Do people in your country disagree on what the biggest cities are?

28 comments

1. No, not really. The boundaries of German cities are pretty well defined.

   The two largest, Berlin and Hamburg, are even separate federal states, but basically [all large cities are their own “counties”](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Landkreise%2C_Kreise_und_kreisfreie_St%C3%A4dte_in_Deutschland_2021-07-01.svg) or “districts” for the lack of a better term, which makes them a bit more important and independent than normal municipalities.

   So even if a suburb is very close to a metropolis, it’s very clear if it’s really a part of it or not.

2. There’s an ongoing argument between residents of Manchester and Birmingham over which of the two is the UK’s “second city”.

   IIRC one wins on area while the other wins on population size…

3. Even tho in official numbers Brussels isnt that big, nobocy disputes it being the biggest. Its just a very balkanised city with 19 municipalities. Its probably also because in real numbers its twice the size of the second biggest city, Antwerp.

4. In Poland city ranking by population is totally fluid depending on what you count as a metropolitan area and if you count de-facto merged cities as one.
   This way you can get either Warsaw or Katowice area as the biggest city, for the second biggest Krakow, Katowice area and Tricity, and so on 😀

5. First of all, there’s like at most two cities in those lists.

   And no, not really. There’s 4 with a population over 250k Metropolitan (arbitrary limit for city), and they very roughly half each step down. The three largest ste usually set apart, and I think there’s koncensus on that.

6. Technically, since the Gemeentewet/Municipality Law of 1851 we organize everything into municipalities, not cities/towns themselves. So the Haarlemmermeer is in the top 15 on population lists even though it has no traditional cities.

   Per the Grotestedenbeleid/Big City Policy of 1994, there are four big municipalities, the G4: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht. Each of these cities have more than 300k inhabitants. They’re also the big conurbation, the Randstad. The policy has since been expanded several times and is currently the G40, but the Big Four are still the Big Four.

   Number 5-8 are the 200k+ cities. Eindhoven and Tilburg are industrial revolution-era boomtowns that still have important industry and innovation, Groningen is the Northern capital populated by a lot of students, and Almere is a collection of buildings and just overflow for Amsterdam. These are big cities but not *the* Big Cities.

7. Yes, there’s like 5 cities competing for the name of “the third capital” even though we all know it’s Novosibirsk.

8. First and second is generally agreed upon (Bratislava and Kosice), but people sometimes disagree on the third biggest, or are surprised what it actually is (most people think it’s Banska Bystrica, but it’s Presov).

   However, when ranking by area size, there is huge disparity. Usually cities with most inhabitans are also the largest, but by metric used, size of the city whether by inhabitants or by acreage) is calculated within it’s administrative borders. Following this, the second biggest city after Bratislava (only 10.000 sqkm smaller) is Vysoke Tatry that has 4.000 inhabitants 😀

9. No, because the top 4 all have very different number of inhabitants, and the larger cities also have the larger metropolitan areas. Unless you count Rotterdam and The Hague as a single metropolitan area but nobody does that for statistical purposes. Spot 5 and 6 are close together but I don’t think anyone really cares about that including the cities themselves.

10. I think most people use the official city areas, so there is not too much controversy.

    The top 5 would be:

    * 1 Madrid – 3 416 771
    * 2 Barcelona – 1 702 547
    * 3 Valencia – 825 948
    * 4 Sevilla – 687 488
    * 5 Zaragoza – 686 986

    Although Seville surpassed Zaragoza very recently as the number 4.

    If instead of using the proper city area you wanted to use Metropolitan area it would be:

    * 1 Madrid – 6 155 116
    * 2 Barcelona – 5 179 243
    * 3 Valencia – 1 645 342
    * 4 Sevilla – 1 305 342
    * 5 Bilbao – 987 000

    The only difference would be Bilbao replacing Zaragoza. But most people don’t use the Metropolitan area.

11. No, the first one is Prague, the second one is Brno, the third one is Ostrava, and the fourth one is Plzeň. No one would say it differently.

12. In Finland, the rivalry is not due to size but to relevance and general coolness. In the blue corner, dignified former capital of Finland with royal and religious significance – Turku. And in the red corner, industrial powerhouse, politically and socially significant – Tampere.

13. I think the biggest disagreement in Sweden is regarding “Upplands Väsby och Sollentuna”, which is an urban area defined by the Swedish Central Bureau of Statistics (SCB), and according to them, it is the fifth largest city in Sweden – although most ordinary people would simply count it as part of Stockholm. It is only separated from the Stockholm urban area by quite a small strip of undeveloped land, and consists of an amalgamation of mainly the suburban Stockholm municipalities of Sollentuna, Upplands Väsby, and a chunk of the municipality of Stockholm.

    So according to SCB, the largest cities in Sweden are:

    1. Stockholm

    2. Göteborg

    3. Malmö

    4. Uppsala

    5. Upplands Väsby och Sollentuna

    6. Västerås

    7. Örebro

    8. Linköping

    9. Helsingborg

    10. Jönköping

    If removing “Upplands Väsby och Sollentuna”, of course every city behind them would be moved up a step, and Norrköping would be joining the top 10 instead.

