Demographics of The United States - Cities

Cities

See also: List of United States cities by population and Cities and metropolitan areas of the United States

The 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
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 the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him.... We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder.”
    —Willa Cather (1873–1947)

    “Again and again I am brought up against it, and again and again I resist it: I don’t 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 (1844–1900)

    “Whilst we want cities as the centres where the best things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)