Talk:List of cities proper by population

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 2 May 2008. The result of the discussion was keep.

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[edit] Conflicts with other wikipedia articles

I found conflicts with other wikipedia articles. Like Mumbai ... the wikipedia article on Mumbai says it has population of 13 mil (proper) ... and 19 mil (mumbai + greater area ... which is generally considered the city limit... ) .. so the populaion should be something ~ 19 mil ....

Look for Shanghai as well

[edit] New Data (Barcelona)

Barcelona's Metropolitan Area is 5.150.000 (updated 2006) in 3.925 km2 (1.515 ml2), as it is observed in... http://bcnip.blogsome.com/la-region-metropolitana-de-Barcelona (data 2005)

[edit] A Scientifically appropriate way to calculate what is a "city"

Lizzy McCourt thinks Dhaka is the most densely populated I often find that when you start looking at diagrams of tall buildings, they all seem to appear relatively tall as you go down the list, each one only incrementally and slightly smaller than the last and all comparable in height, soon you realize you are considering a 1400 foot tall building similar in height to a 600 foot tall building. The same thing happens when you try to calculate where a city ends, as the rings of population density seem perhaps only marginally different from the last. Before you know it, you're counting incredibly large areas as a portion of the city. For instance, the city of Los Angeles is actually bigger than New York City, though less than half as populous. There needs to be a cut-off point for where a city no long is a city and reverts back to being rural. For this we need to set out some points:

  • Political boundaries do not a city make. In other words just because a city decides to say the edge of the city is whereever, doesn't mean the city and the urban build-up magically stops there. In many case they stop short of there. For instance in Columbus, Ohio there are farms within the city limit.
  • A city is naturally occuring to a certain degree. Never has there been a city that was completely planned by one group or only effected by one planning, nearly all cities are a build-up of different forces, political, social, and economical. When we consider what is inside of city we need to consider all these forces and how far out the effects are felt.
  • Conception of the city. La Grande Arch, a famous building in Paris, is technically not really in Paris at all, but in La Defense, a district in an entirely different municipality. However you can clearly see it from the Arch de Triompho and it's effectively right down the street. I'd say that's still part of Paris.

With these tennants in mind the best way to calculate what is the population of a city is mathematically. We would need a population denisty map of all the major cities of the world, and then we would need to come up with a set cut-off point where the city actually stops based on when the urban build-up or density of the population drops below a fixed mark. This however leads to many debates, because I am sure many inner cities plagued with urban decay and urban prairie will actually be less populace then the surrounding area. All these things aside, this debate is truly about what is a city and where does a city end, and we need to set forth a ruler we all can work by. DEAN PIE Ntyler01mil 06:38, 28 March 2006 (UTC)


The bottom line is that no one knows which city is the largest in the world. This list is a classic example. The creator of this list is comparing apples and pineapples. One city is listed as being the city proper and another as being the metropolitan area. That alone is enough to cause one to question the list. I have never seen two lists that agree, simply because no two people count in exactly the same way. A census is nothing more than an educated guess anyway. How can you be sure that you counted every single individual, especially in a developing country? When my students ask which is the largest city, I say, no one knows, but Tokyo, Mexico City, and São Paulo are among the largest, and perhaps Chongqing also. Who knows?

(134.250.30.129 14:43, 6 April 2006 (UTC))

I agree with Ntyler01mil: A city can best be defined as a contiguous area with a population density in excess of n/km2; the only exception being where satellite cities are bridged by a corridor of a density that exceeds n, in which case the perpendicualr bisector through the weighted midpoint of the corridor should suffice as a boundary. The issue of resolution must also be mentioned, as a resolution that is too fine will produce an unrealistic fragmentation (over rivers etc). A circle with an area of 4 square kilometre should suffice; that is, if you can place the circle on the map and the number of people inside the circle is larger than 4n, then it's part of the city.

Right then, who's going to collate the data and do the maths? [everyone scarpers]

Denys Williams 2006-11-24 01.40 UTC

[edit] Very Serious Problems with this List

We cannot list 2 cities : Lima and Riyadh because 90% of the Lima's area is rural region and 95% the area of Riyadh is rural region and desert The urban population of Lima is not over 2.5m and of Riyadh is only around 1.2m The problems are significant. For example.

The population of the city of Buenos Aires is less than 3m. The estimate on this page is apparently an agglomeration or metropolitan area estimate.

The population of Manila is approx. 1.5m, far below this estimate. This estimate appears to be for Metro Manila, which is not the municipality, and which is also the national capital territory.

The population of Chennai is about 4.2m. Even the agglomeration is not as large as this estimate.

Hey could someone tell me why Bogota is in the list two times with different populations? Aren't those the same cities?

[edit] Conflicts

http://www.world-gazetteer.com/st/statn.htm and the contents seem to conflicts --Rrjanbiah 05:26, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Because the external link talks about urban agglomerations while this article talks about cities. Also look at List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_population. Ambarish | Talk 06:08, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Ranks of various cities below rank 30

Certainly does need updating, as it says. On the reference list, Auckland is some way ahead of Dublin, and Hiroshima and Port-au-Prince are not the same number of places apart as in this section. I haven't counted all the way to the top! If we keep this section, inserting population figures (rounded to 0.1m) could be of value for general interest as well as editorial updating. Robin Patterson 22:49, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it's really updating, per se, because this list is just plain wrong. Just clicking on the cities pages will show you how out of order it is.

I just wish it was longer. I'd like a complete list of all the cities with populations over 100.

[edit] Whole article needs much more thought

Now after reading much more of what this article contains, some of the discussion at List of metropolitan areas by population, and quite a bit of the free-but-not-quite-public-domain page that our top 30 table virtually copies and the "below rank 30" list may once have matched, I can confidently say we haven't got it sorted out!! The top 30 table and the "below rank 30" list are (at least to a substantial extent) NOT populations of official municipalities. They are agglomerations, often much bigger than the "city" at the heart but generally not as big as the roughly corresponding ones at List of metropolitan areas by population. Examples of where they are definitely not official municipalities are Buenos Aires, London, and Sydney, where the surrounding population is far greater than the territorial entity with the actual name.

Do we want a listing of official local government area populations in rank order (and if so how far down to we want to go)?

Can we improve, or add to the number of, definitions in this article (so that people know what we mean by "cities" even where it's not a standard definition and may not even have a comparable word in a particular country - eg Sweden)?

I think we should also pay more respect to the copyright notice on that marvellous gazetteer site, which says:

Copyright Information

all data © 2004 by Stefan Helders

This project is regarded as a free data provider. Some requests let me precise the copyright information. If you use its data/images the only thing I ask you is to promote this site. If you would like to republish the data presented here, please do not change the data and use a copyright note as described as follows:

© by Stefan Helders www.world-gazetteer.com

or if you would like to republish online, use the following html-code:

© by Stefan Helders <a href="http://www.world-gazetteer.com/">www.world-gazetteer.com</a>

.....


