The largest US cities:
Nine cities with more than one million people
Los Angeles and New York City grow fastest
By Tann vom Hove and Josh J Fecht

Introduction to largest US cities | Largest US cities 1 to 100 | Largest US cities 101 to 200 | Fastest growing US cities | The 25 largest US cities (2007 | Historical ranking of America's largest cities | The fastest growing / shrinking US cities (2007) | Largest cities in US states |

The US has nine cities with populations topping one million. New York City, with more than eight million residents, is by far the largest US city. Los Angeles, in second place, has a population of just below four million people. Both Chicago and Houston have populations of more than two million. Other cities with more than one million citizens include Philadelphia, Phoenix and San Diego. San Antonio has leapfrogged Dallas to become the eighth-largest US city. Table

September 2005 up-date: US Census Bureau names fastest grwoing metro and micro areas

These are some of the results of the 2004 survey by the US Census Bureau, which has its headquarters in Maryland, just outside Washington DC. The Census Bureau employs nearly 12,000 people. The workforce expands dramatically when the national census is taken every ten years. About 860,000 temporary workers were hired for Census 2000.

Based on the 2004 survey by the Census Bureau, City Mayors found that the largest US cities grew strongly between 2000 and 2003. In 2003, more than 72 million Americans lived in the country’s 200 largest cities compared to 71 million three years earlier. The combined population for the largest 200 US cities was 72.7 million in 2003 whereas in 2000 it stood at 71.0 million – an increase of almost 1.65 million. Americans living in the 200 largest cities represent 24.8 per cent of the country's total population of 293.6 million.

Numerically, Los Angeles was the fastest growing US city. Between 2000 and 2003, the size of the city in southern California increased by over 125,000 to more than 3.8 million people. The second-fastest growth was experienced by New York City, which became home to an additional 77,500 people in the three years following the 2000 national US census. San Antonio, Phoenix, Houston and Fort Worth all saw their populations increase by more than 50,000. Table

Some cities in the north and east of the US experienced significant population losses. Detroit saw a drop of almost 40,000 people, while the number of citizens living in Chicago fell by more than 26,000. The population of Philadelphia, one of the oldest US city, fell by 38,200. Other large cities with population losses of more than 10,000 between the years 2000 and 2003 includes San Francisco, Baltimore, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Cleveland, St Louis and Cincinnati.

California is the US state with the largest number of cities with more than 100,000 people. Some 46 cities in City Mayors’ table of the largest 200 US cities are in the west-coast state. Texas, the state with second largest number of large cities, has 19 representatives in the City Mayors table. Some 12 cities from Florida make it into the table of the top 200 US cities, while New York cities are represented five times. Table

A few US states, including North Dakota, West Virginia and Vermont, have no cities with populations of more than 100,000 people.

Census Bureau names fastest
growing metro and micro areas
The Greeley area, north of Denver (Colorado) was the fastest growing US metropolitan areas between 2000 and 2003, while Palm Coast, Florida, was the fastest growing micro area. According to data released in September 2005 by the US Census Bureau, Greeley grew by 16.8 per cent, while the population of Palm coast increased by 25 per cent.

The Census Bureau defines a metro area as one with at least one urbanized area of 50,000 or more people. A micro area has at least one urban cluster of 10,000 to 50,000 people.

The New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island region, with 18.6 million people, was the most populous metro area in 2003, the report said. It was followed by Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana (California) with 12.8 million and Chicago-Naperville-Joliet (Illinois) region with 9.3 million. With the exception of the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta (Georgia) metro area, which was 11th in 2000, each of the 10 most populous metro areas in 2003 also was among the 10 most populous in 2000.

The second and third fastest-growing micro areas were Heber (Utah) which grew 15.1 per cent, and East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, which grew 11.4 per cent, the Census Bureau said.

Torrington (Connecticut) was the most populous micro area in 2003, with a population of approximately 188,000 people. It was followed by the Lake Havasu City-Kingman (Arizona) region and the Lebanon (New Hampshire – Vermont) area, the report said.

The metro population in the West grew fastest, 5.5 per cent, from 2000 to 2003, followed by the South at 5.1 per cent, the Midwest at 2.0 per cent, and the Northeast at 1.5 percent. The West also experienced the fastest growth, 3.2 per cent, in the micro population, the US Census Bureau said.

In 2003, more than half the US population lived in metro areas with populations of one million or more. Almost one-fourth of the population resided in metro areas with populations of five million or more, the Census Bureau said.

As of December 2003, there were 361 metro areas encompassing 1,090 counties (or equivalent entities) and 573 micro areas encompassing 690 counties or equivalents in the US.