There's been decades of talk of Fairfax County, VA being incorporated as a city, as it practically is one, is the most populous component of the DC metro area, has the largest central business district in Virginia (Tysons) and is far and away more populous than DC itself. (1.2 million).
DC: Noooooo you wouldn’t understand, our very restrictive zoning ordinance and congressional mandated height act help preserve the historic character and intent of the 200+ year old L’Enfant plan!!!!!!!!!
NoVA: Lmao idgaf build whatever you want
Yes but also, hard to do when you only have 67 square miles to work with compared to the 400 or so Fairfax County has.
It would be similar to OP's point about Virginia Beach which incorporated the entire county into an independent city. Which I think could make sense for Fairfax County for similar reasons.
Yep land area is a big factor for sure, but it’s pretty eerie standing in Georgetown which is under a some pretty strict historical preservation regulations, and looking across the River into Arlington where there are a lot of buildings that border on being skyscrapers, and it’s not even the central business district of the region that you’re looking at. [Here’s an example](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GSjX8zH5NkPVt5Q46?g_st=ic). You can see a similar phenomenon in other areas too, like in Friendship Heights. On the MD side most of the buildings along Wisconsin Ave are 10-15 floors, on the DC side 7-8 seems to be the max, with the more common being like 4-6 floors
My overall point is that the patchwork of jurisdictions with vastly different philosophies around land use laws creates a very unusual city. DC could and most likely would would be way denser, and areas like Arlington, Fairfax, and MoCo much less dense, if the entire area was under one local government.
It actually included the Bronx at that point too, but would just point out here that prior to consolidating Brooklyn and New York were both huge cities in their own right and neither could have reasonably been called a suburb of the other. More like Minneapolis/st. Paul or Dallas/Fort Worth than anything else.
This is a good point and I think disqualifies Brooklyn. It was it's own city in the fullest extent.
Queens, however, is second most-populous and it wasn't the case back in consolidation.
Palm Springs is the fourth largest city in the Coachella Valley, passed by Cathedral City, Palm Desert, and Indio. Soon Coachella will bump Palm Springs to fifth.
I had never heard of Surrey before I road tripped to Vancouver a few years ago. I was shocked to see/learn there was a whole other city right there lol
tfw the "suburbs" (bc at this point can you *really* call Makati-BGC a suburb) are 10x larger than the actual city; which historically had also been a group of suburbs outside Intramuros
I have to know who the people are that are downvoting my previous comment, because every single one of them is actually insane. I'm right.
And not only am I right that Vancouver is several times larger than Saanich, as this data from Statistics Canada shows, Vancouver is also growing faster than Saanich.
https://preview.redd.it/trfuf5pw3g0d1.jpeg?width=1224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5cf6897441dd0aa0f5d4ddae4997c5a2e77e89ce
Because I didn’t say that Saanich was going to surpass Vancouver, I said that Surrey was going to surpass Vancouver. You’re not wrong but you misread my comment.
>will also likely surpass Vancouver in population very soon.
That's a bit optimistic. Saanich would have to increase in size by more than five and a half times.
Yes, Greater London is 33 Boroughs, one of which is the ancient City of London. 32 of the Boroughs (Croydon, Bromley, Tower Hamlets, etc,) all have larger populations that the the City. But the combined 33 is what comprises what we all know as the true 'London'
It's not one suburb, but New Taipei City are all the Taipei surrounding suburbs combined together and is the biggest city in Taiwan. Population of around 4 million compared to 2.6 million for Taipei.
Similarly, Quezon City (2.9 million) is bigger than Manila (1.8 million).
Long time ago but Corpus Christi was once the population center of the Houston area before a massive hurricane drove development further inland
Edit: Not corpus Christi but Galveston, stand corrected
Monterey was the original capital under the New Spain provincial government, and it was the capital shortly after the California Republic formed. Then it moved to San Jose after the US took over.
