This statistic shows the top 25 cities in the United States with the highest resident population as of July 1, 2022. There were about 8.34 million people living in New York City as of July 2022.

How many incorporated places are registered in the U.S.?

There were 19,502 incorporated places registered in the United States as of July 31, 2019. 16,410 had a population under 10,000 while, in contrast, only 10 cities had a population of one million or more.

Small-town America

Suffice it to say, almost nothing is more idealized in the American imagination than small-town America. When asked where they would prefer to live, 30 percent of Americans reported that they would prefer to live in a small town. Americans tend to prefer small-town living due to a perceived slower pace of life, close-knit communities, and a more affordable cost of living when compared to large cities.

An increasing population

Despite a preference for small-town life, metropolitan areas in the U.S. still see high population figures, with the New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago metro areas being the most populous in the country. Metro and state populations are projected to increase by 2040, so while some may move to small towns to escape city living, those small towns may become more crowded in the upcoming decades.

This data set includes cities in the United States, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. These cities were collected from the 1970 National Atlas of the United States. Where applicable, U.S. Census Bureau codes for named populated places were associated with each name to allow additional information to be attached. The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) was also used as a source for additional information. This is a revised version of the December, 2003, data set.

This layer is sourced from maps.bts.dot.gov.

In 2023, the metropolitan area of New York-Newark-Jersey City had the biggest population in the United States. Based on annual estimates from the census, the metropolitan area had around 19.5 million inhabitants, which was a slight decrease from the previous year. The Los Angeles and Chicago metro areas rounded out the top three. What is a metropolitan statistical area? In general, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) is a core urbanized area with a population of at least 50,000 inhabitants – the smallest MSA is Carson City, with an estimated population of nearly 56,000. The urban area is made bigger by adjacent communities that are socially and economically linked to the center. MSAs are particularly helpful in tracking demographic change over time in large communities and allow officials to see where the largest pockets of inhabitants are in the country. How many MSAs are in the United States? There were 421 metropolitan statistical areas across the U.S. as of July 2021. The largest city in each MSA is designated the principal city and will be the first name in the title. An additional two cities can be added to the title, and these will be listed in population order based on the most recent census. So, in the example of New York-Newark-Jersey City, New York has the highest population, while Jersey City has the lowest. The U.S. Census Bureau conducts an official population count every ten years, and the new count is expected to be announced by the end of 2030.

All cities with a population > 1000 or seats of adm div (ca 80.000)Sources and ContributionsSources : GeoNames is aggregating over hundred different data sources. Ambassadors : GeoNames Ambassadors help in many countries. Wiki : A wiki allows to view the data and quickly fix error and add missing places. Donations and Sponsoring : Costs for running GeoNames are covered by donations and sponsoring.Enrichment:add country name

A dataset listing New York cities by population for 2024.

In 2025, approximately 23 million people lived in the São Paulo metropolitan area, making it the biggest in Latin America and the Caribbean and the sixth most populated in the world. The homonymous state of São Paulo was also the most populous federal entity in the country. The second place for the region was Mexico City with 22.75 million inhabitants. Brazil's cities Brazil is home to two large metropolises, only counting the population within the city limits, São Paulo had approximately 11.45 million inhabitants, and Rio de Janeiro around 6.21 million inhabitants. It also contains a number of smaller, but well known cities such as Brasília, Salvador, Belo Horizonte and many others, which report between 2 and 3 million inhabitants each. As a result, the country's population is primarily urban, with nearly 88 percent of inhabitants living in cities. Mexico City Mexico City's metropolitan area ranks sevenths in the ranking of most populated cities in the world. Founded over the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan in 1521 after the Spanish conquest as the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the city still stands as one of the most important in Latin America. Nevertheless, the preeminent economic, political, and cultural position of Mexico City has not prevented the metropolis from suffering the problems affecting the rest of the country, namely, inequality and violence. Only in 2023, the city registered a crime incidence of 52,723 reported cases for every 100,000 inhabitants and around 24 percent of the population lived under the poverty line.

In 2022, San Francisco had the highest median household income of cities ranking within the top 25 in terms of population, with a median household income in of 136,692 U.S. dollars. In that year, San Jose in California was ranked second, and Seattle, Washington third.

Following a fall after the great recession, median household income in the United States has been increasing in recent years. As of 2022, median household income by state was highest in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Utah, and Massachusetts. It was lowest in Mississippi, West Virginia, and Arkansas. Families with an annual income of 25,000 and 49,999 U.S. dollars made up the largest income bracket in America, with about 25.26 million households.

