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Comment by jimjimjim | Hacker News Reader

wait, what? Largest and biggest are synonyms. Why are you deciding that larger means "having more population"

I’d wager that most people would assume “largest city” meant “largest city [by population]” because that’s clearly what search results assume. “Largest city in USA” first lists the Wikipedia entry for “List of United States Cities by Population” [0], with the next bunch of results assuming the same thing. For me, the 9th result is the first to mention land area.[1]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities...

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-city-rankings/largest-c...

Jacksonville, Florida being the largest city has long been a trivia question that relies on this ambiguity. Based on the Wikipedia article, it looks like Anchorage is larger but maybe because it's a county equivalent, it's not considered a city in this context.

Maybe it’s just the contiguous US? Fun fact!

Jacksonville, FL, and Sitka, AK, are both “consolidated city-counties”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

A city is simply a collection of people, so it's natural to say that the biggest city is the one with the most people.

Not sure I can agree with that definition. A city remains a city even if every single inhabitant leaves it.

I'd be interesting to hear how a city can remain existent without citizens.

Not that I have a better definition - but I've always considered a city to be defined by it's buildings, rather than people.

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