What are the biggest cities in the USA

Funny you should ask, Ii just happen to have a list with me here... The top 50 cities by population*:

1 New York, (New York)
2 Los Angeles, (California)
3 Chicago, (Illinois)
4 Houston, (Texas)
5 Philadelphia, (Pennsylvania)
6 Phoenix, (Arizona)
7 San Diego, (California)
8 Dallas, (Texas)
9 San Antonio, (Texas)
10 Detroit, (Michigan)
11 San Jose, (California)
12 Indianapolis, (Indiana)
13 San Francisco, (California)
14 Jacksonville, (Florida)
15 Columbus, (Ohio)
16 Austin, (Texas)
17 Baltimore, (Maryland)
18 Memphis, (Tennessee)
19 Milwaukee, (Wisconsin)
20 Boston, (Massachusetts)
21 Washington, DC
22 Nashville-Davidson, (Tennessee)
23 El Paso, (Texas)
24 Seattle, (Washington)
25 Denver, (Colorado)
26 Charlotte, (North Carolina)
27 Fort Worth, (Texas)
28 Portland, (Oregon)
29 Oklahoma City, (Oklahoma)
30 Tucson, (Arizona)
31 New Orleans, (Louisiana)
32 Las Vegas, (Nevada)
33 Cleveland, (Ohio)
34 Long Beach, (California)
35 Albuquerque, (New Mexico)
36 Kansas City, (Missouri)
37 Fresno, (California)
38 Virginia Beach, (Virginia)
39 Atlanta, (Georgia)
40 Sacramento, (California)
41 Oakland, (California)
42 Mesa, (Arizona)
43 Tulsa, (Oklahoma)
44 Omaha, (Nebraska)
45 Minneapolis, (Minnesota)
46 Honolulu, (Hawaii)
47 Miami, (Florida)
48 Colorado Springs, (Colorado)
49 St. Louis, (Missouri)
50 Wichita, (Kansas)

(*All figures taken from the census of 1st April 2000)

New York, New York - a Big Apple

So the biggest city of all is the Big Apple

New York is by far the largest city in the USA with a population of 8,008,278 (bigger than 40 of the states).

Los Angeles (3,694,820) and Chicago (2,896,016) combined together have fewer residents than New York.

The USA is a pretty big place.

All this in a country with an overall population of 281,421,906 people. So only 2.85 percent of Americans are New Yorkers (it's just that they make a bit more noise than some of the others!); 75.1 percent of the population are classified as white, as opposed to 12.3 percent (Black or African American), 3.6 percent (Asian) and others. Over 80 percent live in a metropolitan area.

(Parker, Pennsylvania is proud to be known as 'The Smallest City in the United States'. Its population is 853. Put another way, 0.0003 percent of all Americans live there!)

So the East Coast is heavily populated

No fewer than eight of the 50 biggest cities are in the state with the largest population - California.

What's happening inbetween

The fastest growing cities are in the Mid-West, where the likes of Mesa, Phoenix, Austin and Colorado Springs have all seen their population grow by more than 20 percent since the 1990 census. But the fastest growth of all comes in Las Vegas, where the population rose from 258,000 to 478,000 in ten years - a leap of over 85 percent. As recently as 1940 the population was a paltry 8,422.

And if you're worried about overcrowding - not only is Vegas the largest metropolitan area in terms of land - an unbelievable 39,370 square miles, even larger than LA - but they claim the 13 largest hotels in the country as well!

Are any cities actually getting smaller

Oh yes. In the other direction, centres of heavy industry have been haemorrhaging residents as the economy shifts direction - St. Louis losing over 12 percent in just ten years. Other losers include Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Washington, New Orleans and Cleveland.

As for poverty
The metropolitan area with the highest percentage of poverty is McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, in Texas. 41.1 percent of the people there live "in poverty". Not too impressive for the state that supplied the US with President Bush Well, the second poorest metropolitan area is Brownsville-Harlingen-San Benito, third is Laredo and fourth is El Paso. Yes - there'll all in Texas, too. They also happen to be four of the five cities with the highest Hispanic or Latino population in the whole country.

• See also: US Census Bureau website