i'd like to see the source of this data. Im curious where London, Paris and Johannesburg rank. I thought all would have urban areas larger (or maybe just below) Kinshasa's 10.9 million.
The source is from the UN's 2025 urbanisation report. The numbers here are all different to what's commonly remembered because they tried a new 'standardised' methodology for counting urban populations that could be applied globally(basically to get around the never ending debate over differing administrative borders, 'metro' areas and where city limits are drawn).
Chinese cities are notoriously hard to get good numbers on, because official city borders are so large that the oficial “city” will contain massive swaths of rural area, sometimes with millions of people inside
Check the bottom note. This metric uses UN's density threshold of contiguous urban areas with population densities >1500 pp/km2, in order to have a more standardized comparison across countries. There will be differences from how national statistical agencies classify metro areas.
So, what this means is that Seoul has a population that is overwhelmingly larger than New York, Mexico City, São Paulo, Lagos, Istanbul, Mumbai, Beijing, and Osaka...
This graphic was posted on another subreddit but it got removed so I am going to repost my comment because I put some effort into it and the post immediately got removed 😭
TLDR the new UN definition of urban areas has serious flaws and that's why many of the population counts seem completely wrong.
Look at these maps. I put white dots on all of the areas that meet the threshold of density, but are NOT included in their respective urban areas due to geographical irregularities such as airports, parks, bridges, rivers, etc. If you go to Houston or Chicago and tell the people living in those neighborhoods that they don't actually live in that city, they would think you were an idiot. The Miami area extends all the way up to West Palm Beach but somehow leaves out Homestead to the south, which is less than half the distance to the city center.
New York managed to have fewer randomly excluded high density areas, but the density threshold is still way too arbitrary. As defined by them, New York has an average density more than triple the 1500/km threshold. And yet they completey exclude all of the extensive yellow and orange areas surrounding the main area, of which many are above 1000/km in density. You could easily include most of those and add another 5 million people, and the average density would still be around 3000/km.
In fact, many developed countries have been tracking this data for longer than the UN, and have well established, although still imperfect, ways of defining urban and metropolitan areas. According to the 2020 US census definition, they came up with this map of the NYC urban area.
This map is flawed in a different way because they randomly exclude Connecticut, apparently because Stamford is defined as it's own MSA. But it illustrates how different definitions can give completely different results. It shows an area of 8400 km with a population of 19.5m and a density of 2300/km, compared to the UN definition which gives 3000km, 14m, and 4700/km.
Also this map of Phoenix is an even better example of the silliness of this new UN definition, where they count Phoenix and Mesa as completely separate cities due to the fact that there is a river and airport creating a narrow gap between the urban areas.
Point being, the UN made an attempt to create a standardized definition here, but they seem to have come up with something that is less sophisticated and less accurate than the models that already exist. It punishes cities that practice good urban planning with green space and parkland and good transportation infrastructure and areas of lower density housing woven into the city. It rewards cities that just cram as many housing units into every available bit of land. Hence why Jakarta and Dhaka come out way ahead in terms of population, because their urban planning was absolutely terrible so there are zero gaps in the sprawl. And also probably why cities like London and Paris didn't make the cut here.
Still, I am happy that the UN is working on this problem, but I just think they need to continue working on a more nuanced definition that can account for these issues, because the latest one just ain't doing it for me. And we also need to realize that it may never be possible to come up with a definition that applies universally to all of the diverse cities around the world.
By city proper yes, but that’s mostly just because of definitions. The “city limits” are about the size of Ireland, and most of the population aren’t in the same metro/urban area as the city’s core
i'd like to see the source of this data. Im curious where London, Paris and Johannesburg rank. I thought all would have urban areas larger (or maybe just below) Kinshasa's 10.9 million.
The source is from the UN's 2025 urbanisation report. The numbers here are all different to what's commonly remembered because they tried a new 'standardised' methodology for counting urban populations that could be applied globally(basically to get around the never ending debate over differing administrative borders, 'metro' areas and where city limits are drawn).
https://desapublications.un.org/publications/world-urbanization-prospects-2025-summary-results
Per their numbers:
London - 10.4 million
Paris - 9.3 million
Johannesburg - 7.7 million
(Edited for format)
At some point discrepencies in how city boundaries are defined come into play.
The actual city of Paris is 2 million. The urban area around Paris, which is a mesh of around 2k "cities", host 13 million people.
