What is considered a big city in your country? For example in The Netherlands many people speak about the big cities when they talk about Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag (The Hague) and Utrecht. Those 4 cities are all considered big and significant for our country.

Amsterdam is our capital, biggest city and the biggest finance and cultural hub. It has roughly 930k people and in a decade or so probably reaching 1m. Its by far the biggest city in our country.

Rotterdam is the second largest city. Its very much a working class city. The port of Rotterdam is one of the biggest drivers of Dutch economy. Because of this this city with roughly 600k inhabitants has a very entrepreneurial vibe.

Den Haag is the seat of the governement and lots of international organization, most notably the international court of justice. With 560k people its the 3rd largest city in the country.

The last big city is Utrecht. An university city at the middle of the country. Its a major transportation hub. The train station is the bussiest in the country. With around 320k people its by far the smallest of the big cities of the country.

These 4 cities are big by Dutch standards. Like when politicians speak about big cities they often refer to these cities. They often work together about issues regarding bigger cities.

Is there anything similar in your country. When does a city be a big city in your country?


39 comments

  3. 3, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. Some people like to include Uppsala as well, but yeah, I don’t really see that as the norm.

  4. I would say this works by tiers in Spain.

    There’s the huge (Madrid, Barcelona), the really large (Valencia, Seville) and the large (Bilbao, Málaga).

    At the very least there’s a very noteworthy gap between Barcelona/Madrid (both with over 5M in their metro areas) and the rest (less than 2M in their metro areas)

  7. Officially eight, but there are only really two big cities: Glasgow & Edinburgh.

  8. The german definition of Großstadt (literally big city) is a population number greater than 100.000. in that fashion we have 80 big cities. On the other hand, a certain demographic of international urban dwellers are convinced that anything smaller than Berlin is basically a village, especially Munich.

    So the answer must be somewhere between 1 and 80.

  9. Within city limits proper, the cities within the UK with over 500,000 people are:
    London (8.8M people)
    Birmingham (1.1M people)
    Glasgow (622K people)
    Manchester (568K people)
    Sheffield (556k people)
    Bradford (546.9K people)
    Leeds (536K people)
    Edinburgh (514.9K people)

    Neither Wales or Northern Ireland have a 500K people+ city, with Cardiff (372K people) & Belfast (348K people) being Wales’ & Northern Ireland’s largest cities respectively.

    Other large cities that i didn’t mention due to them being out of the 500K+ bracket are:
    Liverpool (496K people)
    Bristol (472K people)
    Leicester (373K people)
    Newcastle (300K people)
    Sunderland (274K people)
    Plymouth (264.7K people)
    Southampton (248K people)

    obviously, the cities will be alot larger due to suburban overspill in neighbouring councils (I.e in Bristol, Newcastle & Manchester to give some examples)

  10. 4. Copenhagen. Aarhus. Odense and Aalborg. They’re all university cities and also serve as regional capitals.

  11. Not sure what the right answer is for England, but London is obviously massive.

    I’d classify Birmingham and Manchester as big cities.

    Then would say Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, Sheffield, Bristol, and Portsmouth & Southampton are all a decent size.

  12. In my head it’s 4: Helsinki-Vantaa-Espoo, Tampere, Turku and Oulu.

    You could say six, since Vantaa and Espoo are large cities on their own, but the greater Helsinki region is kinda like a San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose situation, three cities grown into each other, and Helsinki is the “main one”. The capital, and the biggest of them.

    But really on a larger scale Helsinki+ is the only big city in the country. The metro area has about a million people in it. The Tampere metro area is the second largest at only 400 000, that’d barely be a hamlet in some other countries.

  13. Tier 1: Vienna (2 Mio)

    Tier 2: Graz (305k), Linz, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt (105k)

    Tier 3: Villach (66k), Wels, St. Pölten, Dornbirn, Wiener Neustadt, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Steyr, Krems, Leoben (24k)

  15. In Turkey, population stats are based on provinces, not cities, so it’s a bit tricky to estimate actual city populations. That said, 26 provinces have over 1 million people. Istanbul(16 mil), Ankara(5.5mil), and Izmir(4.5mil) are the big three, and cities like Bursa, Konya, Antalya, and Gaziantep are also pretty major.

