If we also count regions in addition to cities, the Australian state of New South Wales comes to mind, which is both newer and (significantly) further south than the Wales in Britain. Population: Wales 3.1mn, New South Wales 7.5mn.
I’m not sure, however, if the name of New South Wales is a duplication of the state’s new character, being both the “new” Wales and the “southern” one; or if Cook wanted to name his colony specifically after the southern part of the Wales in Britain, to the exclusion of the northern parts of Wales.
Here’s another that technically counts, I guess. In Minnesota, the city of East Bethel at 11,626 is bigger than the adjacent city of Bethel at 466. But Bethel is tiny in area, about one square mile, while East Bethel is large at 48 square miles. The population density of Bethel is higher, and it seems to have more commercial development, though not a great deal of it.
[I’m going to hijack my own thread for a related question, rather than start a new one.]
Is there any city with a full set of direction cities? By that I mean a City with North, South, East, and West Cities in its vicinity. And they have to be actual cities, not neighborhoods or whatever.
In the OP, I mentioned Chicago having a North, West and East, but there’s no South Chicago. Well, there is, but it’s a neighborhood of Chicago. And no, not the South Side; Wikipedia has a page for a neighborhood named South Chicago that’s not the same. South Chicago Heights is also right out. Another one with three direction cities is Orange NJ, which I mentioned in another post. It has an East, West, and South, but there’s no North Orange.
So those are a couple with three and I’m sure there are others with three. But any with all four?
It is directly west from Bloomfield Township, from which Bloomfield Hills was incorporated, so I’ll give Bloomfield Township its population too, but it’s still smaller:
Also, speaking of “direction” Chicago, the ad agency where I work has an office (and a large printing plant) in West Chicago. No small number of people who’ve worked at our downtown offices have planned to make what they think is a fairly quick trip to the West Chicago facility, only to discover that not only is West Chicago not contiguous to the city’s border, but it is, in fact, about 35 miles west of downtown.
North Chicago is similarly a long ways away from the city, being up near Waukegan. East Chicago is also not contiguous, Hammond IN is in between.
Direction cities are sometimes geographically incorrect, even more so than East Chicago. A couple examples: South Charleston WV is actually west of Charleston, not south at all. East Palo Alto CA is north, not east in the least.
The correct story about the naming of New South Wales is clearly explained here [in the third section].
New South Wales provides a good example for the OP, in the appropriately named Bland Shire in central western NSW. Wyalong was founded in 1884, but now has a few hundred people, whereas its upstart child West Wyalong was founded in 1895 after gold was discovered, and retains ten times the population of its parent.
Montreal (Canada) has a “West”, “North”, and “East” all contiguous to the parent city’s borders, but “Montreal West” is geographically south, and “Montreal East” is geographically north. There was once a “Montreal South” (separated from the parent by a couple of km of St. Lawrence river), which was geographically east of the parent.
As noted in WIkipedia, the writers of the song were a couple of English guys, whose knowledge of Chicago geography was more theoretical than practical:
The city of North Tonawanda, New York, at 31,568 is larger than the city of Tonawanda at 15,130. They’re adjacent to each other but in different counties. I’m not sure it counts because, confusingly enough, there is a separate town of Tonawanda that has a higher population than the two cities put together at 73,567.
Another oddity of that group besides their geographic ignorance is the lead singer was the drummer. They arranged themselves on the stage a little differently than most R&R guitar & drum quartets.
I take it that “town” is a term of art, in New York? Possibly meaning the same thing as “township” around here, a locality that has not incorporated as a city? Because here, at least, “town” has no official meaning, and just informally means “small municipality”.
