In the United States, I’d probably name Oregon City, the famous end of the Oregon Trail and the first city founded west of the Rocky Mountains during the pioneer era. Its population is only 37,000.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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    22 hours ago

    What’s your population threshold for city, here? Are there just a ton of rural people? It feels like a major country.

    • absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz
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      21 hours ago

      50k people

      Looking at this list some are dubious. e.g. Hibicus Coast (#9) has been swallowed up by Auckland (#1), I would have called it a part of Auckland, much like Manakau City, which isn’t on the list.

      Lower Hutt (#6) and Upper Hutt (#18) are on the list but Petone is not, geographically they are part of the same long valley and can almost all be considered part of Wellington like Manakau City is part of Auckland.

      But you also get places like Masterton (#28), feels city like, since it is the largest settlement in the region but really it is a big town, it takes up a huge area though. Mainly services the farming communities around it.

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        22 hours ago

        Wow. And you still have >5 million people? This list goes all the way down to what I’d call not quite villages, but very small towns (although your link is broken, you need to add the Wikipedia part).

        • absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz
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          21 hours ago

          Thanks, fixed the link.

          When you consider that the top 5 on that list take up 50% of the population. Auckland continues to grow, and at 30% of the population already, it has an crazy effect on the economic decisions in the country.

          It is also growing geographically, eventually Auckland and Hamilton will merge somewhere around Huntly (#50).

          • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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            2 hours ago

            Huh, so it does. It looks like it shouldn’t at first, my bad.

            Have you had any luck with the urban sprawl? We’ve brought in a bunch of urban densification stuff recently in Canada, and NZ was cited as an example to follow.

            • absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz
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              1 hour ago

              Auckland is the definition of sprawl.

              A bunch of laws were past on the last few years to combat it, but we find see the effects for decades to come.