#61 Shenyang, China. Although I admit that Essen was a bit of a squeaker.
I’ve heard of many of these cities but had no idea that they were so big!
Sigh. I thought I was good at geography.
#19 Karachi (incl. div. cantonments) Pakistan 10750000
Also unknown for me:
22 Dhaka (Dacca) Bangladesh 9800000
31 Al-Khartum [Khartoum] Sudan 7200000
32 Lagos Nigeria 7200000
35 Hyderabad India 6700000
38 Chongqing China 6450000
41 Kinshasa Congo (Dem. Rep.) 6050000
43 Lahore (incl. Cantonment) Pakistan 5850000
49 Tianjin China 5350000
51 Nagoya Japan 5150000
57 Wuhan China 4450000
58 Belo Horizonte Brazil 4400000
60 Harbin China 4400000
61 Shenyang China 4350000
64 Ar-Riyad Saudi Arabia 4250000
69 Ahmadabad India 4150000
71 Pusan (Busan) South Korea 3950000
74 Abidjan Côte d Ivoire 3800000
75 Medellín Colombia 3800000
77 Porto Alegre Brazil 3650000
79 P’yongyang North Korea 3550000
81 Chengdu China 3500000
86 Pune (Poona) India 3450000
87 Recife Brazil 3450000
94 Jiddah Saudi Arabia 3150000
95 Salvador Brazil 3150000
96 Cali Colombia 3100000
97 Chittagong Bangladesh 3050000
100 Fortaleza Brazil 3000000
I feel terribly ignorant now, thanks Matt 
Woohoo! I’m still geography king! What do I win? 
Besides scorn and ridicule, I mean…
Phoenix has 3400000?
Add Tucson’s metro population to that and that would leave about 8 people to occupy the rest of Arizona wouldn’t it?
I have a list from about 30 years ago, the 1971 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia.
Top 50 Metropolitan Areas of the World in 1971.
- New York 16m
- Tokyo 11.3m
- Paris 8.2m
- London 7.7m
- Chicago 7.5m
- Buenos Aires 7m
- Los Angeles 7m
- Shanghai 6.9m
- Moscow 6.5m
- São Paulo 5.4m
I won’t bother with the rest but its obvious that Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America have really moved to the city in the last 30 years; Mexico City is a mere #21 with 3.3m, behind a hypothetically reunited Berlin, with 3.3m.
In 1971 Birmingham and Manchester, UK were a lofty #35 and # 37 repectively with 2.4 m. each. They aren’t even top 100 now. But if the Ruhr counts, why not say the “Midlands” of England or the “Megalopolis” of the East Coast?
50 was Caracas, Venezuela with 1.95m! Some of Mexico City’s suburbs have more people today.
Mukden, China was #38 in 1971 with 2.4 m. What is it now? I don’t think it dissapeared - maybe it’s now attatched to a larger area now.
38 Chongqing China, unless it’s a spelling variant of one I know (Sinkiang?), in which case it is # 40 Essen Germany.
Nitpick: NY, NY includes Newark? Ahhhhhh…I dunno about that. I used to live in New Jersey…
Tianjin, again.
Then, Chengdu, then Chittagong.
The other 97 I could place or at least recognize by country (even the Chinese ones written in Pinyin).
But some assignations of Greater Metropolitan Areas do seem a bit of a reach. DC-Baltimore are hardly one cohesive unit. And the entire Ruhr is “Essen”?
Well, for me it was Wuhan, China, number 57. FWIW, I have been to 31 of the places listed here. And I don’t buy into applying US “metropolitan area” counting concepts, which IMHO are a bit bogus to start with, to turn everyplace in the world into an instant mega-city.
Also, for many of these places these are SWAGs, there is for example no census count for Bangkok, and the official count is far short of what many people believe to be the real count. There are several political reasons for this.
58 Belo Horizonte Brazil 4400000
I’d heard of all of 'em. No, really. I work in a map library. I’ve been a geography buff since I was a kid.
Tianjin (Tientsin) is the most frequently named city on this thread so far. Here’s something that may jog your memory. Remember that movie The Last Emperor? Remember when Pu Yi was kicked out of the Forbidden City, he moved to Tientsin and became a “playboy”?
One of my best friends ever came from Lahore. My yoga class has been graced by a very lovely young lady from Belo Horizonte. I used to work with someone from al-Khartûm. I have actually been to Chennai/Madras.
Mrs. Mojo is from Hyderabad.
Well, I’ll be the first to admit that I suck at geography and was stopped at… #4.
*LDG hangs her head in shame.
I have a real big problem with the methodology. Do some google searches on city population. I also see I’m not the first to point this out.