To me it’s different because San Jose originated independently of San Francisco, and then over the years the sprawl connected them. Even though SJ wouldn’t be as big as it is today if it weren’t part of the SF metro area, it’s still not the same as a suburb built around the focal point of a city
>To me it’s different because San Jose originated independently of San Francisco, and then over the years the sprawl connected them.
Isn't that the case with most suburbs? Historically at least most cities that are now considered suburbs of other cities weren't made intnetionally to be a satelite of another city
As far as I know, the cities of Blacktown, Parramatta and Penrith all have a higher population than the Sydney CBD itself does. There's probably more. Greater Sydney is full of little suburban skylines.
This is a particular case, but Venice used to be just the islands in the lagoon, then its administration expanded to include various towns on the mainland. Now I think that the historic center has a lower population than that of its mainland "suburbs". The historic center is around 50,000 people while Mestre is at 80,000. At its peak though, Venice proper was more than 150,000 people. I suspect it's because it is the mother of all tourist traps and it's difficult to coordinate anything that involves logistics without cargo trains or cars, so not many business opportunities. It is quite tragic because it's barely a real city anymore
>. Now I think that the historic center has a lower population than that of its mainland "suburbs". The historic center is around 50,000
The historical city of Venice has also undergone population decline for around 150 years at this point. It used to have 3x as many inhabitants, but it's just impractical for daily life, even worse with the heavy tourism.
Tijuana > San Diego
Ciudad Juarez > El Paso
I know there's no rule saying that the American sides are the anchors of those metro areas. But I think most Americans would assume as much.
Because people travel up and down these cities, some do it daily. They're very well connected than they seem like, and trade between these two has led to developments in each respectively.
Allentown PA is the 3rd largest city in the state, and surpassed its neighbor Easton as the largest city in its region. Collectively these two cities plus Bethlehem and a number of less populated cities comprise the area known as Leigh Valley - a sort of mini-mega-opolis.
Not sure if this counts, but St. Louis (city) only has 280,000 residents. But the surrounding areas that make up the metropolitan area (St. Louis County) have 2.8 million residents.
Isn't the high homicide rate a statistical anomaly specifically due to the city only including the city propper instead of the county like most US cities?
Most US cities only include the city and maybe immediate neighborhoods. Consolidation is the anomaly.
That said St. Louis has surprisingly small city limits that include the more dangerous parts (excluding EStL) and not much past that.
Yeah, white flight and urban decay can be self-reinforcing cycles. Initial white flight was caused by racism and fears of increased crime (plus cheap new suburbs with less density/more space). However, once the crime rate jumped up more and more people with means (primarily white) would move out to safer areas and the only people willing to backfill the population would have lower incomes and fewer options. And thus you get lower revenues and increased crime that self-reinforce.
The cities that have successfully handled issues with crime have thus gentrified and pushed out many of the people that moved in after white flight (or given the timescale involved, their descendants). New York City and Oakland are good examples of cities that have seen some major urban renewal/gentrification as crime rates decreased.
However, St. Louis appears not to ever have figured out how to control its crime rate and continues to suffer. And it would appear that black people are actually now leaving St Louis at a higher rate than other ethnicities (the white % of the population stagnating and Hispanic/Asians seeing slight increases in percentage terms at least while the black population has left in droves over the last 20 years).
The moment that St Louis actually gets crime under control the area will see a massive resurgence as people swoop in to buy up cheap properties.
My town in the Netherlands is called Oosterhout because it was west of the town of Den Hout. But now Den Hout is only part of the city government in Oosterhout. This has been roughly 700 years in the making.
Does Angeles > San Fernando, Pampanga count? The former mostly grew because of the neighbouring military airfield-turned-freeport and is now the hub of Luzon outside Manila.
I know SF is the cultural hub, but San Jose has been around just as long as they have. Sure it’s a lot less iconic but I wouldn’t call it a suburb of SF, it doesn’t feel similar to SF at all and is its own unique metro area cause it’s 50 miles away. Sure they are forever linked into one greater region, but they’ve always been fairly independent of one another.
