# Globally important medium size cities



## Küsel (Sep 16, 2004)

I agree as well! 

Also here the people are totally proud to say that they are from this and that town. But explaining that they come from Dietikon, Bollingen, Liestal or Emmen doesn't help anybody who lives outside of the country - why not saying Zurich, Bern, Basel, Luzern?! In the Romandie it's a bit better, the localpatriotism or identification with the hometown is not so strong. No one would say he comes from Meyrin Prilly - it's Geneve or Lausanne. 

But it's a different story: these towns exist as long as the big cities - some even longer (Augst near Basel, Nyon near Geneva have been populated even before the Romans) and have their own history, identity, even dialect while in the US or in Australia the identity of a place has been taken over by the big center - maybe with some exception as Cambridge (Boston) and Jersey City (New York). The other reason is that people have been moving out of the central city into the suburban belt for 30 years (Basel or Zurich lost 1/4 of the pop in the 70s and 80s!). The urban sprawl is unstoppable since then, a big problem for a country whose area is very limited (60% Alps and 10% Jura mountains leave 15'000 km2 of midlands for 7mio+ pop, it's a polycenter metro as the Randstad and also planned as that once...). But these suburban commuters think they live "in the countryside" (German: "Im Grünen") because they are proud not to be a habitant of the poor, dirty, criminal center city in their perception. 

And yes I know a lot of people who said they NEVER would live in the city of Zurich - too dangerous, to much traffic and drugs etc. But it's the same people who probably would't care to visit the red light districts Bangkok, Bahia or the Central Park or the Center of Rio at night without thinking twice. I don't say that you shouldn't - but their perception is absolutly rotten in my eyes


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## Justme (Sep 11, 2002)

^ very true. Although you'd be surprised to find many "suburban cities" in Australian metro's that are just as old, older or nearly as old as the main centers, and with their own identity as well.

Parramatta in Sydney's metro is one. It's as big in population (was much larger until recently when Sydney annexed the city of South Sydney), larger in geographical size, has it's own downtown and many residents say they are from Parramatta first - I know one personally who I worked with. But then, there is a vast East/West divide in Sydney's metro. Those in the western suburbs hardly ever visit the city center of Sydney.

The central coast north of the Sydney suburbs is fully disconnected from the urban area by a large national park and water, but with today's commuting, is included in Sydney metro statistics (based on the S.S.D. of 4.2million). Few people there, or those in the Blue Mountains also officially in the S.S.D. would ever say they live in Sydney, but they are counted as part of Sydney's metro.

Fremantle in Perth is another one, which has the most historical buildings in the metro (I think the city is older than Perth) and a very strong local "feeling". But Fremantle is much closer to Perth than say Penrith in Sydney's outer metro.

Of cause, in Europe, these types of metropolitan centers with long histories are far more common, even today, Sachsenhäusen, now a suburb of the city of Frankfurt, was once a fully seperate city, and some locals (especially the older ones) don't consider themselves Frankfurters but Sachsenhäuseners, which is really crap because it takes far too long to say that word  These old people though are few and far between who think like this.

I apologize to others here for taking this thread off on a tangent, but it is an interesting discussion for those into demographics.


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## Beacon (Mar 14, 2005)

mic said:


> In Australia a city proper isn't like Manhattan, we dont have anything like it. We have a downtown with apartments and offices ( we call it a Central Business District) and then we have suburbs. Melbourne city Council (City Proper) would have 60,000 people, but that is not the population of Melbourne. The city has a population of 3.7 Million. Without the suburbs, Melbourne would not be a city...


That's exactly the point. Even if you live in the suburbs, you still live in Melbourne. If you travel overseas and someone asks you where you live, do you say "Williamstown, which is near Melbourne", or do you say "Melbourne", and then qualify the suburb? If the suburbs weren't a part of Melbourne, then there would be no CBD, with a predominantly commercial and financial purpose. That's a New World phenomenon, and it exists in Australia, the US and Canada. It can be hard to explain to Europeans and Asians who've never been.


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## BRISBANE (Sep 16, 2005)

......


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## Bartolo (Sep 20, 2004)

Beacon said:


> That's exactly the point. Even if you live in the suburbs, you still live in Melbourne. If you travel overseas and someone asks you where you live, do you say "Williamstown, which is near Melbourne", or do you say "Melbourne", and then qualify the suburb? If the suburbs weren't a part of Melbourne, then there would be no CBD, with a predominantly commercial and financial purpose. That's a New World phenomenon, and it exists in Australia, the US and Canada. It can be hard to explain to Europeans and Asians who've never been.



I disagree with the fact that if i lived, in Mississauga, which is a rather large city, with its own CBD, population of close to 700k, it is still a suburb, but if you went overseas, would I say i lived in Missy, or would I say Toronto, Id say Mississauga, the suburb. This really only works in the west and east, due to the fact that much of the west burbs are large, and the east burbs are mostly a seperate CMA, but people from Markham or Vaughan, would most likely either say north of Toronto, or there respective city. A place like Milton, where I used to live, I would most likely say, I live in milton, 25 minutes west of Toronto. So In Canada, most people more associate with their respective towns, cities, villages, more so than the central city.