    If using the municipalities instead of urban areas, the list would actually look basically the same, sans “Upplands Väsby and Sollentuna”, with just some slight changes in order.

    I do actually think however that using the urban population makes more sense than using municipal borders though, since municipalities vary a lot in geographical size, and some include quite large areas with a lot of countryside and many smaller villages quite far from the main city. And in particular the urban areas of Stockholm and Göteborg are also divided between several different municipalities.

14. No. It’s pretty clear that Athens is the “capital” and Thessaloniki the “co-capital”.

15. No way. Vienna is the largest, no matter how you count. There isn’t even a state (Bundesland) that can match Vienna in population.

16. In Spain we have debate about the 3er one (Madrid and Barcelona being 1st and 2nd)

    Sevilla, Valencia, Bilbao, Zaragoza… several cities with around 1-1,5 million people and a similar cultural weight both nationally and internationally

17. There are no debates in Norway what the biggest cities are, but the definition of “tettsted” is about as artificial as our “kommuner” or “city-limits” outside of Norway is, because our definition of “urban area” is very different from the rest of Europe. If there is a little seabreak or terrain break between, it’s not considered “tettsted”, while in the majority of the world, “urban” means where people actually work and commute and feel a connection to. (which is very ironic in a country which has plenty of those geographical features).

    It’s also double ironic, as Arna, Askøy and Sotra is seen very “culturally” as the urban area of Bergen, from both parts, but not part of Bergen because of two bridges and a mountain. Actually Arna is in Bergen kommune, and in many ways they feel less as Bergen than Askøy and Sotra (Straume at least).

    I’ve lived in Oslo and Trondheim for a short while, and visited Stavanger a lot, and what is obvious is that Oslo is far larger than Bergen, Trondheim and Stavanger is. It’s obvious to me that Oslo is about 3 times the size of Bergen, Bergen is about 20% larger than Stavanger, and Stavanger (region) is about 20% larger than Trondheim.

18. Check this one out: Im surprised at how accurate it seems:

    https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/

19. No, I dont think so. Amsterdam is clearly the biggest city. When someone talks about big cities like specific policy for big cities they mostly refer to the 4 largest cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag (The Hague) and Utrecht. These 4 cities are also more or less the corners of the Randstad, the urbanized area in the western part of the country.

20. Yes in France it really depends how you look at it. If it’s city, then you have 1.Paris 2.Marseille 3.Lyon 4.Toulouse 5.Nice 6.Nantes 7.Montpellier (Toulouse will be 3rd very soon) but if you look at agglomération then it’s 1.Paris 2.Lyon 3.Marseille 4.Toulouse 5.Lille 6.Bordeaux 7.Nice. So it really depends, for instance Lyon and Marseille are both the 2nd biggest town of the country, it depends who you talk to and what their definition of city is.

21. No, that’s pretty clear since the federal office of statistics keeps track of that.

    – Berlin has about 3,87 million inhabitants.

    – Hamburg about 1,91 million.

    – München about 1,51 million.

    – Köln about 1,09 million.

    – Frankfurt am Main about 780k.

    – Düsseldorf about 680k.

    – Stuttgart about 630k.

    – Leipzig about 620k (fastest growing major city in Germany)

    – Dortmund about 600k.

    – Essen about 586k.

    PS: Urban areas not included. We usually go by city limits.

22. I’m in Sweden. We don’t have the same situation, Stockholm is the biggest no matter how you count. There’s more people in the city center of Stockholm than in Göteborg including suburbs (our next largest city)

23. There is the question whether Espoo, technically the second-biggest city in the country, is actually a city or just a suburb of Helsinki. Espoo didn’t legally become a city until 1972.

24. In my opinion there’s some confusion because the city of Roma has the largest population, but that’s because the city limits are so large that they include large suburban and rural portions. Whereas with Milano and Napoli the city limits are small but their metropolitan area extends far beyond that (in fact their metro population would be 6 and 4 million respectively, while Roma’s is barely below 4 million)

    Furthermore, some might be fooled by the “Città metropolitane” which were renamed 10 years ago but they are still the same provinces as before, and Roma has one of the largest provinces so it still ends up on top on the official charts. The Wikipedia entries for the metro areas of these three cities place them as 1. Milano 2. Napoli 3. Roma while the city population is 1. Roma 2. Milano 3. Napoli

25. Everyone in Scotland knows STIRLING is the biggest and nobody compares to us 💪

    >!the joke is that we’re barely a city!<

26. the hilarious part is that *four* of the ten largest “cities” in Norway have fewer than 100,000 people living in them

    I mean, *Kristiansand* – are you serious. The place has about four streets, a bus stop, a Burger King, and a ferry that goes to …um, Hirtshals.

27. People assume it’s London, but the city of London is only one square mile with only a few thousand residents.  Greater London is a conurbation of about two dozen cities.

28. I think ranking it after urban era is silly. for one thing this is a top 10 list but it has 13 cities in it.

    You should count one city not combine two cities together.

    The city of Oslo has a smaller population than the urban era of Oslo, and the city of Kristiansand has a larger population than the urban era of Kristiansand.