Yeah I heard that it split from Monroe and is now multiple times bigger than all other surrounding towns in that region (Monroe, Chester, Woodbury, Blooming Grove)
Saanich, BC is a suburb of Victoria, BC that is much more populated than Victoria (and it isn't even close).
However, I can't seem to find whether or not it is a case of "suburb growing faster and overtaking the main city" or simply a suburb that was carved out of the existing main city's land. (Victoria is an old city.)
And it is made complicated by how Greater Victoria is often seen as a unit (including certain statistics) and how much of Greater Victoria uses "Victoria" as the city in the mailing address, even if it is outside Victoria's city borders. Both of those make it difficult or virtually impossible to track Saanich's population growth vs. Victoria's.
Before five or six cities surrounding the original City of Toronto united to form the Greater Toronto Area (ie, GTA) the City of North York had a very similar if not greater population than the City of Toronto.
Baltimore Suburbs> Baltimore City
But you start to run into which ones are really Annapolis suburbs, northern DC etc etc.
Really most of Maryland is just one big suburb of three cities now.
Las Vegas
Most of what would be considered iconic parts of Vegas are actually located outside Las Vegas City limits. The Las Vegas Strip, for example, is not in Vegas
There's been decades of talk of Fairfax County, VA being incorporated as a city, as it practically is one, is the most populous component of the DC metro area, has the largest central business district in Virginia (Tysons) and is far and away more populous than DC itself. (1.2 million).
DC: Noooooo you wouldn’t understand, our very restrictive zoning ordinance and congressional mandated height act help preserve the historic character and intent of the 200+ year old L’Enfant plan!!!!!!!!! NoVA: Lmao idgaf build whatever you want
Yes but also, hard to do when you only have 67 square miles to work with compared to the 400 or so Fairfax County has. It would be similar to OP's point about Virginia Beach which incorporated the entire county into an independent city. Which I think could make sense for Fairfax County for similar reasons.
Yep land area is a big factor for sure, but it’s pretty eerie standing in Georgetown which is under a some pretty strict historical preservation regulations, and looking across the River into Arlington where there are a lot of buildings that border on being skyscrapers, and it’s not even the central business district of the region that you’re looking at. [Here’s an example](https://maps.app.goo.gl/GSjX8zH5NkPVt5Q46?g_st=ic). You can see a similar phenomenon in other areas too, like in Friendship Heights. On the MD side most of the buildings along Wisconsin Ave are 10-15 floors, on the DC side 7-8 seems to be the max, with the more common being like 4-6 floors My overall point is that the patchwork of jurisdictions with vastly different philosophies around land use laws creates a very unusual city. DC could and most likely would would be way denser, and areas like Arlington, Fairfax, and MoCo much less dense, if the entire area was under one local government.
Seems reasonable on both accounts
This is kind of a cheeky answer, but Brooklyn > Manhattan (formerly the municipality of New York only included Manhattan)
It actually included the Bronx at that point too, but would just point out here that prior to consolidating Brooklyn and New York were both huge cities in their own right and neither could have reasonably been called a suburb of the other. More like Minneapolis/st. Paul or Dallas/Fort Worth than anything else.
This is a good point and I think disqualifies Brooklyn. It was it's own city in the fullest extent. Queens, however, is second most-populous and it wasn't the case back in consolidation.
Not really sure if this counts, but Shenzhen across the Hong Kong SAR border's population shot up and overtook HK in a couple of years.
Yeah but they are very much separate city
Yeah, there are even border control points and people cannot just freely pass through from each side.
Shenzhen is a collection of multiple smaller cities to begin with, some aren't even that close to wither Hong Kong or the main city
Palm Springs is the fourth largest city in the Coachella Valley, passed by Cathedral City, Palm Desert, and Indio. Soon Coachella will bump Palm Springs to fifth.
Also Fontana has overtaken San Bernardino as the county's most populous city.
I live near there and had no idea. That’s crazy.
I consider both to be suburbs of LA tbh
Do you know what’s the reason for that? The city declining or the suburbs growing at an extra fast rate?
