The Worlds Biggest Cities

[nmm]

This is always a complex question: how do you define a large city? Is it in terms of a World Presence, a huge population, or total land area? Some cities like Manilla only have a population of 1.6 million, but a METRO of 11,000,000+. NYC has a population of roughly 9 million but has 23 million people during the day. Go figure.

Cities are a most fascinating thing. They are places where people, that dont really known one another, come together to live, work, and play out their lives. One great Scholar of Muslim Spain (Ibn Khaldun) said: "a defining character of all civilizations and educated societies is that their people live in great cities".

Remember, this isnt METRO areas, rather, this is INNER city-limit populations, how i think it should be. I dont think a city should include its suburbs' population, unless your talking about agglomerations, and not cities themselves.

I present to you: The Worlds Biggest Cities. Estimated for Mid-2005 (i believe)

1 12,778,721 Bombay India

2 12,207,254 Karachi Pakistan

3 11,055,365 Delhi India

4 10,840,516 Shanghai China

5 10,375,688 Moscow Russia

6 10,147,972 Seoul South Korea

7 10,136,978 Sao Paulo Brazil

8 10,121,565 Istanbul Turkey

9 8,866,160 Lima Peru

10 8,548,639 Mexico City Mexico

11 8,407,479 Jakarta Indonesia

12 8,158,957 New York City United States of America

13 8,124,310 Tokyo Japan

14 7,741,274 Beijing China

15 7,620,971 Bogot

[Dominax]

Nice chart of world population

my city is at the very bottom of the chart

the second to the last.

some cities on their

are numbered as metro populations.

i found two!!!!!!

toronto does have 5 million in metro

but 2,5 million in inner city

vancouver does have over 2 million in metro

but only 580,000 in inner city

[zaphod]

Interesting the top 3 are all in developing countries.

Id like to see a list of what cities can equally provide for their large populations. Like it would show both population and also if that population is getting basic utilities. Also factor in the amount of jobs versus population.Not sure how that would be done but it would be an interesting list.

I got the idea along time ago when i watched a show about ebola. They were in a "town" in zaire. except this "town" had 400,000. but they lived in shanties and only a few buildings in the entire city had utilites. Im sorry, but that doesnt really count as a city in my book.

[DJ V Lawrence]

6 10,147,972 Seoul South Korea

What's crazy about that stat is that South Korea's population's only about 48 million. That means that more than 1 in 5 people living in South Korea live within Seoul. It's wild knowing that, then seeing other major cities in Korea and seeing how urbanized those cities are.

[sevfiv]

funny, that site/information is copyright by Rhett Butler

[krix]

Remember, this isnt METRO areas, rather, this is INNER city-limit populations, how i think it should be. I dont think a city should include its suburbs' population, unless your talking about agglomerations, and not cities themselves.

That's what it makes it really hard to compare, since how cities and their surrounding areas are administered differ wildly from country to country. In a sense you would end up comparing apples to oranges...

On the other hand, trying to compare agglomerations invites arguments about what to include and what not to include (or if you should include several metropolitan areas into one supermetropolitan area, like in the case of LA). So I guess the most "objective" criterion you get is to go by city boundaries, and that's why internationally this is favored over agglomerations. But I still think agglomerations make more sense, I mean what does it tell you if you compare Boston's 500K with Houston's 2 million? Certainly doesn't tell you that Greater Boston has 4.4 million ppl, as compared to Greater Houston's 5 million. And if you took a list of Metropolitan areas, the top three woud like this:

1. Greater Tokyo: 35 million

2. Greater Mexico City: 19 million

3. Greater New York City: 18 million

(Source)

[Trophy Property]

It is interesting to compare the two lists. I always thought Rio was bigger than Sao Paulo. I was way off.

Largest Cities - Without Metro

Largest Cities - Metro

[rantanamo]

Metro should always be used because of the reasons stated above. Please tell me how some of the municipalities of TokyoTo are less "city" that your typical US sunbelt sprawler. Those areas are much more urban than pretty much anything in the U.S. outside of NYC. Heck, even a place like Mississaugua, Ontario has comparable density, employment and high rises to sunbelt sprawlers and its a suburb of Toronto. To further this, its even prevalent in Texas The definition of city by mmm sounds a lot like Irving, The Woodlands, Richardson, Plano and even Frisco. And if we are gonna compare CITY to different countries, I'd say there is no CITY in Texas if compared to cities outside of the US. Plus the difference in municipal definitions. So it must be govt assigned METRO areas defined by each individual govy. Otherwise, its pretty much impossible to compare anything.

Besides, could you really even compare Houston or Dallas to Frankfurt, Tokyo or San Francisco. They are much more so CITY within their boundaries. Houston and Dallas are more like suburbs with multiple business centers. Sounds more like Mississaugua.

[Montrose1100]

after reading the post above I thought I was in Skyscraper City...

[editor]

I find http://www.geohive.com/ to be a much more reliable source of population information.