Data on median household income can be compared to statistics on personal income in the U.S. released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal income rose to around 21.8 trillion U.S. dollars in 2022, the highest value recorded. Personal income is a measure of the total income received by persons from all sources, while median household income is “the amount with divides the income distribution into two equal groups,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Half of the population in question lives above median income and half lives below. Though total personal income has increased in recent years, this wealth is not distributed throughout the population. In practical terms, income of most households has decreased. One additional statistic illustrates this disparity: for the lowest quintile of workers, mean household income has remained more or less steady for the past decade at about 13 to 16 thousand constant U.S. dollars annually. Meanwhile, income for the top five percent of workers has actually risen from about 285,000 U.S. dollars in 1990 to about 499,900 U.S. dollars in 2020.

This dataset contains information about the demographics of all US cities and census-designated places with a population greater or equal to 65,000. This data comes from the US Census Bureau's 2015 American Community Survey. This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

In 2021, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was the city with the highest poverty rate of the United States' most populated cities. In this statistic, the cities are sorted by poverty rate, not population. The most populated city in 2021 according to the source was New York city - which had a poverty rate of 18 percent.

A dataset listing Georgia cities by population for 2024.

A dataset listing Colorado cities by population for 2024.

A dataset listing Massachusetts cities by population for 2024.

In 2022, approximately 11.45 million people lived in São Paulo, making it the largest municipality in Brazil and one of the most populous cities in the world. The homonymous state of São Paulo was also the most populous federal entity in the country.

Brazil's cities

Brazil is home to two large metropolises: São Paulo with close to 11.45 million inhabitants, and Rio de Janeiro with around 6.21 million inhabitants. It also contains a number of smaller, but well known cities such as Brasília, Salvador, Belo Horizonte and many others, which report between 2 and 3 million inhabitants each. As a result, the country's population is primarily urban, with nearly 85 percent of inhabitants living in cities.

While smaller than some of the other cities, Brasília was chosen to be the capital because of its relatively central location. The city is also well-known for its modernist architecture and utopian city plan which is quite controversial - criticized by many and praised by others.

Sports venues capitals

A number of Brazil’s medium-sized and large cities were chosen as venues for the 2014 World Cup, and the 2015 Summer Olympics also took place in Rio de Janeiro. Both of these events required large sums of money to support infrastructure and enhance mobility within a number of different cities across the country. Billions of dollars were spent on the 2014 World Cup, which went primarily to stadium construction and renovation, but also to a number of different mobility projects. Other short-term spending on infrastructure for the World Cup and the Rio Olympic Games was estimated at around 50 billion U.S. dollars. While these events have poured a lot of money into urban infrastructure, a number of social and economic problems within the country remain unsolved.

A dataset listing Oregon cities by population for 2024.

The "Major Cities" layer is derived from the "World Cities" dataset provided by ArcGIS Data and Maps group as part of the global data layers made available for public use. "Major cities" layer specifically contains National and Provincial capitals that have the highest population within their respective country. Cities were filtered based on the STATUS (“National capital”, “National and provincial capital”, “Provincial capital”, “National capital and provincial capital enclave”, and “Other”). Majority of these cities within larger countries have been filtered at the highest levels of POP_CLASS (“5,000,000 and greater” and “1,000,000 to 4,999,999”). However, China for example, was filtered with cities over 11 million people due to many highly populated cities. Population approximations are sourced from US Census and UN Data. Credits: ESRI, CIA World Factbook, GMI, NIMA, UN Data, UN Habitat, US Census Bureau Disclaimer: The designations employed and the presentation of material at this site do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

This statistic shows the 25 largest counties in the United States in 2022, by population. In 2022, about 9.72 million people were estimated to be living in Los Angeles County, California.

Additional information on urbanization in the United States

Urbanization is defined as the process by which cities grow or by which societies become more urban. Rural to urban migration in the United States, and around the world, is often undertaken in the search for employment or to enjoy greater access to services such as healthcare. The largest cities in the United States are steadily growing. Given their size, incremental increases yield considerable numerical gains as seen by New York increasing by 69,777 people in 2011, the most of any city. However in terms of percentage growth, smaller cities outside the main centers are growing the fastest, such as Georgetown city and Leander city in Texas.

Urbanization has increased slowly in the United States, rising from 80.77 percent of the population living in urban areas in 2010 to 82.66 percent in 2020. In 2018, the United States ranked 14th in a ranking of countries based on their degree of urbanization. Unlike fully urbanized countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong, the United States maintains a sizeable agricultural industry. Although technological developments have reduced demands for rural labor, labor in the industry and supporting services are still required.

A dataset listing New Mexico cities by population for 2024.

