Though Stuttgart, at least, really is &quot;just a city,&quot; albeit one dense with industry and finance. If the author was looking at describing cities that exist as quasi-independent entities, I&#x27;m not sure it&#x27;d really fit.<p>As well to consider is its size: as big as it feels, the city is around 600k people and the official metropolitan region, even with its 5.3 million, is very low density (the Wiki heads say ~340 persons&#x2F;sq.km., vs thousands in other reported areas).