For example, San Francisco at 7.2 million. WTF? That’s 10x higher than the official population. SF is on a penninsula, Oakland is across the Bay for chrissakes. San Jose is at least an hour’s drive south. I’m not sure what kind of half assed methodology was used, but Shanghai would probably be at least 30 million if you include the same geographical size as San Francisco.
I lived in Tokyo for a few years, and have always seen estimates for 10-15 million for the greater Tokyo area depending on how it’s defined. I guess this study is including the greater greater greater area.
BTW, I’ve lived in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taipei and San Francisco. Any casual visitor would think that SF is a ghost town compared to the others.
Answer to some previous questions on China. Chongqing used to be known as Chungking. By the way, check out this site which says that the Chongqing city proper population is 5.7 million, and the greater Chongqing area is 30 million. http://www.canada.org.cn/chongqing/en/home/overview.htm Tianjin was Tsientsin, a treaty port from the opium war days, and where the Last Emperer hung out before heading up to Manchuria. Mukden was the old name for a big somewhere in China’s northeast, maybe Changchun? IIRC China has something like 20 cities with populations in excess of 5 million. They haven’t made this list.
To answer the OP, I bet there’s at least 10 Chinese cities that people haven’t heard of. For example, Chengdu has an population of 3.2 million and over 9 million for the greater area http://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/chengdu.htm
It’s okay LDG. pats LDG on the head I stopped at #4 as well, and even paused at #3 for a microsecond. 
4 Ciudad de México Mexico 19300000 incl. Nezahualcóyotl, Ecatepec, Naucalpan. That’s just Spanish for ‘Mexico City’. You must’ve heard of Mexico City, it’s the capital of Mexico ;).
I have some doubts about the acuracy of some of those population figures.
Osaka including Kyoto? The two cities are close but hardly the same. And if they’re measuring the population of the urban area, when I went there I was told Chongqing’s was close to 30,000,000.
But they might have lied.
Chongqing is a special autonomous municipal region, along with Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai. Autonomous municial regions answer directly to the central government. Therefore, these are much more like a small state than a city. So the population of the Chongqing area is given at 30 million, that encompasses 82,400 square kilometers. Vermont by contrast is 24,900 square kilometers.
58 Belo Horizonte Brazil 4400000
How about in area? I’ll bet that most people would be knocked out at #1:
- Davao City, Philippines. (244,000 hectares, or 942 square miles, #319 in population)
Yeah the methodology is iffy, as it is very difficult to define exactly what a metro area is. The web site even gives a warning about this:
In the sites faq, they refuse to answer a question about the 10 biggest cities, saying that such a question is essentially meaningless. Looking at the site as a whole, it isn’t really intended to be used as a top 10 type of thing, but more to give info about the largest populated areas of the planet.
I once read a discussion on this subject that defined the New York / Providence / Boston corridor a single metro area.
I also have a cousin who lives in Brooklyn, which is part of New York, but she frequently refers to going to Manhattan, where she works, as “going into the city”. For her, Brooklyn is only technically part of New York.
Largest city lists can be as much a matter of ego as reason. Ask people around here, and it’s a well known “fact” that Mexico City is the largest in the world, and some would take it as an insult to disagree.
It’s like the “tallest building” debate. How do you define how tall a building is? If you live in Chicago, you define the height of a building as the ground to the top of the highest floor. Using this definition, surprise, the Sears Tower is the world’s tallest building. If you live in, oh, let’s say Malaysia, it’s pretty obvious that 250 ft. decorative spires count in the height, which makes the Petronas Towers the world’s tallest buildings. But if you include spires, why not anntenae? Then, the Sears Tower is tallest.
If you are considering only the population of the city proper, the only site I could find had Seoul listed first at about 12 million. Unfortunately, that was months ago, and for the life of me, I can’t find it now. Most sites stick with agglomerations, claiming that determining city populations with any accuracy when it comes to very large cities is next to impossible.
I take all such lists with a grain of salt. You can’t count large city populations accurately, and metro areas, or agglomorations, are fuzzy concepts. But it is fun for the purposes of the OP.
It’s official, I’m an idiot. I’m out at #3
Everton… I offically love you. Yes, I have heard of Mexico City, so that means my actual knowledge gets me all the way to… #9.
Crap.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by China Guy *
**I have a real big problem with the methodology. Do some google searches on city population. I also see I’m not the first to point this out.
For example, San Francisco at 7.2 million. WTF?**
I had the same reaction to the listing of Toronto as 5.2 million. Canada’s own census reports the Toronto metropolitan area as 4.3 million, and that is a VERY generous definition of “metropolitan area” which would include places nobody thinks is part of Toronto.
#51, Nagoya. The next one after that is #71, Pusan.