> > > Yeah, Edmonton has a LOT of suburbs. When added all together, the greater Edmonton area has over a million people. Without counting the suburbs though, Edmonton only has about 600 000 or so.
>
> This seems to be a big difference in how people define cities... Auckland is, for all practical purposes, entirely suburban. It wouldn't occur to me to try to separate the number of people who live in the city from those who live in the suburbs, because the *city* part, ie the couple of blocks in the middle where there are skyscrapers, isn't where anybody lives. Oh, there are some apartment buildings there, but nothing even *close* to how many people would live in apartments in a comparatively sized US city.
>
> It's population *density* rather than size which makes city life bearable or otherwise. We've got a million people in Auckland, but spread out over twice the land area of London. (Or so I've heard.)
>
> Brunnen-"or it was 1.5 times the land area of some other humungous city...or something... but you get the idea"G

I think that in the context that Kaz! is using, suburb is taken to mean "community which was once a seperate hamlet/village/town/city but which has become a part of the larger city through the expansion of this city". I can understand why you would look at it in the way you do, though-- Your definition of suburbs seems to be something like "The part of the city which is quieter, has less traffic, is mainly residential, and is mostly houses" which is what my definition usually is. But for me, knowing the names and histories of several of Kaz!'s suburbs gives me a bit of an advantage in deciphering that information. Of course, by his definition, you get into an issue which FP and Elly have both discussed here earlier: When does a smaller community become part of a larger one? I won't even try to answer that-- it is too ephemeral a question, and there are so many ways to define the question that I think the real issue is not answering the question, but defining it. Ugh, I am verbose.

I agree wholeheartedly about your population density point, though. Calgary has a very low population density, and though this does make driving across the city into quite a chore, it makes most parts of the city quite nice to live in.

Don "I think 'Ugh, I am verbose' is a self-contradictory statement" Monkey