The Census Bureau released its estimates of city populations for July 1, 2009 today.
Albuquerque is the 34th largest city in the U.S. with an estimated 528,497 residents.
(These estimates are for the city only. They do not include the surrounding metropolitan area, which of course is more meaningful. I don’t live in the city, for example.)
The top ten, in order:
New York 8.4 million
Los Angeles 3.8 million
Chicago 2.9 million
Houston 2.3 million
Phoenix 1.6 million
Philadelphia 1.5 million
San Antonio 1.4 million
San Diego 1.3 million
Dallas 1.3 million
San Jose .96 million
Around the area, El Paso ranks 22nd nationally, Denver 24th, Las Vegas 28th, Tucson 32nd, Mesa 39th and Colorado Springs 46th. Salt Lake City ranks 127th (or smaller than Chandler, Glendale, Scottsdale or Gilbert, Arizona).
Albuquerque is the only place in New Mexico with 100,000 people within its city limits.
UPDATE:
These are a few of the metropolitan area estimates for July 1, 2009:
Albuquerque 857,903
Boulder 303,482
Colorado Springs 626,227
Denver-Aurora-Broomfield 2,552,195
El Paso 751,296
Las Cruces 206,419
Las Vegas-Paradise 1,902,834
Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale 4,364,094
Salt Lake City 1,130,293
Santa Fe 147,532
Tucson 1,020,200