But what's usually considered as "Paris" is the 2 million area
When did Dhaka and Jakarta surpass Tokyo?
I missed that
Dhaka actually hasn't, Tokyo's Metro area is 41 million, I'm not sure why it says 33.
I feel Beijing is massively undercounted here.
Chinese cities are notoriously hard to get good numbers on, because official city borders are so large that the oficial “city” will contain massive swaths of rural area, sometimes with millions of people inside
São Paulo is wrong. It has about 20 million inhabitants in the Metropolitan Region and almost 12 million in the city itself.
Check the bottom note. This metric uses UN's density threshold of contiguous urban areas with population densities >1500 pp/km2, in order to have a more standardized comparison across countries. There will be differences from how national statistical agencies classify metro areas.
Wonder where London is in this ranking. Must be close to making it
31 🇨🇴 Bogotá 10.6M
32 🇵🇪 Lima 10.5M
33 🇬🇧 London 10.4M
34 🇮🇳 Hajipur 9.9M
35 🇧🇷 Rio de Janeiro 9.5M
Source: https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/undesa_pd_2025_wup2025_summary_of_results.pdf, pages 107-109
London is a has-been city compared to these powerhouses
It has a lower population than the cities on this list, yes, which is why it is not included…
So, what this means is that Seoul has a population that is overwhelmingly larger than New York, Mexico City, São Paulo, Lagos, Istanbul, Mumbai, Beijing, and Osaka...
No Chongqing?
[deleted]
Colours are split by country. Layout is organized to make a vertical map of our usually horizontal world.
This graphic was posted on another subreddit but it got removed so I am going to repost my comment because I put some effort into it and the post immediately got removed 😭
TLDR the new UN definition of urban areas has serious flaws and that's why many of the population counts seem completely wrong.
Look at these maps. I put white dots on all of the areas that meet the threshold of density, but are NOT included in their respective urban areas due to geographical irregularities such as airports, parks, bridges, rivers, etc. If you go to Houston or Chicago and tell the people living in those neighborhoods that they don't actually live in that city, they would think you were an idiot. The Miami area extends all the way up to West Palm Beach but somehow leaves out Homestead to the south, which is less than half the distance to the city center.
https://imgur.com/a/U3JZRvq
New York managed to have fewer randomly excluded high density areas, but the density threshold is still way too arbitrary. As defined by them, New York has an average density more than triple the 1500/km threshold. And yet they completey exclude all of the extensive yellow and orange areas surrounding the main area, of which many are above 1000/km in density. You could easily include most of those and add another 5 million people, and the average density would still be around 3000/km.
In fact, many developed countries have been tracking this data for longer than the UN, and have well established, although still imperfect, ways of defining urban and metropolitan areas. According to the 2020 US census definition, they came up with this map of the NYC urban area.
https://imgur.com/a/VVsb9JI
This map is flawed in a different way because they randomly exclude Connecticut, apparently because Stamford is defined as it's own MSA. But it illustrates how different definitions can give completely different results. It shows an area of 8400 km with a population of 19.5m and a density of 2300/km, compared to the UN definition which gives 3000km, 14m, and 4700/km.
Here's an example of how much complexity and detail they go into when trying to define an urban area.
Also this map of Phoenix is an even better example of the silliness of this new UN definition, where they count Phoenix and Mesa as completely separate cities due to the fact that there is a river and airport creating a narrow gap between the urban areas.
https://imgur.com/a/uGOd58T
Point being, the UN made an attempt to create a standardized definition here, but they seem to have come up with something that is less sophisticated and less accurate than the models that already exist. It punishes cities that practice good urban planning with green space and parkland and good transportation infrastructure and areas of lower density housing woven into the city. It rewards cities that just cram as many housing units into every available bit of land. Hence why Jakarta and Dhaka come out way ahead in terms of population, because their urban planning was absolutely terrible so there are zero gaps in the sprawl. And also probably why cities like London and Paris didn't make the cut here.
Still, I am happy that the UN is working on this problem, but I just think they need to continue working on a more nuanced definition that can account for these issues, because the latest one just ain't doing it for me. And we also need to realize that it may never be possible to come up with a definition that applies universally to all of the diverse cities around the world.
Interesting article I found while researching: https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization
I had in mind Chongchin was the largest city in the world . It is nowhere on the map
By city proper yes, but that’s mostly just because of definitions. The “city limits” are about the size of Ireland, and most of the population aren’t in the same metro/urban area as the city’s core
That's because it's a province, not a city