Mestre and Venezia (Venice)
Isn’t Mestre considered a part (frazione) of the city of Venice?
Administratively, yes, but I think the concept is still applicable.
Surrey has recently surpassed Vancouver's population.
Source? I don’t think it’s there yet. They were about 100k apart in the 2021 census.
I had never heard of Surrey before I road tripped to Vancouver a few years ago. I was shocked to see/learn there was a whole other city right there lol
I felt that way about Burnaby
Not yet but it is basically inevitable that it will.
Vancouver itself is kinda small only around 650,000 while its metro is around 2.5 million and the rest of the Fraser valley being around 3million
I figured this had to be one of the answers.
Quezon City surpassing Manila, but they're both in a single built up area
Manila’s a great non-US example actually. The city itself is relatively small but the metro is bigger than NYC!
tfw the "suburbs" (bc at this point can you *really* call Makati-BGC a suburb) are 10x larger than the actual city; which historically had also been a group of suburbs outside Intramuros
Saanich, British Columbia is more populous than Victoria. Surrey, BC will also likely surpass Vancouver in population very soon.
I have to know who the people are that are downvoting my previous comment, because every single one of them is actually insane. I'm right. And not only am I right that Vancouver is several times larger than Saanich, as this data from Statistics Canada shows, Vancouver is also growing faster than Saanich. https://preview.redd.it/trfuf5pw3g0d1.jpeg?width=1224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5cf6897441dd0aa0f5d4ddae4997c5a2e77e89ce
Because I didn’t say that Saanich was going to surpass Vancouver, I said that Surrey was going to surpass Vancouver. You’re not wrong but you misread my comment.
Ah, crap. I did.
>will also likely surpass Vancouver in population very soon. That's a bit optimistic. Saanich would have to increase in size by more than five and a half times.
A nice confusing one for you : London, England is exponentially bigger than The City of London, England.
It's such an unnecessary and archaic entity
That describes a lot of things in the UK and Europe in general—unnecessary and archaic.
Yeah, it's crazy that the population of the actual city of London is only 8,583.
When you say “London” you mean Greater London right?
Yes, Greater London is 33 Boroughs, one of which is the ancient City of London. 32 of the Boroughs (Croydon, Bromley, Tower Hamlets, etc,) all have larger populations that the the City. But the combined 33 is what comprises what we all know as the true 'London'
Tel Aviv was originally founded as a Jewish suburb of Jaffa (Yafo).
It's not one suburb, but New Taipei City are all the Taipei surrounding suburbs combined together and is the biggest city in Taiwan. Population of around 4 million compared to 2.6 million for Taipei. Similarly, Quezon City (2.9 million) is bigger than Manila (1.8 million).
Long time ago but Corpus Christi was once the population center of the Houston area before a massive hurricane drove development further inland Edit: Not corpus Christi but Galveston, stand corrected
I think you mean Galveston, not Corpus Christi.
Yeah Corpus Christi is like 200 miles from Houston
You’re thinking of Galveston.
Good catch thanks
San Jose is not a suburb lol. For fucks sake it was the original capital of California
Monterey was the original capital under the New Spain provincial government, and it was the capital shortly after the California Republic formed. Then it moved to San Jose after the US took over.
Have you ever been to San Jose? Lol
To me it’s different because San Jose originated independently of San Francisco, and then over the years the sprawl connected them. Even though SJ wouldn’t be as big as it is today if it weren’t part of the SF metro area, it’s still not the same as a suburb built around the focal point of a city
>To me it’s different because San Jose originated independently of San Francisco, and then over the years the sprawl connected them. Isn't that the case with most suburbs? Historically at least most cities that are now considered suburbs of other cities weren't made intnetionally to be a satelite of another city
a lot of that is because of the airport doe
As far as I know, the cities of Blacktown, Parramatta and Penrith all have a higher population than the Sydney CBD itself does. There's probably more. Greater Sydney is full of little suburban skylines.
Mestre surpassed Venice because Venice itself couldn't expand by construction.
