Earlier quoted context omitted.
We often call smaller city's suburbs of larger ones. DC 'suburbs' extend out 60+ miles and include several mid-sized city's. "Greater Metropolitan area" is often a better term. EX: Fairfax city is in a similar location relative to DC and takes 1h 20min to get their by subway, it's also inside fairfax county which has ~1Million people. However, large numbers of people commute from west of Fairfax into DC. So IMO, it's…
I think the term loses a lot of meaning if used just for the same distances in the UK as in the US. Particularly because the main consensus for 'suburb' seems to be that it's a residential area, which the commuter flows suggest that Reading is not. Perhaps the best benchmark is merely whether a place is treated as a sub-district (albeit far-flung) of a city? I'd say that doesn't apply to Reading, but perhaps the same…
Re: Independence Day
#71Suppose 100k people live in fairfax and 150k people work in fairfax. That's a net influx. But if 300k people commute though fairfax IMO that point's to it being part of a larger collective.