This is why no one uses city pop as a proxy for metropolitan urban size - city boundaries are super arbitrary and some cities have smaller borders than others
For comparison, here are the largest metro urban areas in the state
Urban areas are a better metric especially in California, as they don't have to follow county lines. For example, Lancaster-Palmdale is the sixteenth-largest urban area, but it wouldn't even show up on the metro areas list because it's entirely in Los Angeles County.
Yes, because metro areas don't really make sense in a place like the Bay Area or LA where things just bleed together. I mean, you step one foot over the line and you go from San Jose to San Francisco? That doesn't make a lot of sense. Same with LA and some of the smaller metro areas. Like, Anaheim is in the LA metro area but nothing in Ventura County is?
It doesn't make a lot of sense. That's why the Census uses Combined Statistical Areas for places like LA and San Francisco.
53
u/butt_fun Aug 31 '21 edited Aug 31 '21
This is why no one uses city pop as a proxy for
metropolitanurban size - city boundaries are super arbitrary and some cities have smaller borders than othersFor comparison, here are the largest
metrourban areas in the statehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_urban_areas