Robin Patterson 00:57, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Calcutta (Kolkata)

Where is the city of Kolkata in the list? It is really surprising that you include cities based on their core city and the surrounding urban agglomeration (Shanghai, Buenos Aires, etc.), and some cities based on their core municipal limits. Kolkata's urban agglomeration consisting of 13,216,546 people (2001 census) far outnumbers many of the cities you've mentioned on this list. Going by the same logic, should London even be included in the list, given that the core 'City of London' is 1 sq. mile in area and boasts of only some thousands in population.

The area and population of Kolkata is traditionally considered to be the area overseen by the KMDA (Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority), and not just the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) area. This is also consistent with the Kolkata Telecom District which follows the KMDA area.

[edit] City near Moscow

(1) On the map, what is the city just north-west of Moscow? (Looks like Helsinki or St Petersburg? - Can't be. Both are ports and this dot is not near the baltic) The only european city listed is London. (2) Also, shouldn't Moscow should be listed as Europe? -- Chuq 04:05, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

(1) I have no idea where the map came from. When I updated the list, I looked around the site for a new one, and I didn't see it. I guess it was made by the submitter.
(2) Probably. I chose to list Moscow as being in Asia as most of Russia is in Asia. However, if we were to consider Moscow seperately from Russia, it should be listed as being in Europe.
-- Rascalb 05:12, Aug 28, 2004 (UTC)

Moscow is in Europe. The fact that most of Russia is in Asia is irrelevant as long as some of it is in Europe. Russia itself is for most purposes culturally European but that is also not relevant here.

The map was originally from the CIA but it looks like the markings were added afterwards: http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/docs/refmaps.html --Jiang 05:21, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

(1) If you are talking about this map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Msk_all_districts_abc_eng.svg so this is Zelenograd - an administrative part of Moscow.

(2) Moscow is in Europe like everything in Russia to the West of Ural mountains: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Location-Europe-UNsubregions.png 193.111.176.6 10:48, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Exactly, the Ural mountains act as a geographical boarder line between Europe and Asia, just like in Turkey, Istanbul is on the Bosphorus strait, which is another geographical barrier, and the same dispute goes on there, is Istanbul in Europe or Asia?

[edit] Redirect

This page seems to be a less precise and more out of date version of List of metropolitan areas by population. I thus propose redirecting this page to the other. - SimonP 06:23, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

Seconded. The term 'city population' is used too many different ways in different countries for this list to be useful. And if cities are defined as municipalities, then it's wrong, anyway. Chongqing is far larger than any other city on the list. Ever heard of it? --Randwicked 11:38, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
The two lists are quite different - this list orders cities by population while the other orders agglomerations. I propose moving this to List of cities by population though - 30 sounds arbitrary. Also, Largest cities of the world should redirect to this rather than to List of metropolitan areas by population. Ambarish | Talk 17:04, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
But this list also seems to be for urban agglomerations. The city of Toronto has only about 2.5 million. It is the Greater Toronto Area that has 4.5. - SimonP 17:12, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)
This list is most certainly for cities. Look at the source cited below, and specifically look at the definitions used there. If the city of Toronto has only about 2.5 million people, all it means is that the original source is mistaken. We can change the article if you could provide some references. Ambarish | Talk 22:29, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
The list cited is confused. It is defined as a list of 'urban agglomerations', but I know for a fact that the Australian figures at least are for the metropolitan areas, because Australia doesn't bother with data on 'urban agglomerations' and treats metro population the same as city population -- surely the most sensible option anyway. Randwicked 22:42, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)
That may make sense in Australia, but in the US the biggest cities often sprawl out over several states, like the New York Metropolitan Area, for example, wich has over 20 million people and sits in at least three (maybe four) states. It would confuse government to have a city belong to several states. I agree, this should redirect to the more accurate list. --Quasipalm 20:56, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Istanbul

Istanbul, I believe, is also in Europe -- it's west of the Bosporus. It's in a similar situation as Moscow: it's in Europe, even though most of its country is in Asia.

It's on both sides. Istanbul has an Asian and a European part. Ben T/C 13:29, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New data from World Gazetter

[This] page has new rankings with significant change. Would it be wise to create an archive of the date that page was created and update or what? gren

Food for thought, indeed; Karachi, for example, has jumped from fifth to third place. This article is still seriously unsatisfactory, for several reasons. The World Gazetter, incidentally, lists 32 "World: important places", but has a link to its page called "metropolitan areas" - 72 of them, from Tokyo at 31 million down to Rangoon at 4.4 million (with a note indicating which are actual cities and which are agglomerations). That page has a link called "proper places", but it leads us "back" to the "World: important places". Despite some linguistic oddities like that, I think the WG is doing a much better job on this subject than we are! Robin Patterson 21:45, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Buenos Aires

The population count for Buenos Aires seems too high.
The figures currently listed (about 11 million people) is correct, but only when counting greater Buenos Aires area.
The population within the city limits (within the autonomous territory) should be approximately 3 million and depending on the criteria used one figure or another should be used.
Maybe the same criteria is not applied for all the cities listed?
(New York is listed as having LESS population than Buenos Aires, that does not look ok)

[edit] Position 23

The source list (snapshot 2005-04-13) is the same as this list except Dhaka has become Hongkong Why? The note at the foot of our page suggests Hong Kong shouldn't be on the list.

1 Shanghai 12 762 953 China 
2 Bombay 12 692 717 India 
3 Karāchi 11 627 378 Pakistan 
4 Buenos Aires 11 548 541 Argentina 
5 Delhi 10 928 270 India 
6 Manila 10 443 877 Philippines 
7 Moscow 10 381 288 Russia 
8 Sŏul 10 349 291 Korea (South) 
9 São Paulo 10 021 437 Brazil 
10 İstanbul 9 797 536 Turkey 
11 Lagos 8 789 133 Nigeria 
12 Mexico City 8 657 045 Mexico 
13 Jakarta 8 540 306 Indonesia 
14 Tōkyō 8 336 611 Japan 
15 New York 8 108 040 United States of America 
16 Kinshasa 7 787 832 Congo (Dem. Rep.) 
17 Cairo 7 734 602 Egypt 
18 Lima 7 646 786 Peru 
19 Peking 7 490 618 China 
20 London 7 421 228 United Kingdom 
21 Tehrān 7 157 993 Iran 
22 Bogotá 7 102 602 Colombia 
23 Dhāka 6 493 177 Bangladesh 
24 Lahore 6 312 576 Pakistan 
25 Rio de Janeiro 6 023 742 Brazil 
26 Baghdad 5 672 516 Iraq 
27 Bangkok 5 104 475 Thailand 
28 Bangalore 4 931 603 India 
29 Santiago 4 837 248 Chile 
30 Calcutta 4 631 819 India 
31 Toronto 4 612 187 Canada 
32 Rangoon 4 477 782 Myanmar

-- SGBailey 06:26, 2005 Apr 13 (UTC)


Looking at the history, someone added Hong Kong in that position then neglected to bump the rest down so Dhaka got deleted. Randwicked 10:12, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Tokyo