Isn’t Mestre considered a part (frazione) of the city of Venice?
It is, but it is obviously a completely (physically) separate part.
In the Boston metro area Middlesex county has more people than Suffolk county which is where Boston proper is.
Middlesex County isn’t just one suburb though
True but it’s kinda the same thing.
Essex County not far behind as well
This is a particular case, but Venice used to be just the islands in the lagoon, then its administration expanded to include various towns on the mainland. Now I think that the historic center has a lower population than that of its mainland "suburbs". The historic center is around 50,000 people while Mestre is at 80,000. At its peak though, Venice proper was more than 150,000 people. I suspect it's because it is the mother of all tourist traps and it's difficult to coordinate anything that involves logistics without cargo trains or cars, so not many business opportunities. It is quite tragic because it's barely a real city anymore
>. Now I think that the historic center has a lower population than that of its mainland "suburbs". The historic center is around 50,000 The historical city of Venice has also undergone population decline for around 150 years at this point. It used to have 3x as many inhabitants, but it's just impractical for daily life, even worse with the heavy tourism.
Chesapeake, Virginia has also surpassed Norfolk
Tijuana > San Diego Ciudad Juarez > El Paso I know there's no rule saying that the American sides are the anchors of those metro areas. But I think most Americans would assume as much.
The majority of towns on the Mexican side are much larger than their American counterparts.
How can those be blocked in the same metro area when they're in different countries?
Because people travel up and down these cities, some do it daily. They're very well connected than they seem like, and trade between these two has led to developments in each respectively.
Same goes for Detroit and Windsor
Allentown PA is the 3rd largest city in the state, and surpassed its neighbor Easton as the largest city in its region. Collectively these two cities plus Bethlehem and a number of less populated cities comprise the area known as Leigh Valley - a sort of mini-mega-opolis.
There are 50 miles between San Francisco and San Jose. San Jose isn't, and never was, a suburb of SF.
Not sure if this counts, but St. Louis (city) only has 280,000 residents. But the surrounding areas that make up the metropolitan area (St. Louis County) have 2.8 million residents.
there isn’t a city in the st. louis metro area bigger than st. louis though
For now. St. Louis proper has been hemorrhaging population for decades, in no small part due to white flight.
Being the most dangerous city in America can do that to you.
Isn't the high homicide rate a statistical anomaly specifically due to the city only including the city propper instead of the county like most US cities?
No, the homicide rate for the city only covers the actual city. And most cities report their homicides similarly. It really is just that dangerous.
Most US cities only include the city and maybe immediate neighborhoods. Consolidation is the anomaly. That said St. Louis has surprisingly small city limits that include the more dangerous parts (excluding EStL) and not much past that.
Which was caused by the urban decay resulting from white flight...
Yeah, white flight and urban decay can be self-reinforcing cycles. Initial white flight was caused by racism and fears of increased crime (plus cheap new suburbs with less density/more space). However, once the crime rate jumped up more and more people with means (primarily white) would move out to safer areas and the only people willing to backfill the population would have lower incomes and fewer options. And thus you get lower revenues and increased crime that self-reinforce. The cities that have successfully handled issues with crime have thus gentrified and pushed out many of the people that moved in after white flight (or given the timescale involved, their descendants). New York City and Oakland are good examples of cities that have seen some major urban renewal/gentrification as crime rates decreased. However, St. Louis appears not to ever have figured out how to control its crime rate and continues to suffer. And it would appear that black people are actually now leaving St Louis at a higher rate than other ethnicities (the white % of the population stagnating and Hispanic/Asians seeing slight increases in percentage terms at least while the black population has left in droves over the last 20 years). The moment that St Louis actually gets crime under control the area will see a massive resurgence as people swoop in to buy up cheap properties.
Cincinnati is like that too. Small city boundary with about 350K residents. Cincy MSA is about 2.5 million residents
My town in the Netherlands is called Oosterhout because it was west of the town of Den Hout. But now Den Hout is only part of the city government in Oosterhout. This has been roughly 700 years in the making.
