What's The Largest World City You've Never Heard Of?

Another one for Wuhan. Ye gods, a city bigger than my entire province and I’ve never heard of it (or if I have it was only the most fleeting of references).

After that, the next I’ve never heard of is Surat, India.

#14, Wuhan, like everyone else. A lot of the Chinese ones fucked me up, actually; if you toss them out, I went all the way to #48, Abidjan, and the only other one I didn’t know was #52, Durban.

I didn’t even make it to 3… Mumbai??? MUMBAI??? MOOOOOOOOO WHYYYYYY?:frowning:

I am confused as to the definition of “city proper”. For example, where is Paris on this list, which has a reputed population of (aire urbaine or metropolitan area) of 11,769,433 (January 2006) and is one of the most populated metropolitan areas in Europe and by most listings has a greater population than London?

Another Wuhan, here, though without the Pune-born mother.

Yeah, Wuhan. Surprising how unknown it is!

Another Wuhan, soon to be a popular trivia quiz answer.

2 Mumbai.

Surprising to see how few well known cities are on the list, really. I would have started rattling off capitals of major countries and the like.

Wuhan. So what, China has lots of large cities. :frowning:

São Paulo. Guess I didn’t need to look too far down that list.

I guess I should add: I only knew Karachi because there’s a map in Counter-Strike called de_Karachi. :frowning:

I bet you’ve heard of Bombay, though. :wink:

Seriously, I think the fact a lot of these cities have changed their names is what’s leading to confusion, rather than having never heard of the city at all.

Wuhan.

I have also never heard of Kinshasa. All the other cities I knew.

Surat. Or at least no conscious memory of it. This thread has inspired to me to at least have name recognition of all the cities in the world with at least a million people. Amazing that there are places bigger than Dallas in China or India or Indonesia that I’ve never even heard of, and I stare at maps a lot more than the average American.

Wuhan for me too.

Having a Chinese SO, and being Indian, I knew most of the places :slight_smile:
Speaking of Wuhan.
Here is a video of an attractive Wuhan speaker.

Surat, although its older name looked vaguely familiar. I think Wuhan may be a very forgettable name. I started to think that I didn’t recognize it. Then I realized that I’d been there. My spell checker knows Wuhan but not Surat.

Wuhan for me, too.

It depends on how you count. If you step back and look at the entire entity, nothing even comes close to Tokyo, but it’s #11 on the OP’s list.

Also Wuhan for me - I didn’t know most of the Chinese ones really, though I was familiar with all of the Indian ones, having visited there for a month.

One that surprised me was #17, Kinshasa - I had never heard of it before, and I would never have expected the Republic of Congo to have one of the most populous cities in the world - but then according to that table it only has a population density of 787/sq km (I see that it is a “city-province”). Anyone have any idea how that population is concentrated?

Wuhan as well as a number of other Chinese cities. What is most notable is that Cairo is the densest city of all of them. considering the skyline of the city the population must be living in shoe boxes.

Wuhan for me as well.

I’m surprised by the people who haven’t heard of Kinshasa, to be honest, if only because there are two Congos, and they are often referred to as “Congo (Kinshasa)” or “Congo (Brazzaville)” for clarification.