I think Kuwait then is the perfect answer;
Kuwait
17,820 sq ki
4.35 million people
Kuwait City
200 sq ki Metro area, still quite small and only 1.1% of the nation’s landmass.
4.1 million people (Metro area)
Oddly enough, Hong Kong. As tiny as it is, the majority of Hong Kong is mountainous forested parks with the majority of population clustered in Hong Kong Island & Kowloon. 3.3 of the 7.3 million people reside in an area just 10% of the country.
To piggyback: Are there any city-states that are entities unto themselves, and which are effectively neutral zones for warring territories?
I’m writing a novel that includes a fictitious city-state and I’m curious what real life models I can look at for insight.
30 percent of Montenegro’s population lives in the capital of Podgorica, which is 10 percent of the total area.
Meanwhile, in South America, roughly half the populations of Suriname and Guyana live in or around their capitals.
I think that you would be alone in calling Korea a city state.
Lopburi is pretty primate.
No current ones that I can think of. In recent times in Europe there’s been the [Free_City_of_Danzig](Free - Wikipedia City of Danzig) and the Free Territory of Trieste. Some locals are arguing for the return of the latter’s status. Going back to Holy Roman Empire days, there were a huge number of “Free States” and such. And a lot of other similar situations in pre-modern times.
For a good chunk of the 20th century, Tangier was an “international city” independent of French or Spanish Morocco. It was under the control of those two plus Britain.
It also was a common situation for Andorranos during the Middle Ages and Renaissance; I’m sure that the period of the Taifas must have seen quite a bit of that as well but can’t remember specific episodes. Some of the Taifas were pretty large but a few made Andorra look big. But Andorra is a mountain valley; people tend to think of “city states” as being in the flatlands.