In the United States, I’d probably name Oregon City, the famous end of the Oregon Trail and the first city founded west of the Rocky Mountains during the pioneer era. Its population is only 37,000.
ottawa
I think a decent number of people know about Dildo, NL
Not a city as much as part of a city, but Coney Island is pretty well known. I was recently speaking to someone in Colombia and even they knew of it!
(I’m part of the sideshow cast there ☺️)
I’m from Pakistan and I know it too, it appears in the movie Robot Dreams.
Username checks out?
I’m often introduced as a real life tiefling so yeah
I’m not from there, but who doesn’t know the name of Scunthorpe?
It’s a problem.
Gibraltar has a population of 32,000, which by some definitions is too small to be considered a city.
Gibraltar is a city?
I am American, so low bar, but there are dozens of us.
It’s a city, it’s a really big rock, it’s a maritime port, it’s the only wild monkey population in Europe, it’s a 2½ mi2 British Overseas Territory whose status is perennially contested by Spain.
The New Orleans French Quarter is easy to spot.
Bobcaygeon, population 3,500.
I think people really overestimate how much everybody knows about the US.
I’d say there’s a large population that only know NYC, LA, and Chicago.
Used to be Dallas was pretty famous- Kennedy shooting, cheerleaders, and a titular TV show.
I’d say Salem, Massachusetts (pop just under 45k) is pretty famous thanks to the witch trials.
Van Halen and Spring Break dictates that everyone knows Panama city.
Population of under 36,000.
“Panama isn’t about a city, it’s the stage name of a stripper from Albuquerque!”
- David Lee Roth
It doesn’t matter that it isn’t actually about the city. That doesn’t change that people think of and know Panama the city due to the song. They either know it because they think it’s about the city, or they know it because they’re like you with their “actually”, which shows that you and anyone else who knows it’s about a stripper still knows of the city.
I thought it was about the country
Winnipeg, Canada (pop. 850k) has a famous namesake in Winnie the Pooh (who was named after Winnipeg) and has been in the Simpsons.
850k isn’t really small though.
It’s still small for a city, especially a capital city. However, it’s bigger than Regina 😄
Your “small city” has more people than 5 US states
It has more people than anywhere that has less people.
It’s about the same population as San Francisco.
If you mean people from my country… All of them.
New Zealand only has like 10 actual cities. It is not some great feat of memory to know them all.
What’s your population threshold for city, here? Are there just a ton of rural people? It feels like a major country.
50k people
Looking at this list some are dubious. e.g. Hibicus Coast (#9) has been swallowed up by Auckland (#1), I would have called it a part of Auckland, much like Manakau City, which isn’t on the list.
Lower Hutt (#6) and Upper Hutt (#18) are on the list but Petone is not, geographically they are part of the same long valley and can almost all be considered part of Wellington like Manakau City is part of Auckland.
But you also get places like Masterton (#28), feels city like, since it is the largest settlement in the region but really it is a big town, it takes up a huge area though. Mainly services the farming communities around it.
Wow. And you still have >5 million people? This list goes all the way down to what I’d call not quite villages, but very small towns (although your link is broken, you need to add the Wikipedia part).
Thanks, fixed the link.
When you consider that the top 5 on that list take up 50% of the population. Auckland continues to grow, and at 30% of the population already, it has an crazy effect on the economic decisions in the country.
It is also growing geographically, eventually Auckland and Hamilton will merge somewhere around Huntly (#50).
Huh, so it does. It looks like it shouldn’t at first, my bad.
Have you had any luck with the urban sprawl? We’ve brought in a bunch of urban densification stuff recently in Canada, and NZ was cited as an example to follow.
Auckland is the definition of sprawl.
A bunch of laws were past on the last few years to combat it, but we find see the effects for decades to come.
I remember going to Auckland in the 90s and being amazed how low everything was considering it’s size. Wellington was vertical. Auckland was horizontal.
At least, that’s how it felt.
Matamata is really nice.
Dildo, Newfoundland.
Not really though.
Off the top of my head I’d say places like Gander, Churchill, Iqaluit - places known maybe for their location as much as their people and unique situations?
The smallest Canadian city that I’d think most people around the world might know about is Niagara Falls, although they might only know about the falls and not know that it’s also a city.
