSA | South | |||
| 6 | Philadelphia | 5,992,414 | Philadelphia–Camden–Wilmington, PA–NJ–DE–MD MSA | Northeast | |||
| 7 | Washington, D.C. | 5,703,948 | Washington, DC–VA–MD–WV MSA | South | |||
| 8 | Miami | 5,670,125 | Miami–Fort Lauderdale–Pompano Beach, FL MSA | South | |||
| 9 | Atlanta | 5,359,205 | Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Marietta, GA MSA | South | |||
| 10 | Boston | 4,591,112 | Boston–Cambridge–Quincy, MA–NH MSA | Northeast | |||
| based on the 2011 U.S. Population Estimate | |||||||
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of The United States
Famous quotes containing the word cities:
“In great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state of co-operation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for all the rest they are careless of neighbours. Christianity teaches us to love our neighbour as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbour.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (18041881)
“Again and again I am brought up against it, and again and again I resist it: I dont want to believe it, even though it is almost palpable: the vast majority lack an intellectual conscience; indeed, it often seems to me that to demand such a thing is to be in the most populous cities as solitary as in the desert.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (18441900)
“If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
When time is old and hath forgot itself,
When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
And blind oblivion swallowed cities up,
And mighty states characterless are grated
To dusty nothing, yet let memory
From false to false among false maids in love
Upbraid my falsehood.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)