Talk:List of the largest urban agglomerations in North America

Honolulu

Why is Honolulu on the list? That is not located in North America so I will remove it. Norum (talk) 01:01, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Upto 25

1-25 are correct. I got tired trying to fix this list so I am going to take a break and start tomarrow again on 26-50.

This list is terrible, Who did this? Do not change new Corrected list

This list has San Francisco and San Jose as seperate entities. Same with Washington DC and Baltimore and many more. San Diego and Miami were not even on this list. Where was Denver? Guatamala City is bigger then any other city in Central American, FACT. This list was terrible and untrue so I have taken the time to correct it. Please do not remove or change it. Thank you! All my numbers run in corrospondence with the wikipedia page of each actual city. Please do not change!!

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.188.149.7 (talk) 23:44, 27 June 2010 (UTC) 

What figures are correct will obviously vary depending on your definition of urban agglomeration and which cities are agglomerated into which agglomeration. In this case, the figures are based on the UN report given in the footnote. Spacepotato (talk) 07:01, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

The title

The title is too long and I say we should create a shorter title because I had some problems finding this page. ThisguyYEAH (talk) 03:41, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

• What titles would you like? It's very easy to create many redirects to this page from plausible search terms. WilyD 17:25, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• I would suggest Largest Urban Agglomerations in North America ThisguyYEAH (talk) 01:22, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Okay, for any addition names you'd like to use, do the following. First, type is out as a link, so it looks like [[Largest Urban Agglomerations in North America]]. It should then appear like Largest Urban Agglomerations in North America. Click on the red link, and it should open up a dialogue box to create that page. Type: #REDIRECT [[List of the largest urban agglomerations in North America]] into the new page and save it. Whatever page you just created with automagically redirect anyone who enters it into the search bar to this page. Cheers, WilyD 16:28, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Detroit-Windsor

Why can't you just combine Detroit Metro with Windsor Metro and make the entire thing complete. You do know Metropolitan areas are don't know any national borders. Now the census will never consider the one across the border since they are government owned. Windsor and Detroit is a continuous Urban Agglomeration if you look on a map.ThisguyYEAH (talk) 23:34, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Article is seriously flawed=

This article has outdated numbers. The article is incorrect in that San Diego and Tijuana are not consolidated. And that goes for El Paso/Juarez, etc. The tremendous growth in some urban centers such as Houston and Dallas place them much, much higher on the list. And finally this article should be merged into an article on North America metropolitan areas. It is redundant and incorrect.76.31.116.153 (talk) 17:35, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

The other article is here: List of North American metropolitan areas by population.76.31.116.153 (talk) 17:37, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Toronto vs Golden Horseshoe

Toronto is listed at 12th 5,928,040. Not only is that population out-of-date, as it neglects the 2016 Canadian Census (click through to the link to get to 6,417,516), but the Greater Toronto Area article itself calls itself a "metropolitan area" as opposed to an "urban agglomeration." The Greater Toronto Area provides a link to Toronto's urban agglomeration within the first two paragraphs: the "Golden Horseshoe," at 9,245,438.

I'll wait one week to see if anyone can provide a good reason why Toronto's urban agglomeration should not be the Golden Horseshoe. If I get no response, I'll take that as evidence that I should change that stat, and perhaps make further improvements to this article. (NorthernFalcon (talk) 21:17, 10 April 2018 (UTC))

Large Update

Instead of just updating Toronto as I wrote in my previous paragraph, I went ahead and noticed that nearly every figure on this article was old, in some cases several years old, and that the source of most of these figures had updated in the meantime. As a result I went through the entire list and updated all of the population figures using up-to-date stats.

As most of the previous article was based on citypopulation.de, I put their stats in the first column.

Then, I added a second column with more recent population estimates from the census. The US Census Bureau had CSA population estimates available here. These estimates are as of July 1, 2017. Unfortunately I was not able to find similar estimates for the MSA's; I went with what the Wikipedia page for each city's metro area page said, and slapped a "citation needed" tag on those specific figures if I was unable to find a source on that page.

Statistics Canada provided similar population estimates here. Some of the Canadian stats are flawed, because they split up one urban agglomeration into multiple smaller metropolitan areas--notably Toronto and Vancouver. The Wikipedia articles for each urban agglomeration provided assistance in obtaining the correct figures; however, the figures I used in those cases are accurate as of 2016, which makes them one year older than the other stats on this list.

For Latin America, I was unable to find recent population estimates. This may be due to my lack of ability with the Spanish language. For Latin America, I alternated between this 2016 estimate from the United Nations and using the population figures from each urban agglomeration's Wikipedia page. I am not happy with having done so, but I was unable to find a better source. If another Wikipedia editor would like to take on the task of providing better sources for the Latin American cities on this list, please do so.

