The U.S. Census Bureau's latest big-city population data was released Tuesday and once again … we're number two. In July, 2009, the latest month for which data was available, the city of L.A. had 3,831,868 residents, making it second only to the city of New York (8,391,881) in population size. The city ranked 164th in growth since 2000, with a 3.7 percent increase in Angelenos, or an additional 136,442 people fighting for that parking spot. More from the Census website.

The Los Angeles “metropolitan statistical area,” by the way, which includes the greater “Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana” area, comes in second once more with 12,874,797 residents. The “New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island-NY-NJ-PA” greater metropolitan area, by the way, gets 19,069,796 people for number one.

Now wait a second, New York's metropolitan area counts part of Pennsylvania? Almost the entire upper half of New Jersey? Hmm. By that measure the southern half of California, including Santa Barbara, San Diego, Palm Springs, and the Imperial Valley should be counted in L.A.'s own M.S.A. Maybe then we'd be number one.

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