  16. For Serbian standards, I would say 3, perhaps 4, but for overall European standards of a big city, only Belgrade then.

  17. Italy has 44 cities over 100,000 inhabitants.

    Two (Rome and Milan) are over 1,000,000 inhabitants, while other four (Naples, Turin, Palermo and Genoa) are over 500,000 but under 1,000,000

  18. The four largest are usually talked about as the big cities: Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Stavanger. Of other towns and cities usually mentioned in extension are Drammen, Kristiansand, Tromsø and Fredrikstad+Sarpsborg. Sometimes towns like Ålesund, Bodø, Hamar, Gjøvik, Lillehammer, Molde and Kristiansund are mentioned, but more as regional ones. Some are barely mentioned since they’re too close to one of the main cities, like Lillestrøm and Sandnes.

  19. Sad to see Eindhoven not making your list, feeling a bit underrepresented here in the south haha

  20. 2 big cities: Madrid and Barcelona

    5 important medium sizes cities: Valencia, Seville, Malaga, Zaragoza and Bilbao

    Other medium sized cities: Murcia, Las Palmas, Palma, Alicante

  22. In Norway: Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, Trondheim, others might be called cities, but not that big.
    Some will complain if they saw this but check the numbers, like: Tromsø is an important city, but not that many people 😀

  23. Poland’s got 6 cities with over or almost 500k people: Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław, Łódź, Poznań and Gdańsk, though Gdansk together with Gdynia and Sopot is one metropolis of around 760k people. And another of around 400k – Szczecin, which is one of two major Polish ports. There’s also Katowice area – while Katowice itself is not that big, it’s the heart of a densly populated Silesian Urban Area which is about 2 mln people altogether, so it’s often counted as a major city.

    So, I’d say 8?

  24. The biggest cities are Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Paris and its surrounding have more than 12 million of people, whereas Lyon and Marseille a bit over a million. Many French people would also consider Nice, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Lille, Nantes and Montpellier as being big cities. Their population is smaller, like around 100 – 500,000 at best.

  25. Some people would say that it is just Vilnius vs the rest of Lithuania, many others would say Vilnius, Kaunas and the rest, and some others also consider Klaipėda on the middle between the 2 largest cities and the rest.

    Usually Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai and Panevėžys are considered the large cities as they all have had population higher than 100k (Panevėžys no longer has).

  27. 4 towns/cities above 100.000 inhabitants.

    Copenhagen 1.4 million
    Århus 301k
    Odense 185k
    Ålborg 121k

    But really only Copenhagen is a city. Århus balances on being one, and Odense and Ålborg are in reality large towns.

  28. In Romania just Bucharest, ~2mil. Behind that 3-4 large cities by our standards, Cluj-Napoca, Iași, Timișoara and maybe Craiova/Constanța (between 300-400k). After that a good number of 100k-300k cities.

  29. Three. We have Prague (1.3 milion), Brno (400k) and Ostrava (300k).

    Prague is in the center of Bohemia. Its is the center of tourism, economy and culture.

    Brno is the student city, while Ostrava is former industrial city.

    The best city is Brno, close to Vienna and Bratislava and lower prices with almost same wages😎

  30. Arguably, only Copenhagen. There’s almost a difference of a million people between Aarhus, the second largest city, and Copenhagen.

    However, I’d argue that there’s four major cities with a population over 100.000, divided into three categories: 1) Copenhagen as the undisputed centre of Denmark with a population of 1.300.000

    2) Aarhus as the largest regional city, existing in its own right as a fast growing, cultural and educational alternative to both Copenhagen and Aalborg and Odense. A population of almost 400.000 in the municipality.

    3) Aalborg, pop. of 120.000 and Odense, pop. of 185.000, as major university towns that used to be comparable to Aarhus.

  31. From north to south:

    Torino
    Milano
    Venezia
    Firenze
    Bologna
    Genova??
    Roma
    Napoli
    Bari
    Palermo

    Please help me if im missing any.