Edit: I thought the question meant people around the world but I guess it could also mean just the people in your own country…
Man, I was struggling with this. The one I landed on is Halifax, just given its role as a port city and the story of the Halifax Explosion. But I’m having a hard time justifying that position.
There’s much smaller, even more interesting places but not much about them that’d attract international notice unless you’re visiting here or specifically curious about Canada.
Charlottetown is a good answer actually. Bigger than I thought though, 40k people.
Banff is what I was looking for in this list (pop ~8300). Not many places in this country are ‘acting Canadian’ anymore.
Yellowknife has a population of 20,000. Is that considered small enough?
I’d say no in the context of the OP. That’s one of our major cities in our own way. And a territorial capital.
Omg…i spent 4 hours in Gander one evening, so it took about 20 hours to go Dallas -> Chicago -> Gander-> Chicago.
“A week in Gander one day.”
Nope
Unfortunately, I would guess that school shooter locations are probably the most easily recognised in the US. Uvalde has a population of ~15,000, for instance.
Similar to how more people have heard of Lockerbie than any other Scottish town of 5000 people.
Sandy Hook is ~9,000. You may not remember, but Alex Jones does.
Yeah Alex Jones can rot in hell
deleted by creator
Ah yeah, I was going for instantly recognizable
I’m in the US and I can’t say I’d heard of Oregon City before this post…
I am not in the US. Never heard of Oregon City. But Atlantic City sounds really familiar.
Fairly big city and a tourist destination if you are too trash to go to Reno, which is where you go if you are too trash to go to Vegas.
Ocean City is the new Atlantic City anyway.
Oregon City would be my answer to ‘what’s the capital of Oregon?’
Just a standard, since I never heard of the capital I’ll try the state name plus city guess.
I take it it’s not Portland?
I just looked it up. Salem is the capital. Portland is the largest city.
For real. I’d think many more people could name Panama city in Florida. Famous spring break and vacation city every kid who’s gone through college or listened to Van Halen knows of. Also has a population of less than 36,000 people.
I thought the Oregon Trail was a pretty standard part of US history curriculum.
From US, played Oregon trail for hundreds of hours, didn’t remember Oregon City.
I think the game ended in The Dalles didn’t it?
Nantucket Massachusetts 10k
Aspen Colorado 7k
Jackson Hole Wyoming 10k
Key West Florida 25k
Probably all more famous and smaller population.
Tombstone, AZ has a population of 1,313.
And every one of them is hot.
Not really, not in our school district anyways. They did allow us to play the game based on that on their ancient computers, but never really gave us historical context, nor were we required to play the game.
I didn’t learn shit about it back then, and barely get it today. I’m 42 years old for reference.
We were taught about it, but most Americans don’t view westward expansion with the same… Reverence? Notoriety?
Like, I remember learning about it across multiple grades, but… Oregon City being the final destination, that’s not something I would probably remember a year or two later, nevermind a decade or more.
Oregon trail, yes, Oregon city, no. I remember learning that it went from independence Missouri to the Willamette Valley. If I had to guess where I thought it ended, I would have said Portland.
But most of the world did not have the US education system. I’d say only some Americans have heard of Oregon City, and very few non Americans.
It was popular, but I think most folks who played it remember dying of dysentery, not the cities 😆
I too have never heard of Oregon City. I can only assume it’s in Oregon. The only thing I remember about the Oregon Trail is that I died from dysentery every time I followed the trail.
Lajitas, Texas, which once elected as their mayor a goat that drank beer, has a population of 75.
Terlingua, Texas, as made famous by Jerry Jeff Walker and home of the Terlingua International Chili Cook-off, has a population of 78.
Luckenbach, Texas, as made famous by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, has a population of 3.
Aramoana here in New Zealand. It has a population in the low hundreds and it is famous for a horrible massacre in 1990. The cops here don’t usually have guns and in a little place like that there are often only a handful of police that are anywhere in the general region.
Vulcan, Alberta.
Famous because of a spaceship that landed there once, I think.
Some people with pointed ears may have also been involved, but I would replicate that with a grain of salt. I haven’t really looked into it.
It’s a total aside, but I feel like more people should know about Shag Harbour, NS for similar reasons. That and The Shag Harbour Incident would make an excellent band name.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shag_Harbour_UFO_incident
They have a little museum which is kinda fun.
