^This. While it is super exciting to us Minneapolitans that we cracked 400k, I'm not sure that's the number we want to be broadcasting.Back on topic, it would seem that the population of the two central cities has probably now exceeded 700,000.
400k is still really small by national standards, for a major metropolitan core and largest city in a state.
When talking about population numbers, we really ought to broadcast the combined Mpls-StP number. At 700k, now you're talking about a pretty damn big city. Instead of ranking 46th, just surpassing Tulsa in 2013 population, we'd be ranked 18th or 19th, just about even with Detroit. At 700k, we're solidly in the big leagues with the central cities of many metropolitan areas, and actually come out ahead of Seattle, Denver, Portland, and company. The 700k number is much more in line with a typical core city population for a metro of our size.