These rankings are based on political borders of the cities and not the commonly perceived notions of what is a city. Honestly for me entire SF to San Jose belt must be considered as one single city to compare it with something like L.A.
That is just me saying though. I might be compeltely off on this because I have never been to NY, Chi, Phili, etc.
No, I think you have it right. I have lived in NYC and now live in SF, and a sensible comparison would be Manhattan to San Francisco, or the 5 Boroughs, northern Jersey and a chuck of CT to roughly San Jose up to SF. We can argue about including Marin.
(I generally look at urban regions that are larger entities than official borders by transit. If there are large daily people flows from area A to B, A and B are part of that region, no matter what the tax borders say.)
These rankings are based on political borders of the cities and not the commonly perceived notions of what is a city. Honestly for me entire SF to San Jose belt must be considered as one single city to compare it with something like L.A. That is just me saying though. I might be compeltely off on this because I have never been to NY, Chi, Phili, etc.