So, Exactly How Much Bigger is LA's Land Area Over Chicago's? Over Twice the Size

Although Los Angeles overtook Chicago as the country's second most populated city during the '80s, at 2.7 million residents, the Second City has the third place position on lockdown. There has been some debate lately regarding population growth and decline in certain neighborhoods, but overall, it appears that Chicago may be actually starting to grow again — actually, never mind, Chicago's population growth is as flat as the city itself. But what happens when we compare the physical size of a city like Los Angeles to Chicago? Our colleagues at Curbed LA recently highlighted a few maps that offer a very clear picture of this comparison. Although the City of Angels' population is considerably higher than Chicago's, at 469 square miles, Los Angeles' land area is more than twice the size of Chicago's 227 square miles.

And as many might guess, Chicago is much more densely populated than Los Angeles with nearly 12,000 residents per square mile over LA's 8,300 residents per square mile. LA is so big that if you uprooted the entire city and dumped it into the Great Lakes, it'd be more than easily visible from space. Just look.

So, what about Houston? Currently, Houston has the fourth largest population in the country, and it seems to be growing every year. However, at 600 square miles, Houston's land area is actually considerably larger than LA's and at 3,662 residents per mile, its population density is even lower. Imagine if Chicago annexed almost all of the suburbs and added the populations of cities like Naperville and Schaumburg to the total — Chicago's population would easily be over the 3 million mark. So really, at the end of the day, comparing a city like Chicago to Houston is kind of like comparing apples to oranges. Sure, they're both big cities, but they're different species of fruit. Or something like that.

There's many more maps and much more data at self-storage-focused site SpareFoot, who has info comparing LA to other cities like New York, San Francisco and others.

·16 Comparisons to Show Exactly How Enormous Los Angeles Is [Curbed LA]
·How Big is Los Angeles, Actually? [SpareFoot]