Quote:
Originally Posted by Evergrey
How many times do we have to say "city populations are irrelevant for comparison due to dramatic variability in municipal regimes" on this forum?
Canadian cities tend to have larger populations than U.S. counterparts because Canadian city boundaries are over-bounded instead of under-bounded. Hamilton, for example, has an area 17 times that of Syracuse.
Hamilton city - 519k in 1,138.11 km2
Winnipeg city - 145k in 66.4 km2
When comparing Metro populations, Syracuse is clearly on the same tier as Hamilton and Winnipeg. The big difference is that Syracuse ranks as the 80th largest metro in the U.S. while it would rank as 10th in Canada... being perceived as a "big city" in a country with so few large urban areas.
Metro Winnipeg - 730k
Metro Hamilton - 721k
Metro Syracuse - 662k
Using your method, we could say something ridiculous like "Calgary is twice the size of Denver", when in reality Calgary is half a Denver.
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What I’ve learned from this site is that American metro areas are huge and can’t be compared to Canadian ones, which accounts for why American cities seem small than their numbers indicate. But while I agree that comparing some of these stats is like comparing apples and oranges, that doesn’t change the fact that Winnipeg and Hamilton are much bigger than Syracuse. The urban area of Winnipeg is about the same size as the urban are of Rochester, for example, although Winnipeg probably has a bigger downtown and more business in general because it’s also both the regional centre for a large area and the capital of the province.
The technical definition of urban area might be a better comparison, in fact, but even there the criteria are different inflating American numbers relative to Canadian ones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_area#Canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_area#United_States
Here are aerial views of the three at the same scale.
Rochester
https://maps.google.ca/maps?q=roches...gl=ca&t=k&z=11
Winnipeg
https://maps.google.ca/maps?q=winnip...gl=ca&t=k&z=11
Syracuse
https://maps.google.ca/maps?q=syracu...gl=ca&t=k&z=11
Btw, you’ll have to excuse Razor. His knowledge of Canada outside of his small part of it is not very strong, and he’s a bit insecure which leads him to constantly subtly try to minimize and generally put down other parts of the country.