Tokyo shouldn't be on the list for the thirty most populous cities, for the simple reason that there is no city of that name. There is a province, a region, a metropolitan area of that name but no city. Somebody, please remove it and update the list. Ben T/C 13:32, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Tokyo is a city. Terminology is irrelevant. Would you complain that Beijing shouldn't be there, because it's a Municipality, or Mexico City, because it's a Federal District, or London, because it's a "top level administrative subdivision"? Every country has its own way of defining cities, but that doesn't change the fact that that's what they are. And anyway, the population given for Tokyo is that of the 23 Wards, a unit which is neither a province, a region or a metropolitan area. - Randwicked 15:01, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't get it. You say even if it's not a city the article should include Tokyo, is that right? Ben T/C 22:42, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm saying there are lots of cities on the list that aren't "Cities". They are still small-c cities and belong on the list. Tokyo is internationally regarded as a city, and eliminating it from a list of largest cities just because of its peculiar political status is needless pedanticism, unless you want to remove all the cities of unique status. As I suggested there are quite a few. - Randwicked 04:15, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
Who regards Tokyo as a city? Check the Tokyo article. Ben T/C 13:06, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
Resolution of this is all the more important due to the fact that the Tokyo article explicity declares the "city" to be the largest in the world, so the encyclopedia disagrees with itself, and one or the other article needs to change to maintain consistency. Personally I find the city/not city issue a moot point. Tokyo is considered a city by practically the entire world population (including the Japanese themselves) as a convenient label for central area of the sprawling mass that is the Tokyo/Yokohama/Saitama megalopolis. To rule it out of the list on a technical point, while perhaps accurate, would be overly pedantic. Saiing 09:27, 28 February 2006

Technically, the writer is correct that Japan's largest city (市 in Japanese) is Yokohama, itself a Tokyo suburb. In the 1940's, Tokyo city merged with Tokyo Metropolis (actually Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture), headed in Shinjuku at Tokyo Metropolitan Government Bldgs #1 and #2 aka Tocho. However, the 23 wards of Tokyo Metropolis comprising of the former Tokyo City are still consider "Tokyo" by residents and mapmakers and for all practical purposes, but labelled Tokyo 23 wards or Tokyo 23区. Nobody is saying Tokyo 23区 is the largest city, nor is 東京都. They are saying 東京圏 is. A demographer should be hired to make these lists who understands these distinctions, but as Wikipedia is a "free" or free-for-all, then these things don't get sorted.

[edit] Cities, not cities

What about putting some notes/footnotes in the table that state clearly what is not a city? Ben T/C 07:01, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll put some notes here for reference (I'll add more when I can)
Shanghai = 9 core districts of the municipality + 4 adjacent outer districts covering a total area of 2060 km². The population (according to world-gazetteer) is 14,608,512 which does not match the current figure.
Bombay = Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation (470 km²)
Karachi = Karachi City District Government (3530 km²). Consists of 18 towns. Not the same as area used by world-gazeteer which excludes the defunct Malir district.
Buenos Aires = Gran Buenos Aires (Autonomous City of Buenos Aires + 24 municipalities) with total population of 11,574,205 covering an area of 3680 km². This is not on the current list here.
Delhi = Delhi Municipal Corporation (1400 km²). This is not and does not include New Delhi.
Manila = Metro Manila (640 km²). Consists of 17 cities/municipalities including the City of Manila.
Moscow = Federal City (gorod) of Moscow but excluding the administered city of Zelenograd (800 km²)
Seoul = Metropolitan City of Seoul (610 km²)
Sao Paolo = city proper (1580 km²)
Istanbul = Metropolitan Municipality (composed of 27 District Municipalities) (1830 km²)
Lagos = city proper
Mexico City = Distrito Federal (16 boroughs of Mexico City) (1480 km²)

It's a good start, thank you. I see your point about the problems discerning cities and municipal areas, etc. In any case, it would certainly improve the article having footnotes, like you indicated. Ben <sup>[[User_talk:Male1979|T]]</sup>/<sub>[[Special:Contributions/Male1979|C </sub>]] 16:35, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I changed the footnotes so that it looks neater. Having too many footnotes is unnecessary, I think. Even though some entities are not officially called cities, most in the list correspond to them. I only left footnotes for those that are definitely not cities. London could even be removed from the notes list since Greater London is probably considered a city as well. Polaron 03:45, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dots on Map

There are thirty-one dots on the map, and Toronto is not included.

[edit] Toronto?

Why is Toronto here? The city population is 2,481,494 (From the article). - Randwicked Alex B 14:03, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

That's a good question. The list just copies the one from World Gazetteer. They are using the concept of "settlement points" which sometimes do not correspond to administrative city boundaries. Footnotes have been added to areas that do not correspond to the "city proper" concept. If there's a better reference for this list we can probably use that instead. Polaron 14:17, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Here's an alternative, rather different list. It only goes to 20 though, and doesn't seem to include Lagos or Kinshasa,, which I thought would be up there. Bias? Unreliability of figures for those cities? - Randwicked Alex B 15:11, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Here are two other possible sources: [1] - uses census counts (does not use estimates or projections so some of the figures are really old, especially for African countries). This list seems to be similar to the geohive.com list; and [2] - looks like it uses the same concept as World Gazetteer for the most part (Toronto is listed as having 5 million). Polaron 16:51, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Toronto is on the list because the population of the Census Metropolitan Area of Toronto (not defined by city boundaries) is used rather than the population of the City of Toronto. - User:I_Am_Canadian529 24:48, 13 February 2006


No, I agree with the people offering criticism on this one. You can't use the "metropolitan area" if you're ranking cities this way. Consider that the metropolitan area of Chicago is about 10 million - and it's not even on this list. New York's metro is just over 21 million. the ACTUAL city population of Toronto IS LISTED ON THE PAGE FOR TORONTO. It doesn't matter if your source is factually accurate about metro area because it's not the figure that SHOULD be used - and I really don't see why this is a debate over whether or not we should provide accurate information.

also, I think Polaron is right about where the data comes from - and like I said previously it's inconsistent with the rest. Gazetteer has totally different rankings for example. Rob Shepard 01:17, 14 April 2006

Toronto shouldn't be on this list, it's just silly. If including metro areas there are over 3 dozen cities in the world that outstrip Toronto. Also what is up with teh Saudi Arabian city that has a square area larger than some countries and more than all the other cities on the list combined! --68.236.5.240 22:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

People--cities merge. In 1996, Toronto had around 600K people, but by 2001 Census, it was over 2.4 million. 6 cities had been dissolved and amalgamated into the new Toronto city limits, not Metro area. Other cities in Canada have done this too, and Louisville in USA, as well as many Japanese cities.