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## crazyjoeda (Sep 10, 2004)

I would say a medium city is 1.5million or more, a large city is 5million+ and a mega city is 10million+(metro area of course). 

An example of a globally important small city would be Amsterdam, an important medium city is Vancouver, a important large city is Toronto and an important mega city is London. Thats what I think anyway.

My list for medium cities.

Vancouver
Havana
Seattle
Frankfurt
Cape Town
Manchester
Montreal
Brasília
Dubai
Melbourne
Singapore


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## SHiRO (Feb 7, 2003)

Dude Amsterdam is larger than Vancouver!
2.5 M vs under 2 M.
Also Amsterdam is part of Deltametropolis which boasts 8 million (comparable too Bay Area).

Furthermore, on your list...Frankfurt is 5M+ metro and so is Singapore.
Most of those cities you mention are at least large "medium cities"...


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## Dean (Sep 11, 2002)

BRISBANE said:


> Brisbane is 2.0 million and will bebigger than melbourne in 2015


really?

so going by your logic, Brisbane, which you say has 2 million people (1.7M actually), will grow at 170,000 people per year for the next 10 years(it's actually growing at around 35,000 people per year) to catch Melbourne's population of 3.7 million by 2015. and in the next 10 years Melbourne wont add a single soul to its population.(and its currently growing at around 52,000 people per year.)

honestly.. think b4 you write. you just make a fool of yourself


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## snitsky (Feb 16, 2005)

Very big city- 6 million +
Big City- 2-5 million
Medium city- 1 million to 2 million
Small city less than 1 million.


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## ♣628.finst (Jul 29, 2005)

City Proper only.

Very Large City(Megacity)- 3 million+
Large City- 700,000- 3 million
Medium city- 300,000- 700,000
Small city- 50,000- 300,000


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## alexbn (May 21, 2003)

Justme said:


> There is no official mention of this that I have seen, so it is based just on other sources.


I have looked it up on Google ("Metropolregionen in Deutschland", "Metropolregion München", usw) and have found some information on it, but I don't know whether it is official or not.


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## Dubai_Boy (May 21, 2003)

Abu Dhabi should be added to the list . its pop is almost 2000,000


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## Küsel (Sep 16, 2004)

xantarcx said:


> City Proper only.
> 
> Very Large City(Megacity)- 3 million+
> Large City- 700,000- 3 million
> ...


You can't go by city propers - some countries have huge areas as China or Brazil and others very small like Italy, Spain or Switzerland according to the politics of the country. Here it is for example it's like: small city 10-30k, medium city 30-100k and big city 100k+ but few municipalities have more than 15km2 of area (as about Basel or Geneva - with 180k on this area quite dense popultated but 4-5times bigger metro area), so it's clear that they can't reach a big size in pop and agglomerations have to be defined.

Paris and Barcelona are extremly small in size but very dense populated and with a metro area several times bigger than the city proper that is overbuilt by some 80% or more.


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## crazyjoeda (Sep 10, 2004)

SHiRO said:


> Dude Amsterdam is larger than Vancouver!
> 2.5 M vs under 2 M.
> Also Amsterdam is part of Deltametropolis which boasts 8 million (comparable too Bay Area).
> 
> ...


Well I got all my population stats from Epmoris  
Vancouver is acctauly 2.2 and will be over 2.5 by 2010, doubt Amsterdam is growing at the same rate as Vancouver. I love Amsterdam though after London its my favorite city in Europe.


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## staff (Oct 23, 2004)

Geneva (must be the most important city in the world compared to its size)? Copenhagen? Zürich?


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## Küsel (Sep 16, 2004)

Back to the topic? Good idea 

Geneva (no doubt about that one)
Bruxelles (EU capital)
Jerusalem (three religions, political neuralgical point)
Mekka (Hadsh for millions of people every year)
Singapore (already on the upper limit in size)
Brasilia (architecutural model city, capital of the biggest economical power in SA)


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## Cee_em_bee (May 12, 2004)

BRISBANE said:


> Brisbane is 2.0 million and will bebigger than melbourne in 2015


Well you would have to count the GC and both would have gain 1.7 million in population, which both are relatively possible.


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## DarkFenX (Jan 8, 2005)

snitsky said:


> Very big city- 6 million +
> Big City- 2-5 million
> Medium city- 1 million to 2 million
> Small city less than 1 million.


That is a really crappy standard. If this was in the US, only cities like NYC, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, Philly, San Antonio, Houston, Phoenix and San Diego are consider medium city+. So SF, Baltimore, Boston, Miami, Seattle, Indianopolis and so on are small?


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## neilio (Jan 12, 2005)

BRISBANE said:


> Brisbane is 2.0 million and will bebigger than melbourne in 2015


YUP!! and the kangeroos around Brisbane are going to grow larger brains, become the dominant species and learn to fly by 2015 to!


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## Harkeb (Oct 12, 2004)

Johannesburg & Cape Town. Eventhough their populations are fairly big 
+- 5 & 3 million, the majority are poor migrants. Nonetheless these cities are globally important as an economic powerhouse & a sea port on a main sea route.


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