REALLY strange choice of data point for Toronto -- it uses a much smaller land area than for the US cities.

Greater Toronto Area - 7,124 km^2

Chicago Metro Area - 28,120 km^2

Houston Metro Area - 26,061 km^2

Dallas-Fort Worth - 24,059 km^2

Washington Metro - 14,412 km^2

Philadelphia Metro - 13,256 km^2

A much more apples-to-apples comparison would be the Golden Horseshoe (7.005 million / 10,097 km^2), or Greater Golden Horseshoe (8.759 million / 31,561 km^2).

I believe that Chicago's population is also stagnant, whereas the GHA has grew 4.5% from 2006-2011, so extrapolating to 2016 would put it at 9.1 million. Still smaller than the Chicago metro area, but not by a lot.

These area are huge. Switzerland is 41,285 km^2, Belgium is 30,528 km^2, The Netherlands is 41,543 km^2.

Try the Los Angeles metro area - 87,490 km^2 (and 18.7m people)...

Having lived in Chicago, I was genuinely surprised by Belgium's comparably small size.

The city of Toronto absorbed many suburbs a while ago, so the metro area isn't much bigger than the city proper. So Toronto (just the city) is bigger than Chicago (just the city), whereas metro Chicago is much bigger than just Chicago.

Lies, damn lies and statistics.