[edit] Buenos Aires2

The City of Buenos Aires' population is something like 2 million. You are counting Gran Buenos Aires(Greater Buenos Aires) which is 11.5 million. It even says when you click on the little number its counting Gran Buenos Aires. Quote from article The city proper has a population of 2,776,138 according to the 2001 census [INDEC], while the Greater Buenos Aires conurbation has more than 11.4 million inhabitants. Vivaperucarajo 22:19, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chennai

The city of Chennai (erstwhile Madras) had a population of 6.6 million in 2001-02 census. Where does that figure in the list? I think this page should be removed, as it is grossly incorrect.

Chennai is listed at #34 with a population of 4.35 million (4.22 million in 2001). Indian cities on this list refer to the municipal corporation only and not the urban agglomeration. Polaron 13:57, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Los Angeles?

Is there any particular reason that Los Angeles is not included?

Los Angeles is ranked 41 on the world-gazetteer city list Polaron 23:05, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  • That is ridiculous. Some of these cities (New York, Mexico, Tehran) are actually using their real population, but others (Toronto, Shanghai, Manila) are clearly using metro area. Los Angeles has over 3.7 million in the city proper, but the metro area holds over 16 million. It is clear that if you chose one test or another, that Los Angeles would be on the list, but since you have used the Los Angeles proper population while using metro areas of other cities, you have completely skewed things.

[edit] What about Paris?

It has more than 10 millions...


Yes, Paris has at least 9 million in the urban area alone, it should certainly come on the list.

Sorry dude your city proper is just 1 mile squared :) Jeroje 02:11, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why 30?

Couldn't we expand this list to, ideally list all cities of over 1,000,000? Also, I think it's a good idea to foot note exactly how we are defining each city. john k 07:15, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there's any particular reason for there being 30. World Gazetteer lists cities with population of 500,000+. If we go with 1 million+ cities, there would be about 310 entries. If we go with 2 million+ cities, there would be about 120 entries. Currently, entries without footnotes correspond to the concept of "city proper" or "administrative area". Polaron 14:32, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Calcutta?

What about Kolkata? This article is awful!--ppm 03:39, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

If you click on the World Gazetteer link, you'll find that Kolkata is #31 on the list. Polaron 03:58, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dhaka?

On the most recent lists in the net Dhaka stands 7th or 8th with a population of more than 10 million. Even in Encarta Reference Library 2003, Dhaka ranks much higher & with a city which is growing by more than 5% every year, how can the population reduce by 4 million so fast? Also another major city Kolkata is missing. This list has something seriously wrong or maybe the person who posted it has some grudge against us Bengalis.

For Kolkata see previous section. The ~10 million figure for Dhaka refers to the statistical metropolitan area and not the administrative area, which is what is listed here. See List of metropolitan areas by population for a ranking of agglomerations. Polaron 14:03, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inaccurate

This table is extremely inaccurate. Shouldn't we use the same conditions for every city, most sources state that Mexico City has 20 million people.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 23:45, 4 April 2006 (UTC)


Entirely agreed. There needs to be a standard measurement of population - either metropolitan area or the population within the city limits. Manilla ahead of Tokyo and Mexico City and New York? Please, that's just ridiculous. Some of these cities shouldn't even be on this list - see my comments on Toronto. User:Rob Shepard 01:08 14 April 2006

[edit] We all have a lot of issues with this - scrap this article and start a new one

Can we make a concensus here on how to define city populations and then write this article? We should compare cities proper with cities proper, and metro areas with metro areas. Which itself would be hard e.g. some people say Baltimore-Washingto, D.C. is one metropolitan area - though I disagree; others consider Newark, NJ part of the New York City metropolitain area, which I believe is accurate. Things to consider; do those outside of the city proper find themselves linked to the city proper via cultural ties: sports, museums, music, linguistics ties, et al.? (e.g. people from D.C. sound NOTHING like Baltimore citizens - just check the Baltimorese article; Newarkers sound like New Yorkers; linguistics alone of course are not enough, for example London is a city for all intents and purpose and their municipal accents vary.) Is there the infrastructure to make a seamless transition between the provincial area (outside of the city proper to the city itself). All in all this article does not suffice, lest it can cite proper sources and separate the entities into their proper classification, while still understand the scope and influence of the City.

There are several ways to define a city: (1) municipality; (2) urban area; (3) urban area adjusted to administrative boundaries; (4) administrative or statistical area composed of multiple municipalities. In the current list, examples of each type are as follows: (1) New York City and Sao Paulo; (2) none; (3) Shanghai and Toronto; (4) London (administrative area) and Tokyo (statistical area). The problem is what is the best way to define a "city". Polaron 00:37, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I think that most people would agree that the best way to define a "city" is by metropolitan population, as that is really what makes a city go. The thing is, there has to be some kind of consistancy here because this article is presenting a really skewed view of the relative size and importance of cities.
Use one definition and stick with it across the board. That's not being done here. Where's Los Angeles? Drdr1989 07:54, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Different countries have different concepts of what a "city" is. Which definition should this list use? The only way Los Angeles would be in the Top 30 would be to use either the urban area or the metropolitan area. In that case, there is already an existing list of metropolitan areas by population. Polaron 14:22, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
I think we should not use metropolitan statistics on this page since, like you said, there is already a list. I definitely believe that this especially applies for those that have also document a city proper population. For example, Toronto has a city proper population and a metro one, just like Los Angeles - yet Toronto's metro statistic is being used here. I would delete that and other metro areas which also have a city proper population, but I'd have to go through the labor of finding everything beyond #30. Drdr1989 18:56, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
The cities beyond #30 are here. The "cities" on the current list that are a combination of municipalities and where the individual municipalities have greater authority than the overall area are: Buenos Aires, Manila, Tokyo, Toronto. In the case of Tokyo, there is no single municipality called Tokyo. Cities that are composed of multiple municipalities and where the overall regional authority has greater power than the individual municipalities are: London, Mexico City, Lima, Istanbul, Jakarta, Kinshasa, New York City (debatable), Karachi, Lahore. The "cities" that are only a part of a bigger municipality are the Chinese cities of Shanghai and Beijing. Should "metropolitan municipalities" like London and Istanbul be included? Should statistical agglomerations like the 23 special wards of Tokyo be included? Should municipalities with vast amounts of rural territory like Beijing be included? So many difficult questions... Polaron 23:00, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New source

User:SRK changed the table using Mongabay as the source. I have added statistical definitions for each city that fit the given figures. I will add area figures later when I have time. What do people think of the Mongabay version? Polaron 21:44, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bogota

Bogota is placed at both 15th and 20th, surely that cannot be correct? Jdcooper 01:34, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ruhr Valley?

This too appears to come under some of the questions already raised. Wikipedia's own article on the area states it is a metropolitan area made up of several seperate cities. There is another list regarding metropolitan areas, this should be on that (which it is) and not this list which is purely for, as the heading puts it "cities proper." I believe a complaint about Paris comes under the same heading. Paris may have a smaller population than say London as a city proper but as wider metropolitan area its population is far larger. This is probably down to a difference in boundry marking between national governments which means that while "Greater London" is included as the city of London (the official "City of London" is tiny and only contains 8,600 people) Greater Paris as, I would assume from the comments and wikipedia's own article, a less official entity is not. I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong in anything I have said and only seek accuracy in wikipedia's articles.

