Every city has its bragging rights. Some are more impressive than others; New York having the most residents of any city in the U.S. is a distinction worthy of bragging about, whereas residents of Albertville, AL probably struggle to boast about their title of “fire hydrant capital of the world.”
When Jacksonville residents are asked for the coolest fact about their city, many tend to respond by pointing out that we’re the largest city, in terms of land area, in the country. Usually, some annoying person chimes in to remind us about those cities in Alaska, at which point we quickly correct ourselves by explaining we meant it was the largest in the “contiguous United States.” And after a long explanation of what the word “contiguous” means, the conversation tends to die off quickly.
Well now, thanks to an infographic from RENTCafe, we have a visual to help you out when explaining how big Jacksonville really is.
As you can see, Jacksonville can fit several major cities within its land area. Boston, Miami, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and the island of Manhattan could all fit together inside the vast area that is considered part of Jacksonville.
The graphic also highlights another rather interesting fact: of those cities, only Chicago and Manhattan rank higher in population. Jacksonville has never been known for its large population, ranking 12th in the country there despite being 1st in land area. (Again, besides Alaska.)
So next time someone asks you for an interesting fact about Jacksonville, and you reach for that convenient land area zinger, you can now at least offer some more perspective on exactly how impressive the size of Jacksonville (and those four Alaskan cities) truly is.
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Ok but the vast majority of Jacksonville is very sparesely populated or rural. Miami has over 10 times the population density.
This article doesn't argue that Jacksonville is more densely populated than any of these cities. But for what it's worth, if you think the "vast majority" of Jax is rural, or even sparsely populated, you're pretty far off.
Miami proper is roughly 450 thousand and jacksonville is almost 2 times larger in population. Youd have to count suburbs along miami to say it's bigger.
Look at how small Washington, DC is in land area, yet it has about 200k people less than Jacksonville. I never could understand why a city as random as Jacksonville had such a huge population compared to the DC's and Boston's of the world. But now it all makes sense.