Calling Wichita a "big city" is very generous, but interesting nonetheless.
Wichita has a population of 400K and is in the top 50 in population in the US, I would call it a big city.
There are a lot of "Middle American" cities that don't have what people from the coasts think of as big city vibes but are way more populous and more economically significant than most of us tend to assume. Kansas City, Omaha, and various Midwestern state capitals like Indianapolis and Columbus come to mind as other examples of this.
I think the issue is more that a “city” genuinely means nothing in American government as each individual city has a unique government. There is also the issue of MSA vs. City limits, which again are pretty useless when looking across cities as some have very confined borders and dozens of suburbs, like Los Angeles, or are massive and take in most of their suburbs, like Houston.
Wichita, by MSA, is 90th, in the area of Rochester, NY and Jackson, MS. So not insignificant, but not the top 50.
There’s also “prominence”. If you dropped Newark in western Kansas it’d be a mecca for the region, and prominently displayed on maps. But, since it’s so close to NYC most people don’t know it exists.
I'd hesitate to ever call Newark a Mecca.
Heh. Mesa, Arizona is larger than Newark.