Also Duesseldorf-Wuppertal is mentioned separately, but I know that Wuppertal is in the Ruhr valley. Very problematic classification.

[edit] Something is seriously wrong

Yup, something is SERIOUSLY wrong in here. I think the same measurement rules should be applied for every city. Like, for Dhaka only the population of an area 200 square km was taken whereas larger was taken for many many cities. I would request this change of measurement as a regular Wikipedia user.

Defining the extent of a city is not always easy. I agree that not all areas are defined the same way but I guess not all countries define cities the same way either. Also, not all cities have the same surface areas -- there will be some that are just huge and some that are really small. The advantage here is everything is from one source making it easier to maintain. If you are aware of a better source, please do share it. --Polaron | Talk 13:26, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cologne - Bonn

"59 Cologne - Bonn 3,100,000 Urban agglomeration" Isn't this supposed to be a list of cities, not agglomerations? Actually, there are even more, especially the German cities seem to be agglomerations.

[edit] What is the main source?

What is the main source used in this article? It looks like Mongabay. It doesn't look like a reliable source after seeing all the wrong urban populations. We should find a more reliable website. --John9834 00:04, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Istanbul and Ankara

Edited Istanbul and Ankara city population estimates for 2005 giving an official government statistics (estimates) as a source. http://www.tuik.gov.tr/PreIstatistikTablo.do?istab_id=229

[edit] Johannesburg

Your shockingly inaccurate list does not include Johannesburg, which has an official municipal population of 3.2 million, based on the 2001 SA Census. This excludes the metropolitan area. I'm mortified by the inaccuracy of Wikipedia in this instance.

[edit] Wuhan

According to the Wuhan page there are over 9 million people in Wuhan. Does this list need updating? Or maybe this is a different definition of a city. Either way, if that information is true that would move the city pretty far up the list. ABart26 14:18, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Chinese cities do not conform to the typical notion of a city because of its inclusion of large rural areas. I think that the population of the urban area is what is listed here instead. --Polaron | Talk 14:21, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Input needed on name of this article, and others like it

Please see Category talk:Lists of cities#Naming conventions. --Czj 01:34, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Population X Density (x109/km²)

A stupid question... How can I count the last column (Population X Density (x109/km²))? And what does it realy mean? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.111.176.6 (talk) 10:55, 29 January 2007 (UTC).

It seems http://scmtd.com/board/agendas/2001/july.pdf uses it as a measure of urbanization or something like that. References are needed showing that this is a common and meaningful measure, otherwise we can better delete that column.--Patrick 21:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I can't find any references that show this to be a commonly-used or referenced demographic statistic, so I've deleted it. -- The Anome (talk) 11:52, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] vandalism

The 1 and 6 spots listed "your mom" and "the russian hideout" respectively. i replaced them with bombay and moscow, which i'm fairly sure are correct, but be on the lookout for further vandalism.--Delong71487 20:07, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Greater Bangalore

bangalore boundary is expanded to make it greater bangalore. could anybody submit new data on this? area increased from 440 to 720sq.km.

[edit] population of Tokyo prefecture

Tokyo is not Tokyo prefecture, and why is it 23 special wards? If it is Tokyo, population is 12,678,395 people.

--Why do people make comments on things they don't understand? See above.

[edit] Prefecture and a city are the same in Japan

In Japan, a prefecture and a city are approximately synonymous. I cannot go unless U.S.A. distributes a state and a prefecture, a prefecture and a city and thinks. However, we do not have the meaning in Japan where population extremely crowds.

While you might have a point with the case of Tokyo, the rest of the prefectures of Japan do not fit the concept of a city proper. You should bring your arguments on the talk page of List of cities in Japan if you really believe cities = prefectures. --Polaron | Talk 19:42, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] shanghai updation

shanghai is biggest according to reference sources. but in this article it has population of year 2001. updating is need of hour. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.41.72.100 (talk) 05:49, 15 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] new japan cities

no citation. should be removed soon —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vinay412 (talk • contribs) 05:00, 22 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Lima Must be Removed

How did Lima make it to the 19 spot with 7,186,000, when Lima's very own page, here, clearly shows the city to have a population of 4,097,340 in 804.3 km² (498.3 mi²)? This correction needs to be made. --Criticalthinker 07:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Completely inaccurate. That's the population of Los Angeles [3]. -- 87.185.192.52 20:14, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] World's largest cities article.

Majority of data was not sources. The article was completely vandalized through the time. There is also no necessity in such article. This one could be expanded. I have made a redirect to this article. Elk Salmon 16:52, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How to compare apples with oranges

some are figueres of the city proper , and some are the population of the agglomeration or (urban area as listed ) I dont see the point of this article.Jeroje 02:07, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Which cities are you particularly concerned about? If you have better figures (sourced of course), please share them and incorporate them in the article. Thanks. --Polaron | Talk 03:23, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
whole article is a mess, how can you compare greater london with mumbai corporation ? either you compare london core city which just abount 1 squared km with mumbai proper (about 400 sq km ) ( thogh it does not make sense since it means nothing ) or you compare greater london with greater mumbai or greater mexico city. the talk clearly shows that we could not come up with a good universal definition of a city so it does not make sense to put up this list , And some wiki articles are giving a reference back to this article (eg karachi ) it makes the whole connected part of the graph very unreliable. I suggest an AfD what do you think ? Jeroje 03:54, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Note that Greater London is not the same as the London metropolitan area. Are you then also saying that New York City should be broken up by borough? Should Tokyo and Seoul be broken up by ward? Is there any published list of cities at all that uses just the square mile "City of London" to refer to "London"? --Polaron | Talk 04:43, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
City of London points out it is 1 sq mile, pop = about 9000. I am not saying we should break up the pop data in terms of local subdivisions of a city. I am just saying that since it does not make sense to compare 1 sq mile city of london with 3500 km km city district of karachi Karachi district. so one puts greater london figure in that table but similarly it is meaningless to compare Greater London with 210 sq km core city of cairo or about 400 sq km of the three islands of mumbai. my point is that making a rank based on this list is meaningless.Jeroje 18:44, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
So how would you rank cities? What definition would you use for Karachi and London? Just go ahead and nominate the list for deletion and be done with it if you think this list is not salvageable. --Polaron | Talk 22:30, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cairo

Population of Cairo are 20,500,000 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.132.43.250 (talk) 22:21, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problems With Sort

Try clicking the button to sort by population (not the first col; that's rank). It seems almost to alphabetize or something, so that 9,000,000 is first, then 8mil, 7mil . . . 1mil, then 10mil is down at the bottom. Anyone know how to fix this? Registrar 23:43, 6 October 2007 (UTC)


what it seems to be doing is sorting the populations alphabetically, so that 9 is highest and 1 is lowest. thus, 900 would be higher than 1,000,000, and 99 would be higher than 900, while 9,000,000 would come after 900 but above 1,000,000. the problem is the commas, i think. maybe someone can fix the code for the sorter to either change the string to a number or have a field to enter the number when making a sortable list. Songthen (talk) 23:19, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] about Mumbai

there is lot of confusion in estimating pop. of mumbai

technically Greater Mumbai is defined by area which comes under municipal corporation of greater mumbai. nowadays greater word is not used. mumbai has 2 complete urban districts in it.(mumbai city + suburban district) there is national park in mumbai which is under jurisdiction of national govt. the mumbai city district has the limits of old bombay (ie pre-1955). then the suburban district was not didnt existed. in 1955, present day-greater mumbai was created (by including semi urban suburbs). In 1990 the mumbai district was divided into city district and suburban district. however suburbs developed so fast and became so powerful that distinction has almost vanished, thought they are still called suburbs.