  32. We usually consider a city to be big when the population hits 1 million people. In that sense, we have 16 big cities.
    If you consider a 100k people city to be big then… 172 big cities, according to google.

  33. 1 – 3m

    2 – 1m+

    2 – 900k – 1m

    3 – 500k – 900k

    So 8 cities 🤷‍♂️

  34. I’m from the UK and we do have a lot tbf.

    London

    Birmingham

    Glasgow

    Manchester

    Liverpool

    Leeds

    Sheffield

    Bristol

    Edinburgh

    Belfast

    Cardiff

    Leicester

    Bradford

    Coventry

    Nottingham

    Newcastle

    Hull

    Are all cities that I would class as big ones.

  35. Personally I would say 3: Zagreb, Split and Rijeka. These have over 100k population.

  36. I guess, Warszawa, Kraków, Wrocław, Łódź, Poznań, Gdańśk, and honestly I would end it at Szczecin. But theres a few other cities above 300k in Poland.

  37. We use TOP5 for the following cities:
    * Warsaw
    * Cracow
    * Wrocław
    * Gdańsk (also called 3city with Gdynia and Sopot)
    * Katowice, anyone who had been there could notice that it seamlessy transitions to neighbouring cities like Chorzów. If they merged formally they would eclipse Warsaw.

  38. I can tell about Ukraine — there are some cities with pop over 1m people, and they naturally became regional centres of economy, culture and education.

    First and foremost the Cap, boss-city of Kyiv — centre of media, politics, economy, historical centre of the state. Before 2022 pop around 5m with the environs, in itself some 3m.

    Then Kharkiv — 1,5m, centre of education and economy in the East.

    Dnipro ~ 1m, lots of businesses, economy, crossroad in the centre of Ukraine.

    Odesa ~ 1m, biggest port, lots of unique culture, very mixed history and population. Pearl of the South.

    Lviv ~ 1m, historical centre of Western Ukraine, beautiful architecture, strong educational hub, traditionalist and preserving Ukrainian culture.

    Lost in 2014 and now a plundered shadow of its past — Donetsk, ~ 1m in 2014, used to be a mining hub of working people with a big share of Ukraine’s economy.

  39. I would say, that in Poland we have 7 big cities;

    1. Warsaw (Metropolitan area: 3 mln City proper: 1,8 mln). Our capital and financial center. Warsaw Stock Exchange is the biggest stock exchange in the entire central Europe. It also has one of the most prestigious universities in the country (University of Warsaw, the Warsaw University of Technology).

    2. Katowice / Silesia (Metropolitan area: 2,5 mln City proper: 0,3 mln). A metropolitan area consisting of 41 cities, usually medium-sized, located close to each other. For years, the mainstay of its economy was coal mines, which are now declining and the region is depopulating.

    3. Kraków (Metropolitan area: 1,5 mln City proper: 0,8 mln) Our old capital. The most frequently visited city in the country by tourists and home to one of the most important universities (Jagiellonian University).

    4. Trójmiasto / Tricity (Metropolitan area: 1 mln, Gdańsk: 0,5 mln, Gdynia: 2,5, Sopot: 0,03) Sopot connects the other two cities. The center of the shipbuilding industry, it is home to two of the country’s three main ports. The third is in Szczecin.

    5. Wrocław (Metropolitan area: 1 mln City proper: 0,7 mln) The second-wealthiest of the large cities in Poland after Warsaw. The Hi-Tec industry is developing rapidly here

    6. Łódź (Metropolitan area: 1 mln City proper: 0,65 mln) The city developed rapidly in the 19th century, thanks to the textile industry, which collapsed after the fall of communism. It went from being the second largest city proper in Poland to the fourth. But the city is beginning to regenerate and develop anew, for example as a transport center.

    7. Poznań (Metropolitan area: 1 mln City proper: 0,55 mln). It’s an important cultural and business center. Home to some of the Polish buggers companies (Allegro, or Żabka)

    There are also cities that others might argue are also large cities, such as Lublin, Szczecin, and Bydgoszcz. However, their metropolitan areas don’t exceed 1 million inhabitants, and I have the impression that they don’t have the same influence on the rest of the country as these seven.

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