Talk:List of North American metropolitan areas by population

Feb. 2022

There are some good comparisons for CSA-like and MSA-like areas in Canada and Mexico using 2020 data found on citypopulation.de for Canadian census divisions and Mexican municipios. Definitions are included, so edits to these areas can be made. http://ns.faculty.brynathyn.edu/metro/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by NSatBAC (talk • contribs) 00:55, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

I would support this so long as the sources are consistent and reliable. Just musing, but I wonder if this page is trying to re-invent the wheel, given that a lot of these issues get hashed out on other pages such as "List_of_largest_cities". JoeSchlabotnik (talk) 17:12, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Something like...

Rank	Metropolitan area	Country	MSA-style Population (2020)	CSA-style Population (2020)	Population (2015)
1	Mexico City	Mexico	21,838,909	29,717,883	20,892,724
2	New York City	United States	20,140,470	23,582,649	20,182,305
3	Los Angeles	United States	13,200,998	18,644,680	13,340,068
4	Chicago	United States	9,618,502	9,986,960	9,551,031
5	Dallas–Fort Worth	United States	7,637,387	8,130,313	7,102,796
6	Houston	United States	7,122,240	7,312,270	6,656,947
7	Washington, D.C.	United States	6,385,162	9,973,383	6,097,684
8	Toronto	Canada	6,362,892	8,414,996	6,116,725
9	Philadelphia	United States	6,245,051	7,379,700	6,069,875
10	Miami	United States	6,138,333	6,868,652	6,012,331
11	Atlanta	United States	6,089,815	6,930,423	5,710,795
12	Guadalajara	Mexico	5,419,899	6,371,436	4,887,383
13	Monterrey	Mexico	5,371,198	6,677,595	4,689,601
14	Boston	United States	4,941,632	8,466,186	4,774,321
15	Phoenix	United States	4,845,832	4,899,104	4,574,531
16	San Francisco	United States	4,749,008	9,714,023	4,656,132
17	Inland Empire	United States	4,599,839	Los Angeles	4,489,159
18	Montreal	Canada	4,471,675	5,219,853	4,045,877
19	Detroit	United States	4,392,041	5,424,742	4,302,043
20	Seattle	United States	4,018,762	4,953,421	3,733,580

Feb. 2021

Please note that Mexico's 2020 census results are now known. Monterrey (Metro) area has a population of 5.34 million. Monterrey is also bigger than Guadalajara. https://www.infobae.com/america/mexico/2021/01/25/censo-2020-estas-son-las-tres-entidades-con-mayor-poblacion-en-mexico/

May 2014

To do this in the most democratic way possible, this list needs re-ordering. For reasons unknown to me, the San Francisco Bay Area is commonly subject to errors in demography, and [Wikipedia Article for the San Francisco - Oakland - San Jose area] shows population at 8,607,423. This means the SF Bay Area should be at position 5 on this list, after Chicago. All the below rankings thus also need to be modified, since the article currently shows the Bay Area with a population of under 5 million. People are constantly commuting and traveling all over the Bay Area, it is incorrect to conclude that San Jose is a separate metropolitan region than San Francisco, they really are the same and lots of people including myself commute across the Bay Area. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Carl.r.larson (talk • contribs) 18:44, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

June 2013

Why not San Juan, PR? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.189.120.17 (talk) 06:25, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Removed bit about Canadian metro areas generally having larger areas than their American counterparts. This was unsourced, and as far as I know the opposite is actually true more often than not. 184.148.85.166 (talk) 17:30, 21 June 2013 (UTC)LW

February 2015

Why include Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, but not the other countries of the Greater Antilles - Haiti and Jamaica? Port-au-Prince and likely Kingston would also make this list if those countries were included. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.179.12.2 (talk) 16:38, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Metropolitan areas, definitions, and population discrepancies

There are some issues here regarding how cities and metropolitan areas population counts are introduced. Based on the definition the metropolitan area of Detroit does not include Windsor which instead is part of an urban conurbation which transcends borders, where as metropolitan areas do not. This also excludes Tijuana San Diego which is also a conurbation. While this information is interesting it does not follow the definition that the page provides both in name and in the lead-in. Perhaps an additional page can be created with largest urban conurbations but I think it is best for this page to follow the metropolitan definition which can also be more easily sourced. I also believe that is important to provide more references as this will help solve discrepancies and can more easily follow census quoted data which becomes the most reliable source, despite their problem with undercounts. Krazytea(talk) 21:28, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Note - Tijuana is listed twice, with slightly different populations at 54 and 56. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.191.37.21 (talk) 04:06, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Still multiple issues here, no clarity on what metropolitan area we are using. Lots of differences between estimates of populations and census data, we MUST use census data or there is no reliability. Too much boosterism going on with various users especially anonymous users posting information with the highest population data. This page does not get policed enough to reduce this. Must have further usage of references to figure out the problems. Added the boilerplate until this list has some clarity and direction to it. Krazytea(talk) 20:48, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Also, interesting contradictions to the list of US metropolitan areas.--345Kai (talk) 16:14, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I have tried to keep the data correct though I am the only active editor watching this site I believe, I will try to go through the list. Does anyone have an accurate external link, we have this site here on wiki to use the 2010 Census data List of metropolitan areas of the United States though it may also be corrupted. I will try to fact check against this list but appreciate any help. Krazytea(talk) 18:57, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Sorry in order to use a common comparative we are not using CSA's but rather the metro areas as found in List of Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Krazytea(talk) 19:02, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

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Flag icons and redundant links

It seems some believe that 30+ links to the United States article is somehow a good idea. Well it isn't - check the MOS guidlines. Also the silly flag icons although quite colorful are useless in this context. Yes - an image (at default size) of a country's flag is appropriate within an infobox in the article of a country. However, the repeated addition of a tiny flag icon is rather useless "eye candy". I've removed them again. Vsmith (talk) 04:31, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

If the main problem is the 30+ links to the U.S., that can easily be fixed if the flags are added back. But literally ALL of the other "largest-metropolitan-areas" pages have the flags. Paintspot Infez (talk) 04:28, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Toronto should not be grouped with neighbouring CMAs

At time 2024-05-28T05:58:59‎, user 50.100.151.107 made an edit to aggregate the Toronto population with that of the neighbouring census metropolitan areas (CMAs) Hamilton and Oshawa. This does not match the reference source from www150.statcan.gc.ca, in which the areas surrounding Toronto CMA are listed as separate metropolitan areas (as appropriate, since the Statistics Canada definition is applied uniformly to determine CMA boundaries). For this reason, I am recommending that the "Toronto and Hamilton" figures be split into the corresponding, correct figures for the CMAs Toronto, Hamilton and Oshawa. Since Hamilton and Oshawa are not top-50 in North America, they would drop off the list. Unless there is an objection, I will return to this page later to make this edit. In the mean time, I will change the table from "Greater Toronto and Hamilton" to "Toronto, Hamilton and Oshawa CMAs" to make it clearer that the value is an aggregate.

The user who made the edit justified it by the fact that it was not "fair" to compare Toronto with Chicago, because Chicagoland has a much larger area, but "fairness" should not be the criteria used in defining metropolitan area boundaries. Statistics Canada instead defines them by commuting patterns. In addition, it is self-evident that larger CMAs will occupy larger areas; the table is not a table of which metropolitan areas are most dense. JoeSchlabotnik (talk) 16:32, 13 September 2024 (UTC)