Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smallest_cities_in_the_United_Kingdom

see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_United_Kingdom

What we understand the metropolitan city of London and the square mile of the historical city centre with its historical boundary, that still has an administrative purpose, are two different things.

That’s a good illustration of how comparing cities by specific governmental entities and not by metro area is total meaningless. I’ve heard people say stuff like “Minneapolis is a smaller city than Albuquerque!“, while in real life, the Minneapolis metro area is about five times as large in population.

London proper is a basically a de-industrial park; a global hyper-finance business park. Also a tourist trap.

That's nonsense - the word "city" is surprisingly hard to define, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_status_in_the_United_Kingdom

vs EU définition:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/en/urb_esms.htm
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/RCI/#%3Fvis=city.statistics&lang=en

Oh, this was a joke? That was unclear. However, now that you've clarified, it remains unfunny. appreciate the effort, though.

Within the city limits, Albuquerque is more populous than Minneapolis, but Albuquerque is also over 3 times as large physically as Minneapolis. Yes metro area Minneapolis is larger by 3.7 times as much. But that is like asking how many people live in your house and you saying "well there are 120 people in my neighborhood".

That’s nonsense

What is nonsense? This post title is a statement of fact, backed up by the wikipedia article it links to 😂

(the difference between the UK's legal definition of "city" and the colloquial meaning of the word is part of what makes this /c/mildlyinteresting ...)

Usually when people talk about "larger", they mean population. If you are talking specifically about geographical area, sure, but it's usually explicitly named. If you compared the metro area of Mpls to Albuquerque, I bet it's way larger geographically as well. So really my point is that when someone says somewhere is a big city, they don't mean the central city, but rather the metro area. The population or geographical size of the central city has little to do with what it's like to live in or visit a metro area, in terms of cultural variety, economy, and so on.

I shouldn't have posted such an inflammatory comment, sorry!

However, having lived in the UK most of my life and having worked in various logistics and adjacent software businesses, I can promise you that wiki page is totally meaningless for almost all real world uses of the word "city".

The problem is it's a dumb historical definition if you go by what that wiki page suggests are cities. That old school royal city status in the UK is a royal honour, not a population threshold or any other useful definitely. It was historically tied to having an Anglican cathedral, which is why Wells (~10,000 people) and St Davids (~2,000) are cities but massive 200,000-person places aren't.

Some of the most glaring offenders (Milton Keynes, Doncaster, Southend, Colchester) finally got status in the 2022 Platinum Jubilee round, but plenty remain.
Here are the biggest UK built-up areas that are obviously cities by any normal definition but lack the title:

Northampton (~244,000)
Luton (~234,000)
Reading (~204,000)
150,000–200,000:
Bournemouth (~196,000)
Bolton (~184,000)
Swindon (~184,000)
Warrington (~175,000)
Slough (~167,000)
Telford (~157,000)
Ipswich (~152,000)
100,000–150,000:
Blackpool, Middlesbrough, Huddersfield, Poole, Blackburn, Crawley, Stockport, Basildon, Cheltenham, Gateshead, Birkenhead, Maidstone, Solihull, West Bromwich

That's why using the EU definition of a city makes much more sense and makes things actually consistent Europe-wide, is what you'd use in any business / logistics application etc, so that dumb royal definition annoys me 😅
I'm also generally pretty anti monarchy (I'm Scottish) so that probably contributes to how salty I am!

However, having lived in the UK most of my life and having worked in various logistics and adjacent software businesses, I can promise you that wiki page is totally meaningless for almost all real world uses of the word “city”.

Yes, we know, and OP knows we know. He made this post to highlight that very absurdity.

Subtle humor isn’t for everyone 🤷

Fair enough maybe I whooshed but it doesn't feel like mildly interesting to me 🤷 more infuriating lol