Can anyone guess the top 10 most populated cities in the United States? I know it would be easy enough to come up with the answer by searching the internet, or getting on Google, but try and come up with them on your own first.
I thought this would be interesting because there are certain cities that you hear about all the time, and I wondered if that was because of their population. Well, I was surprised by what I discovered.
Here are the top 10 most populated cities in the United States, according to Wikipedia, and estimated by the United States Census Bureau as of July 1, 2008:
| Rank | City | State | Population |
| 1 | New York | New York | 8,363,710 |
| 2 | Los Angeles | California | 3,833,995 |
| 3 | Chicago | Illinois | 2,853,114 |
| 4 | Houston | Texas | 2,242,193 |
| 5 | Phoenix | Arizona | 1,567,924 |
| 6 | Philadelphia | Pennsylvania | 1,447,395 |
| 7 | San Antonio | Texas | 1,351,305 |
| 8 | Dallas | Texas | 1,279,910 |
| 9 | San Diego | California | 1,279,329 |
| 10 | San Jose | California | 948,279 |
Okay, so no surprises with New York City and Los Angeles, but what I didn't know was that New York City had a population over two times that of Los Angeles. The size of New York City is only 305 square miles, while Los Angeles is 498.3 square miles. The one city that did surprise me was San Jose, California, which has a larger population than San Francisco. As you can see, There are 3 California cities, as well as 3 Texas cities in the top 10.
The population in Phoenix, believe it or not, has doubled since 1980. It is one of the fastest growing larger cities in the United States. Chicago and Philadelphia have decreased in population over the past decade.
There are 273 total cities with populations over 100,000, and you can see them all here.
So, how many of these cities did you get right? Are there any cities you thought would be on this list that are nowhere to be found?
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