The population of Denver proper is about 600,000 persons. The city had been land-locked for quite some time until annexing land to the northwest in the service of building Denver International Airport (DIA).
The growth from 550,000, which the population had been at for some time, to 600,000 is--I'll bet--because of growth in the Green Valley Ranch and Montbello areas just south of DIA.
The total population of the "Denver metro area," however, is about 2.5 million. 75% of the population of the "Denver metro area" doesn't live in Denver!
San Antonio is the nation's 7th largest city, weighing in at, roughly, 1.4 million sentient beings. San Antonio proper has over twice the population of Denver, but Denver's metro area population is about half a million people larger than San Antonio's.
While it's the 7th largest city, San Antonio is the nation's 24th largest metro area. The main reason for the difference is probably that San Antonio doesn't have a lot of suburban population to boost the total metro area population. (This may be a characteristic of newer southwestern cities in general. San Diego is the 8th largest city, but 17th largest metro area. Phoenix is 6th and 14th, respectively.)
Taking it from the other direction, St. Louis proper is only the nation's 58th largest city. Aurora, Colorado is now larger than St. Louis, MO. In 1950, St. Louis was 8th. The "St. Louis metro area," however, is 19th largest, sprawling across portions of two states.
San Jose, CA is now larger than its more famous progenitor, San Francisco. San Francisco has about 800,000 citizens, San Jose nearly a million, yet when people in the metro area speak of "going into the city," they still mean San Francisco.
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