I’m not sure about the population question, but from what I remember learning, there is a big mistake in your assumption – how often does there need to be this population? I learned that it needs to be once per year, not every day.
In fact, when R’ Moshe zt”l issued his psak about Brooklyn, he had a rule that we can estimate 1/5 of the population will be outdoors at a given time (during the day, obviously, not in middle of the night). Therefore, it would require a population of 3 million to meet the criteria. The population of Brooklyn was slightly below that number, but R’ Moshe said that since during the summer, many people traveled into Brooklyn to go to the beaches of Coney Island, it pushed it over the number required. This is obviously not every day, as it doesn’t happen during the winter.
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