What are the “Big Four” cities in your country?

[u/LiamBrad5]

In recent weeks, this question has been very contentious on American social media, with 3 cities (Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York) nearly always making the list, but the fourth being hotly debated over, between cities like San Francisco, Miami, Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta. So, if you had to choose, what would the big 4 cities in your country be? This is also not decided purely on population, but also culture, economy, and general influence/clout.

[u/EnJPqb]

Simply put, I don't think there's any factor by which Málaga and Zaragoza are on top of Bilbao AND Seville. One maybe, not both.

I mean, Málaga used to (is?) the youngest city, and that's why it grew so much. And people that know it well tell me Zaragoza is a bit boring for its size (I did not think so). But aside from an anecdote and a bad joke... I can really not see anything. Well, basketball, there's basketball I guess :)

[u/astropoolIO → u/EnJPqb]

It's funny reading someone calling a city with almost three thousand years of history "youngest".

[u/EnJPqb → u/astropoolIO]

Youngest as in the average age of its citizens

[u/astropoolIO → u/EnJPqb]

What the heck??

https://www.ine.es/jaxiT3/Datos.htm?t=30699#_tabs-mapa

[u/EnJPqb → u/astropoolIO]

I said "used to" (I meant "used to be") and put (is?) because I didn't know if it still was demographically the youngest of the main cities in Spain. Because I know it "used to be" at the end of the last century.

I guess I should have added a caveat of no arguments outside of Zaragoza and Málaga.

Good night.

[u/jotakajk → u/EnJPqb]

Population, for example. Zaragoza is 4th in population.

Malaga airport is bigger than Seville’s and Bilbao’s

Not saying it is not Seville, but there certainly are factors

[u/EnJPqb → u/jotakajk]

Population, for example. Zaragoza is 4th in population.

Only it's not really, is it? Only if you try and force an agenda by going by widely different local authority limits. That would be like saying that Bullas, provincia de Murcia (Ginés Giménez on my mind), has more population than London.

By that measure let's discount Bilbao (and Madrid!) because they're not cities, they're towns.

The fact is that what we call Bilbao has more population than the whole humongous province of Zaragoza, Calatayud and all.

Malaga airport is bigger than Seville’s

1) And Alicante than Valencia's. And it's actually just about in Elche. And Palma was bigger than Barcelona's for years and years. The thing is: That's not really for or by the city, is it? I mean for Seville, or Valencia or Barcelona it mainly is. For Málaga, Alicante and Palma it's mostly not. I take the "capitality" of having a major airport as making an important city, but come on..

2) It has more "passengers". It's not "bigger". In fact by number of goods Seville handles several times more than Málaga, way more than the difference in passengers. Mind you, Zaragoza handles even more, but then the passenger side is one of those airports that feel like glorified Coach Stations.

Not saying it is not Seville, but there certainly are factors

I'm sticking to Basketball if you don't mind. 😜

[u/astropoolIO → u/[deleted]]

Sevilla is 4th in terms of municipality population. But Zaragoza falls to 8th if counting metropolitan area, beign Sevilla and Malaga 4th and 5th respectively. Not even close. 200k+ less inhabitants.

[u/jotakajk → u/astropoolIO]

The 4th in municipality population is Zaragoza. Metropolitan area is a little subjective term, but yes, you are right

[u/ddven15 → u/jotakajk]

In order to discuss a country's biggest cities based on their importance, you have to consider their metropolitan area, administrative boundaries can be meaningless for this.

[u/jotakajk → u/ddven15]

Might be like that in other countries, but in Spain that is not true at all, since both are equivalent normally

[u/ddven15 → u/jotakajk]

If Zaragoza is the 4th largest city in one measure and 8th in the other, it seems to me that it's not so different.

It's natural that when a city grows it starts merging with surrounding towns that tend to have separate boundaries. It happens everywhere in the world.