![[OC] Ranking of Top 15 Largest US Urban Areas by Population](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/e3zi9mzj1t3g1-1536x669.png "[OC] Ranking of Top 15 Largest US Urban Areas by Population")
Data Source is City Population's ranking of the largest urban agglomerations in the world, which attempts to standardize city populations based on their contiguous or near-contiguous urbanized areas. For US cities, they base 2025 population estimates based on US Census Bureau's 2020 Statistics on US Urban Areas, but combines adjacent and contiguous urban areas that are split up by the Census Bureau. Excel was used to generate the charts.
On the left side compares population density (people/km^2), while the right side compares overall population of the consolidated urban area. These stats are allow for a more accurate representation and comparison of US cities, as population statistics determined by city-proper, MSA, or CSA, are determined by municipal or county boundaries which can be arbitrary. Instead, this compares cities based on the population of their contiguous urban footprint, essentially what is considered the effective city, allowing a more 1-1 comparison.
Posted by urmummygae42069
5 Comments
There’s no chance LA is denser than NYC or even Chicago. This feels off.
The population values are almost all wrong
LA has a higher population density than NYC?
How? Is this like including some weird suburbs of new york where people live in single family homes on huge lots or something?
i understand that we’re saying the metropolitan area, but giving Boston a population of 7.7M and saying LA is denser than NYC is strange. You have to provide maps for the make up of the larger metro areas you’re using
Using the Boston CSA population is a complete joke.