How many miles not square miles is New York City?

Answer 1

The size of a city cannot be measured in "miles but not square miles." You misunderstand the units of measure.

Miles, feet, inches, yards, centimeters, meters, kilometers, etc. are all units that measure length and distance: "the boardwalk is 4 miles long," "this refrigerator is 5 meters wide," or "it's 25 kilometers from here to Berlin." Length/distance is a 1-dimensional measurement.

Square miles, square feet, square kilometers, etc., measure area, which is length x width (length multiplied by width): "this table is 10 square feet" (2 feet wide multiplied by 5 feet long), or "a standard playing card is 8 square inches" (4 inches long x 2 inches wide), or "my grandfather's farmland is 20 square miles" (4 miles long x 5 miles wide). Area is a 2-dimensional measurement.

A square mile is literally a square of land that is 1 mile long and 1 mile wide (1 x 1 = 1, so a square that is 1 mile long and 1 mile wide is 1 square mile). The square mileage of a city refers to how many of these 1 mile squares fit inside the city's borders. New York City is 468.8 square miles, which means that 468.8 of these 1 mile squares can fit inside the borders of the city.

After miles and square miles comes cubic miles. Cubic units (cubic miles or cubic kilometers or cubic inches) measure volume, which is a 3-dimensional measurement: length x width x height. Put simply, volume is the way you would measure the amount of space inside a cube (or a building, or any 3-dimensional object): length x width x height. If you were trying to find the volume of space inside the Empire State Building, you would multiply the length of the base by the width of the base by the height of the building: length x width x height.

One last example of a unit of measurement is speed. Speed is a measure of distance divided by time: "the subway runs at 25 miles per hour" or "a snail moves at 1 inch per hour." If the subway runs 100 miles in 4 hours, then it runs 25 miles in 1 hour (100 divided by 4 is 25). If a snail moves 10 inches in 10 hours, then it moves 1 inch in 1 hour.

Asking for the size of a city "in miles but not square miles" is like asking, "What is the speed of an Amtrak commuter train in inches?" or "What is the length of this sofa in miles per hour?" You cannot use miles (a measure of length) to find area (a measure of length x width).