The Greater LA areas has 34k square miles of area. Germany, the whole country, has 128k square miles. In other words, the LA area alone is a quarter the size of all of Germany.
A huge chunk of that is national parks and deserts. It's not all inhabited. Only about 25% is classified as urban with the overwhelming majority of that being concentrated in Los Angeles and it's surrounding cities.
This isn't a size measuring contest. I think Europeans forget how _young_ America is. That's the only unique part of this country. Give us a few thousand years and we'll be on par.
No it was a population density measuring contest and you were trying to argue that greater LA was more dense than greater Berlin, without defining greater Berlin in a rigorous way. The size of Germany relative to greater LA was brought up to attempt to put the population densities in perspective.
Measuring methods are also very different. I've had this argument before here.
Looking at the population of greater Melbourne has you looking at suburbs like Werribee, Frankston, Boronia, etc., which everyone would consider as a part of Melbourne (suburbs, outer, but very much a part of the core).
On the flip side, the "Seattle Metropolitan Area" consists of:
Mt Rainier. Bainbridge Island. Glacier Peak in Mt Baker Snoqualmie National Forest. Mt Vernon. Olympia. North Bend.
No Western Washingtonian is calling any of those locations "a suburb of Seattle".