The population of this greater mumbai is 11 million in 2001 and is 13 million today.

the area of city district is 135 km² and suburban district is 446 sq km.

the population of city district is 3-4 million. it is just a office district suburban district is is a shopping and residential district.

however the growth of mumbai didn't existed to Greater Mumbai, it expanded to mainland.The extended/far suburbs like Thane and Navi Mumbai etc, which were developing on the outskirts of Greater Mumbai, also contributed to the development of the mumbai, and the difference between greater mumbai and these far suburbs became invisible. the only thing that defines the separation is checkpost on the borders of Greater Mumbai.

Now, The Urban Area /Urban Agglomeration of mumbai became manifold with the estimated population of 20 million.

mumbai has many features similar to NYC and London(Greater London)

When NYC was formed, it consisted of Manhattan. with the expansion and other boroughs adding, the Manhattan is often called downtown or city.

Present day london is greater london with core part called as city of london or square mile.

Thus Mumbai's city district or core part is often often called as simply 'city'.

Bala 207 12:21, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A thought

I noticed that if the pop x density is not more than or equal to 84 (= that of NYC ) then there is something amiss with the density data (which implies something wrong with either the pop or the area or both ). I suggest we look at all the cities which poses less than 84 pop x density parameter. Jeroje 06:14, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

And the cities with less than 50 pop x density must have included the low urbanised portions of the metro into the pop, area figures. for example Taiwan has pop = 22.9 x 10^6 with density 636 so pop x density = 14. this calculation gives some idea about the parameter in question. Jeroje 06:28, 3 November 2007 (UTC) Bold text

[edit] The problem of Chongqing

Why Chongqing isn't the world's largest city of population? It's obvious that Chongqing is not a countryside, province or state, but a "complete city". Why it's not the largest city in the world?

And how about the academic scope of urban area, urban agglomeration, metropolitan area? --218.167.211.200 11:30, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Most populous city by year?

Anyone have a nice chart of when what city was the most populous? Some individual articles appear to contradict one another e.g.

  • New York City reads "New York City became the most populous city in the world in 1948, overtaking London, which had reigned for over a century", while
  • London reads "it was the most populated city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925."

Thanks! Ewlyahoocom (talk) 13:00, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Density

The caption for the population density column must be wrong (billions of people per square kilometer). I am pretty damn sure that Mumbai does not have 377 billion people in each square kilometer unless it is a very, very small city. Is anyone able to correct? --Legis (talk - contribs) 21:10, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

This was apparently someone's idea of an urbanization metric. Since it's confusing, unreferenced, and dimensionally suspect (squared people???) I've deleted it. -- The Anome (talk) 11:55, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Karachi

according to List of metropolitan areas by population karachi population is 11,800,000 with a metro area 1,100 square km. Now thats the metro area, so the city proper must be smaller by size. But this article mentions some district (may be the whole district of Sindh ) with area 3,500 sq km, with population 11,800,000. Jeroje (talk) 06:50, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Keep in mind that not all cities are defined the same way around the world. It is not impossible to find cases where the municipality is bigger than the urban area. The municipality in the case of Karachi is the Karachi City District, which is what is listed here. --Polaron | Talk 12:20, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removed Lima, Santiago, & Lagos From List

If this is truly a page about city proper populations, than Lima must be removed. Lima city proper, the administrative division, is a city of only 278,804 in 21.88 km2, and is known as Lima District. Now, Lima could go on a page of urban agglomerations/conurbations, because the greater urban area has a population of 7,629,407, and a metro of 9,241,961, but the actual city proper is a very small district in that urban area.

Santiago is also another one that must be removed. The population given isn't even right, but most importantly the number is give for a conurbation/urban agglomeration. Santiago proper is Santiago Commune, the central administrative division of the greater metropolitan area with its own government, which is only 200,792 inside 22.9 km2.