Sustainable cities depend on urban forests. City trees -- a pillar of urban forests -- improve our health, clean the air, store CO2, and cool local temperatures. Comparatively less is known about urban forests as ecosystems, particularly their spatial composition, nativity statuses, biodiversity, and tree health. Here, we assembled and standardized a new dataset of N=5,660,237 trees from 63 of the largest US cities. The data comes from tree inventories conducted at the level of cities and/or neighborhoods. Each data sheet includes detailed information on tree location, species, nativity status (whether a tree species is naturally occurring or introduced), health, size, whether it is in a park or urban area, and more (comprising 28 standardized columns per datasheet). This dataset could be analyzed in combination with citizen-science datasets on bird, insect, or plant biodiversity; social and demographic data; or data on the physical environment. Urban forests offer a rare opportunity to intentionally design biodiverse, heterogenous, rich ecosystems. Methods See eLife manuscript for full details. Below, we provide a summary of how the dataset was collected and processed.

Data Acquisition We limited our search to the 150 largest cities in the USA (by census population). To acquire raw data on street tree communities, we used a search protocol on both Google and Google Datasets Search (https://datasetsearch.research.google.com/). We first searched the city name plus each of the following: street trees, city trees, tree inventory, urban forest, and urban canopy (all combinations totaled 20 searches per city, 10 each in Google and Google Datasets Search). We then read the first page of google results and the top 20 results from Google Datasets Search. If the same named city in the wrong state appeared in the results, we redid the 20 searches adding the state name. If no data were found, we contacted a relevant state official via email or phone with an inquiry about their street tree inventory. Datasheets were received and transformed to .csv format (if they were not already in that format). We received data on street trees from 64 cities. One city, El Paso, had data only in summary format and was therefore excluded from analyses.

Data Cleaning All code used is in the zipped folder Data S5 in the eLife publication. Before cleaning the data, we ensured that all reported trees for each city were located within the greater metropolitan area of the city (for certain inventories, many suburbs were reported - some within the greater metropolitan area, others not). First, we renamed all columns in the received .csv sheets, referring to the metadata and according to our standardized definitions (Table S4). To harmonize tree health and condition data across different cities, we inspected metadata from the tree inventories and converted all numeric scores to a descriptive scale including “excellent,” “good”, “fair”, “poor”, “dead”, and “dead/dying”. Some cities included only three points on this scale (e.g., “good”, “poor”, “dead/dying”) while others included five (e.g., “excellent,” “good”, “fair”, “poor”, “dead”). Second, we used pandas in Python (W. McKinney & Others, 2011) to correct typos, non-ASCII characters, variable spellings, date format, units used (we converted all units to metric), address issues, and common name format. In some cases, units were not specified for tree diameter at breast height (DBH) and tree height; we determined the units based on typical sizes for trees of a particular species. Wherever diameter was reported, we assumed it was DBH. We standardized health and condition data across cities, preserving the highest granularity available for each city. For our analysis, we converted this variable to a binary (see section Condition and Health). We created a column called “location_type” to label whether a given tree was growing in the built environment or in green space. All of the changes we made, and decision points, are preserved in Data S9. Third, we checked the scientific names reported using gnr_resolve in the R library taxize (Chamberlain & Szöcs, 2013), with the option Best_match_only set to TRUE (Data S9). Through an iterative process, we manually checked the results and corrected typos in the scientific names until all names were either a perfect match (n=1771 species) or partial match with threshold greater than 0.75 (n=453 species). BGS manually reviewed all partial matches to ensure that they were the correct species name, and then we programmatically corrected these partial matches (for example, Magnolia grandifolia-- which is not a species name of a known tree-- was corrected to Magnolia grandiflora, and Pheonix canariensus was corrected to its proper spelling of Phoenix canariensis). Because many of these tree inventories were crowd-sourced or generated in part through citizen science, such typos and misspellings are to be expected. Some tree inventories reported species by common names only. Therefore, our fourth step in data cleaning was to convert common names to scientific names. We generated a lookup table by summarizing all pairings of common and scientific names in the inventories for which both were reported. We manually reviewed the common to scientific name pairings, confirming that all were correct. Then we programmatically assigned scientific names to all common names (Data S9). Fifth, we assigned native status to each tree through reference to the Biota of North America Project (Kartesz, 2018), which has collected data on all native and non-native species occurrences throughout the US states. Specifically, we determined whether each tree species in a given city was native to that state, not native to that state, or that we did not have enough information to determine nativity (for cases where only the genus was known). Sixth, some cities reported only the street address but not latitude and longitude. For these cities, we used the OpenCageGeocoder (https://opencagedata.com/) to convert addresses to latitude and longitude coordinates (Data S9). OpenCageGeocoder leverages open data and is used by many academic institutions (see https://opencagedata.com/solutions/academia). Seventh, we trimmed each city dataset to include only the standardized columns we identified in Table S4. After each stage of data cleaning, we performed manual spot checking to identify any issues.

A dataset listing Virginia cities by population for 2024.