An Australian friend and I were recently discussing administrative divisions. Unbeknownst to myself, the Australian federal government defines a "city" simply as an municipality with more than 100,000 residents, and a "town" as a municipality which does not meet that threshold. While the United States has no federal regulations regarding cities, this post is meant to highlight how strange some of the state regulations are.
For my home state of New York, the list of the largest cities is particularly misleading. The overwhelming majority of cities here are in upstate New York, the lesser densely populated part of the state. Before you continue, read the first 20 cities of that aforementioned list, from New York to Ithaca.
Now, look at the following chart which I've compiled, which shows what the 20 most populous cities in New York would be, if any municipality with a population greater than, say, 80,000 people, was considered a city.
Only two cities from upstate manage the crack the top ten. Only seven even make the top twenty. Surprisingly even to myself, Buffalo, the largest city in upstate New York, was displaced to sixth place, from second. Hempstead (word to Tweed), a town with almost a million residents, would be the second largest city in New York. Suffolk County, which lacks any cities whatsoever as is, would suddenly have the third and fourth largest cities in the state.
On top of that, if Hempstead was a city, it would be the 18th largest in the United States, below Charlotte, but above Detroit, Boston, Denver, Washington DC, Portland, Las Vegas and Sacramento.
It's an interesting scenario to consider.
Let's start with the distinction between a city and a suburb:
1. If you live in Hempstead, Brookhaven, Ramapo, Islip, or Yonkers and you travel outside of the area and you are asked where you are from you will use New York City as a reference to where your 'community' is. One has to be incredibly isolated or ignorant to not know where New York City is.
2. If your 'city' doesn't pass spell-check, it is probably not a real city but instead a suburb. Hempstead, Brookhaven, Ramapo, and Islip failed that test. (Really, so fails Paramus, New Jersey). Of course, some place that is the name of something else (Garland, Mesquite, Grand Prairie, and White Settlement around Dallas/Fort Worth), common surnames (Richardson, Addison, Denton, Irving) would pass that test, as would places that exist elsewhere (Arlington, Lancaster, and Saginaw) or have some commercial identity (Frisco -- OK as a reference to a railroad, but use it for San Francisco and you demonstrate gross ignorance). Bedford, Carrolton, Seagoville, Lewisville, and Euless fail that test. But for any of those places you would refer to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
3. Although there are cities with very low profiles (Paris due to catacombs which deny a good foundation, Washington DC because of a law that prohibits buildings taller than the Capitol), cities are where the skyscrapers are. In that sense a place like Battle Creek, Michigan is more a city than is Livonia, Michigan -- even if Livonia is larger. One easily knows when one is approaching a city and one can rarely distinguish one suburb from another.
4. True cities have their areas of cultural congregation. They are the places after which airports are named. Radio and TV stations identify themselves by the name of a city and not by the name of a suburb. As a contrast -- Pasadena, California is well-known, but TV stations in the Greater Los Angeles Area identify themselves as being from Los Angeles.