Lagos is a very similar situation. Lagos belongs on the page of the world's largest urban areas/agglomerations, but does not belong on this list of cities as defined by their administrative boundaries. Lagos proper is the local government area of Lagos, which is only 209,437 at 19.5 km2. --Criticalthinker (talk) 03:54, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Any source for claiming that Lima city proper, the administrative division, is a city of only 278,804 in 21.88 km2, and is known as Lima District? The city of Lima spans the whole Lima Province. In fact, the mayor of Lima is the mayor of the province mayor not a district mayor. --Victor12 (talk) 10:58, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Do you have any source showing that? If so, than perhaps Lima can be added back, but from what I can tell "Lima" is much like Sydney and Lagos and Santiago, that are huge urban areas divided into very distinct and separate municipal councils. Lima Province contains 43 administrative divisions, each headed by its own mayor. The mayor of the Lima District may also be headed of the Metropolitan Lima Municipal Council, the legislative body of Lima Province, I believe, but Lima Province is not a municipality or even a special federal district as far as I know. --Criticalthinker (talk) 00:11, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Actually, it is the other way around. There is no municipal council for Lima District. It is under the administration of the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima, that is the Provincial municipal council. Here are the relevant citations in the Peruvian law with my own translations:
Ley Orgánica de Municipalidades Ley Nº 27972 (Organic Law of Municipalities)
Art. 151: The capital of the Republic has a special regime. This special regime grants the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima specific unrestricted responsibilities and functions of local, metropolitan and regional character.
Art. 152: The capital of the Republic is the seat of the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima, which exerts exclusive jurisdiction over the Lima Province in municipal and regional matters.
Art. 153: The agencies of the Metropolitan Municipality of Lima are the Metropolitan Council, the Metropolitan Mayorship and the Metropolitan Assembly of Lima.
Art. 154: The Metropolitan Municipality of Lima exerts jurisdiction, in matters of its responsibility, over the district municipalities located in the Lima Province territory.
Art. 156: The Metropolitan Council is formed by the mayor and the regidors
Art. 152: The attributions of the Metropolitan Council are (...) 8. Approve via ordinances regulatory norms for the development of the Historic Centre of Lima (...)
Furthermore, the Municipal Mayor of Lima is elected by the population of the whole Lima Province, not just of the Lima District. So, there is no mayor of Lima District, just a mayor of Lima Province who has the administration of Lima District as one of its functions. --Victor12 (talk) 02:53, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Then, Lima can be added back in, but the other two are definitely not fit for this list. --Criticalthinker (talk) 08:00, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
You forgot to remove all the other cities that have similar governmental structure like Jakarta, Tokyo, London, Istanbul, Seoul, among others. Please be consistent and remove all such entities or restore the ones you removed. --Polaron | Talk 07:29, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Polaron, did you really undo EVERY one of my corrections? The list was flawed on many levels. I made a mistake with Lima, but everything else was correct. Santiago doesn't have an over-riding regional government, nor does Lagos. This page is specifically for large cities covered by large administrative borders. There is already a page for urban agglomerations and metropolitan areas. This is only for "city propers." --Criticalthinker (talk) 08:05, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
The "city proper" of Tokyo, as it is commonly understood, does not have one either. Also, in the case of Santiago and Lagos, the province is the definition commonly understood to mean the "city proper" and is what you'll see tabulated in other lists of cities. These provinces do have a provincial government. This list should not restrict itself to the smallest municipal level but use an administrative level that conforms closely to the concept of city proper. All the Chinese cities would have to be removed if you insist on using the local municipal level (which is the county-level in China). We can of course use the lowest municipal level but the list would be very different from what people know. It's up to you as to how you want to specify criteria for inclusion but please apply it consistently. --Polaron | Talk 13:05, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
No, I wouldn't have to remove the Chinese cities, because their municipal level of government is supreme to any other administrative divisions within the municipality. This is not the case with Lagos and Santiago, which are conurbations. This page is supposed to be for population centers which are governed under one, supreme council. This is not the case with Lagos or Santiago. If we're going to add Lagos and Santiago, then we'd have to add Metropolitan Sydney, Melbourne, etc...this page is not for conurbations that are governed under multiple local government councils. I think this is pretty obvious. --Criticalthinker (talk) 22:07, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Let's make this list consistent then. Lagos, Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo, and the cities of China have no overarching government for the currently used definitions. Santiago Province does have its own government so should be retained. If Santiago is removed, then we should also remove "metropolitan cities" such as London, Lima, Istanbul, Ankara, Jakarta, Mexico City, Bogota, and some others. How do we want to define this list then? Is there a similar reliable list of administrative cities available somewhere that we can use as a model? --Polaron | Talk 15:29, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Santiago Province is not a "local government", though. It's a first-level administrative division. While a place like London is also a region, it is also a municipality. Santiago Province is not a municipality. The only reason we should ever have provinces on here is if they are "special", which means they function as both a city and a state/province. Santiago Province is not a "special" province, nor is Lagos State. London and Tokyo are as they function as both provinces and municipalities under their nation's law. Sydney and Melbourne are not. Do you get what I'm saying, now? I'm trying to be as clear as possible. Hopefully, this finally clears things up.
To reiterate, the ONLY two types of cities that should be on this page are those with clearly defined administrative boundaries (i.e. traiditional municipalities), and those province/state-level cities that are also local governments (i.e. "special" municipalities/cities). This definition would include both traditional local government-level cities like New York City, and non-traditional province-level cities like Shanghai. It would not include a place like Santiago Province, which isn't a local government or municipality or Lagos State, which is also not a local government or municipality.
Also, whenever possible, lets get away from using the United Nations estimates when we can use official data from these nation's official statistics bureaus/offices. For instance, Kinshasa has recent numbers available from its own statistics bureau. We shouldn't be using outside sources just because they are more easily accessible. --Criticalthinker (talk) 22:57, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tokyo Must Remain

I'm not sure why Tokyo was removed. Tokyo is adminsistered as both a municipality and a province, so it's a "special city". It's not like Sydney, Melbourne, or Lagos. While an untraditional municipality, it would definitely qualify, here, for a spot using the "23 special wards" population, or the province-level population. Tokyo is administered as both a local government and as a provincial government. --Criticalthinker (talk) 00:07, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

If you want to include it, you must use the entire prefecture (~12 million) as the 23 wards alone do not have a separate regional government. --Polaron | Talk 00:11, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm interested to hear you're take on it. I believe it's a "special city" that is administered as special province of Japan. If that is, in fact, the case then it belongs here. If that is not the case and Tokyo province is not administered as a municipality, then I guess it doesn't. --Criticalthinker (talk) 00:29, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes it is special in the sense that the prefectural government performs some municipal functions for the 23 wards area. However, the 23 wards alone are nothing more than a statistical concept. The 23 wards as a group do not have any government below the prefectural government. The prefectural government, however, administers 39 additional cities/towns/villages, in addition to the 23 wards. If we're going to include the Chinese province-level municipalities (Chongqing, Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin) as the entire province, then Tokyo should probably go in the list to as the entire prefecture. --Polaron | Talk 00:35, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you. I said it's up to YOU whether YOU wanted to add Tokyo as the entire prefecture of the 23 wards. Whichever way you decide is fine with me. I'm glad we're building a consensus, here, finally. Have you read my new notes on Santiago and the others? --Criticalthinker (talk) 01:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Shanghai

I think the population of shanghai should be updated. The small number on the chrart is of registered Shanghai residents. But if you actually count the amount of people living in shanghai including migrant workers, the estimate is over 20 million people. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-12/05/content_287714.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sqito (talk • contribs) 01:38, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Greater London and Communidad de Madrid

Why is London so high on the list? By the same logic, Madrid would be 25th, above Kingshasa, with a population of 6,081,689. Inconsistencies like this are abundunt.

I don't know why people keep making note of London. It's a special province/region administered as a single municipality. It's just that simple. It's not unlike the many other "special cities" on this list including the likes of Seoul and Kinshasa, all province-level municipalities or "special cities". Madrid is not like that. Communidad de Madrid is a regular province of Spain, which subdivided into many different municipalities of which the actual Ciudad de Madrid is only one of these. Greater London Region and Greater London municipality are one and the same. --Criticalthinker (talk) 05:54, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dehli Inquiry

Does the Dehli population and area figure include the independent city of New Dehli, as well? BTW, I'm working on finding the official 2001 Census numbers for India's administrative divisons. I've been able to find Mumbai's, but need to sign-up at India's statistics site to find the rest, so don't change anything concerning the Indian cities for the moment. --Criticalthinker (talk) 01:52, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

To be absolutely clear, the National Capital Territory of Delhi, which is equivalent to a province or state holds 3 separately governed municipalities: Municipal Corporation of Delhi (Delhi), New Delhi Municipal Council (New Dehli), and Delhi Cantonment Board (Delhi Cantonment). This page should ONLY include the population of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi which is Delhi City. So, please make sure that is the case. --Criticalthinker (talk) 00:29, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

If you'd like to use the 2001 census populations for Indian cities (municipal corporations), these are the correct figures:

  • Mumbai: 11,914,398
  • Delhi: 9,817,439
  • Kolkata: 4,580,544
  • Bangalore: 4,292,223
  • Chennai: 4,216,268
  • Ahmedabad: 3,515,361
  • Hyderabad: 3,449,878

You yourself say that you want to make sure that the Delhi figure doesn't include the entire union territory. The Delhi agglomeration is 12,791,458 while the Delhi NCT is 13,850,507 (these are 2001 census figures).

