Manhattan is home to more than 1.6 million residents, yet based on square miles of land, it’s smaller than Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW).
If you were to measure the square miles of DFW, you’d find the airport covers about 26.9 square miles. The island of Manhattan is only 22.8 square miles. Thus, DFW is actually 18% larger than Manhattan.
Technically, you could fit the entire island of Manhattan, plus three Central Park’s into DFW, or 20 Central Park’s. It’s so large that DFW even has its own post office ZIP code (75261) and U.S. Postal Service city designation (DFW Airport, TX).
In 2024, DFW serviced nearly 88 million passengers. That would equal to a daily foot traffic of around 240,000 or so passengers. Just as a fun fact, the last time NYC’s population was ever near 240,000 was assumably in 1835, from historical census records.
Even with DFW’s massive square mileage, it’s not the biggest airport in the country! That title goes to Denver International Airport (DEN), sprawling around a whopping 53 square miles. Yes, this means that DEN could almost fit two DFWs or more than two Manhattan’s—or 40 Central Parks! DFW is the second largest in the country.
Although NYC is home to one of the busiest airports in the country, no NYC airport is anywhere near the size of DEN or DFW. For context, JFK Airport reaches a total of 8.1 square miles, LGA 1.06 square miles, and EWR 3.16 square miles.
If we zoom out of Manhattan specifically, NYC as a whole sweeps across about 469 square miles of land and water. With only land, NYC comes out to 304 square miles, equivalent to about the entire size of Kansas City.
Queens is the largest borough of NYC by square miles, stretching a total of 178 square miles (109 square miles just land). Inversely, Manhattan is the tiniest borough by square miles.
According to the NYC Census in 2000, NYC has 26,000 people per square mile. Again, that’s not taking into consideration the nearly half a million more people that have moved to NYC since then. So even though NYC remains the most densely populated city in the U.S., it’s not as big as you may think—or Manhattan at least.