(NorthernFalcon (talk) 07:22, 19 April 2018 (UTC))

The Golden Horseshoe is not a monocentric agglomeration but better described as a polycentric conurbation of built-up areas that have started to merge together over time. Meanwhile, the American CSAs are best described as conurbations of metropolitan areas – megalopolises, if you will. Countries in the Americas, including both Canada and the US, generally organize their urbanization statistics using the concept of a metropolitan area, rather than the concept of an urban agglomeration which is mainly used in Europe – note that citypopulation is a European website. I appreciate your update to the first column, but the addition of a second column only serves to create confusion. Cobblet (talk) 20:54, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

It is true that in North America people typically refer to metropolitan areas. However, that article already exists here. If this is a separate article, but it uses metropolitan areas, what's the point of having it? I figured the purpose of this list was therefore to apply the European concept of urban agglomerations to North American cities, and that would make this list an interesting contrast to the metro area population list. I noted that the European version of this list provided multiple columns as well, each column representing a different source.

With that said, I'm not entirely happy with the numbers I ended up using, and I'd love to either do some more work on those numbers, or find a better source. In many cases I went with raw census data rather than urban agglomeration data based on census data as a temporary solution, simply because I couldn't find a better source. Then of course there's the problem with comparing US and Canadian census data. The US census has CSAs, for example, while the Canadian census does not; this leads to Canadian metro areas that are clearly joined together with continuous urban development, like Toronto, Oshawa, and Hamilton, but which aren't joined together in one census area like they would have been in the US. In Toronto's case, I specifically chose the Golden Horseshoe because the Wikipedia article on the Greater Toronto Area specifically refers to the Golden Horseshoe as Toronto's urban agglomeration. There needs to be a clear and uniform solution which provides a correct figure for urban agglomeration population from census statistics.

One reason I added the second column was because I noticed that individual wikipedia users have a tendency to "update" the stats on this list over time, usually by using census stats, and so this led to the list consisting of a mish-mash of citypopulation.de stats and census stats and stats from who knows where, and those stats from different sources would not be measuring the same thing, which would make this list useless. I figured that by making the source clear at the top of the page, we could hopefully prevent people from doing this.

At any rate, I'd be happy to engage in a discussion which would improve the quality of this article while finding it a unique home that would clearly separate it from the metropolitan area population article. (NorthernFalcon (talk) 07:05, 20 April 2018 (UTC))

As I tried to explain, you simply will not be able to get "correct figures for urban agglomeration population from census statistics" because most statistical agencies in the Americas don't use this concept. Any attempt to do so on your own would be WP:OR. There is no source for the claims in the GTA article that the Golden Horseshoe is an urban agglomeration and Golden Horseshoe itself does not call the region that. (This is an example of why Wikipedia itself should never be used as a source.) The concept equivalent to an agglomeration in the US is not the CSA but the urban area. The UN figures you're citing come from the World Urbanization Prospects. If you look at its data sources, you will see that its figures for Canadian and Mexican cities are based on the concept of metropolitan area, not urban agglomeration. The only sources for urban agglomeration data are Citypopulation and Demographia; although both are self-published, they're the best we have. If you absolutely must add a second column, I would use the Demographia estimates.

If you want to more strongly deter people from changing the figures to whatever they like, I'd suggest explicitly stating in the lead paragraph that citypopulation.de is the source being used. But ultimately, the temptation to fiddle with the numbers will prove irresistible for some people; there's not much you can really do other than put the page on your watchlist and revert the changes when you see them. Cobblet (talk) 15:59, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I'd be willing to switch the second column to the Demographia estimates. I'll get to it when I'm off work.

Quick question for you: I was checking out the Canadian Census, and noticed they had an interesting statistic called "population centre," and looking on the associated map seemed to indicate that it roughly correlated with an agglomeration. Is that correct? It's unfortunate that the US Census does not have similar data. (NorthernFalcon (talk) 16:18, 20 April 2018 (UTC))

Indeed, population centres used to be called urban areas. That article explains why the term was changed. Cobblet (talk) 16:31, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I for one found this entire discussion here enlightening, and wonder if the best solution here would be to merge this article with its "metropolitan area" counterpart, have two columns after all, and explain the differences in values and data sources (and perhaps even use the golden horseshoe as an example of certain points, just as here.) --Outdowands (talk) 17:51, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Oh wait, I guess we couldn't combine both sets of figures into one table because mapping between an agglomeration and its constituent metropolitan area(s) would probably be OR. There should still probably be more cross-linking between these two articles, beyond just the "see also." Outdowands (talk) 19:16, 27 November 2018 (UTC)