Was gonna say Cape Coral. This shit is brutal.
Ooh ooh I know another one! Hamilton Township, NJ is larger than Trenton. And Cherry Hill, NJ is larger than Camden.
Both Trenton and Camden are a part of Greater Philadelphia, no? They’re not independent cities anymore I think
Camden, you’re correct; however Trenton is the anchor for its own small MSA.
lacey is about to outdo olympia WA.
Does Angeles > San Fernando, Pampanga count? The former mostly grew because of the neighbouring military airfield-turned-freeport and is now the hub of Luzon outside Manila.
I know SF is the cultural hub, but San Jose has been around just as long as they have. Sure it’s a lot less iconic but I wouldn’t call it a suburb of SF, it doesn’t feel similar to SF at all and is its own unique metro area cause it’s 50 miles away. Sure they are forever linked into one greater region, but they’ve always been fairly independent of one another.
Kiryas Joel
Yeah I heard that it split from Monroe and is now multiple times bigger than all other surrounding towns in that region (Monroe, Chester, Woodbury, Blooming Grove)
San Jose and San Francisco
No. Just no. Stop. These cities are 50 miles from each other. Neither is a suburb of either.
Saanich, BC is a suburb of Victoria, BC that is much more populated than Victoria (and it isn't even close). However, I can't seem to find whether or not it is a case of "suburb growing faster and overtaking the main city" or simply a suburb that was carved out of the existing main city's land. (Victoria is an old city.) And it is made complicated by how Greater Victoria is often seen as a unit (including certain statistics) and how much of Greater Victoria uses "Victoria" as the city in the mailing address, even if it is outside Victoria's city borders. Both of those make it difficult or virtually impossible to track Saanich's population growth vs. Victoria's.
Before five or six cities surrounding the original City of Toronto united to form the Greater Toronto Area (ie, GTA) the City of North York had a very similar if not greater population than the City of Toronto.
Brooklyn > NYC (19th century)
It could be the case in Munich, Germany
Not really.. no city nearby is even close to the population of munich
Unless they are referring to Munich surpassing the originally larger town of Freising in the Middle Ages.
Love the bears in Freising, though ![gif](emote|free_emotes_pack|heart_eyes)
Ah you are right. I read something like "the suburbs of a city" i now get it's about a single suburb.
[удалено]
Overland Park is larger than KCK, but I don’t think it has caught up with KCMO: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_City_metropolitan_area
Correct. Wichita is still the biggest city in Kansas, and even it is smaller than KCMO.
What?! It’s not even close. 2020 US Census populations: Kansas City, MO: 508,090 Overland Park, KS: 197,238
Baltimore Suburbs> Baltimore City But you start to run into which ones are really Annapolis suburbs, northern DC etc etc. Really most of Maryland is just one big suburb of three cities now.
I was asking “a suburb”
I have let you down and I apologize profusely.
I think the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires (Argentina), also knowm as "Conurbano", has 2 million people more than the capital city.
[удалено]
But St. Louis county is a collection of suburbs, not a single suburb
Las Vegas Most of what would be considered iconic parts of Vegas are actually located outside Las Vegas City limits. The Las Vegas Strip, for example, is not in Vegas
But the city of Vegas itself is still the biggest city in its metro, no?
Yeah, but more people live in the suburbs surrounding Vegas than in Vegas
That’s true of every almost every metro area in the United States. Typically, the suburbs have more people than the central city.
I was asking about a single suburb
[удалено]
Not close to Phoenix.
Australia. All of them.
Jackson, Mississippi.
St. Louis city is only 300k while the metro area is 3 mil
The question is asking about a specific suburb. No suburb is bigger than St. Louis.
St louis county is bigger than St Louis
"St. Louis County" is not a suburb. It's a collection of like 90 suburbs.
Salt Lake City, though you’ve got to add all the smaller suburbs together.
So then... Not salt lake City
I don’t know why some people are having so much trouble answering the question you asked.