And just so you're aware, there are also provisional 2001 census figures still floating around. The provisional figures are 13,782,976 (NCT); 12,877,420 (UA); and 9,879,172 (MC).

Why didn't you give your signature? You've provided no source for your numbers, and I got mine directly from the Indian 2001 Census. It clearly shows that Delhi Cantonment and New Dehli make up a very small part of the overall population of the National Capital Territory. We really must stop using random World Gazetter numbers when we have official information from the statistic bureau of these countries. --Criticalthinker (talk) 03:07, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Anyone? The 2001 Census clearly shows that the Delhi Municipal Corporation (the "city") governed +13 million person as of, with New Delhi and Delhi Cantonnment, the only other two municipal governments of the territory only taking up a few hundred thousand persons. The 11 million number must only be for the urbanized population, but the administrative area that is Delhi had over 13 million persons as of 2001. --Criticalthinker (talk) 02:11, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
No, it doesn't. The DMC is 9.82 million. The Delhi UA is 12.88 million. The Delhi UT is 13.85 million. The UT contains areas outside the three municipal corporations known as Census Towns (CT). The 11 million figure used by World Gazetteer is a projection for 2008 of the 9.8 million 2001 census figure. --Polaron | Talk 03:11, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Do you have a map showing this? From everything I understood, those three municipal councils covered the entire area of the National Capital Territoy (Union Territory). --Criticalthinker (talk) 03:23, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Chongqing: Biggest City in the World

I've added China's three other municipal cities to the list, since they are specially-administered city-provinces, but I can't bring myself to add Chongqing. I kind of have to add if if we're to be consistent, but its borders just seem far too large. It is both the largest municipality in area and population. But, this page is, after all, not to measure urban population or even metropolitan population, but simply the population within the confines of a council government. Opinions? Just for reference, Chongqing has an area of 82,300 km² and a population of 31,442,300 (as of 2006). The land area for the municipality is larger than many small nations, but I guess that really shouldn't matter. --Criticalthinker (talk) 22:59, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

It should matter, because it's fairly clear that the Chinese word which is translated as "city" means something rather different than what we normally mean by the term. What about "Prefecture level cities"? Aren't those just as clearly cities as Chongqing? Chongqing isn't a city in any of the normally understood senses of the term, and I don't think it should be included here. john k (talk) 23:41, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it's unclear why only the province-level cities are included with an arbitrary exception. The list is now missing the prefecture-level cities that are large enough to make it on the list (Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Shenyang, Dongguan, Chengdu, Xian, Nanjing, Guiyang, Haerbin). If we're going to stick to areas with a defined government as the criterion for inclusion, I would prefer to exclude the Chinese cities as their city propers (as usually defined, they are a statistical group of urban districts) do not have an associated government. Ultimately, I think the list should be of "city propers" in the traditional sense rather than municipalities, even if those areas do not have an associated single municipal government. --Polaron | Talk 23:53, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm torn because, then, what is the use of a list for the worlds largest urban areas, then? At the same time, it doesn't seem right to list "cities" the physical size of small nations. I guess, then, it's best that we leave out ALL Chinese cities from this list, then. For instance, Hong Kong should also be removed because very little of its 1,092 square kilometers is developed land. If you'd like to remove them, I guess I don't mind. But, to me, a "city" is simply a municipal government, regardless of how little or how much non-urban area it contains. Not the whole of London, for example, is urbanized. --Criticalthinker (talk) 23:59, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
How are we to distinguish a municipal government from any other kind of local government? For instance, what about the various "chartered counties" in Maryland, whose function roughly corresponds to that of a municipal government? Several of them (Baltimore County and Howard County) don't even have any chartered municipalities within them. Why do they not count? The whole conception of this list seems flawed. I tend to think that, given that different countries are organized so differently, we should really just have a list of urban areas, which can be defined in a uniform way, and avoid the pitfalls of this list, which is bound to lead to constant arguing. john k (talk) 00:28, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I do not agree that this list doesn't make sense. As different as countries administrate there area, there is such thing as "local government" or municipal-level government in just about every country. As for chartered counties, what does that have to do with anything? Baltimore is both a municipality and a county. This page is for both traditional and non-traditional local governments. No one would argue Baltimore is any less a local government because it's also a county. --Criticalthinker (talk) 00:51, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
The City of Baltimore is an independent city, not part of any county. There's also Baltimore County, which is separate, does not include the city of Baltimore, and functions very much like a municipal government. It does not contain within it any chartered municipalities, but has more or less full local self-government. Why isn't it a "city" in the sense of Chongqing? It isn't called a city, and it isn't as densely populated as a traditional city, but in terms of government, it's not too different from one. What about British council districts? "Local government" does not at all correspond to what we generally think of when we use the word "city." Sometimes the local government roughly corresponds to the urban area, sometimes it is much smaller, sometimes it is much larger, and sometimes there are several levels of local government which make it extremely complicated to say. But defining "city" to mean "unit of municipal government" strikes me as dubious, especially if it forces us to do things like include Chongqing. john k (talk) 01:28, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Solution for this Page: How to Define "City"

As we all know, defining "city" by the definitions of a "city proper" is usually quite easy. But, there are a few cases where it is more difficult (Chinese cities). I propose that we keep those traditional and easy-to-define city propers that exist on the list, but for those less easy to define that we define them as the local government officially defines them. For instance, Tokyo's "23 Wards" should represent Tokyo, here. As long as these local governments exists as administrative areas we should be able to piece together the population of say a Shanghai or Beijing without having to add thousands of square kilometers of empty rural space. Still, in this case, cities like Santiago still wouldn't belong, here, and it would be hard to make a case for Lagos. But this new definition of "city" would allow quite a few more cities to be added. Opinion? --Criticalthinker (talk) 23:36, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

The 23 wards is simply the area that used to be Tokyo municipality before it was dissolved. It is now simply a statistical area. How is that different from the 16 LGAs making up Lagos or the 32 municipalities making up Santiago. Inclusion of Tokyo necessitates inclusion of these two (as well as the Chinese cities). Let's not make arbitrary decisions here. How about we just find some respectable entity that has already tabulated administrative cities rather than debate what gets included or not. There is no single definition that would satisfy everyone. --Polaron | Talk 00:09, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
If you're talking about World Gazetter of the UN than I would not agree, at all. The people that know their cities best, and know the best ways to define them, are the national or local statistics organizations. Anything else is too much of a guess to be taken seriously, even if it is consistent. I'd rather see this page be inconsistent and exact, than consistent and far from exact. --Criticalthinker (talk) 01:19, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hong Kong Definition

Hong Kong, from what I understand, has no formally-defined cities. The administrative divisions within Hong Kong are more like boroughs than indepedent cities, so Hong Kong should be added. --Criticalthinker (talk) 23:43, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] China cities vs. US cities

In any case, the city proper of a China city is much more conservative than a US city, probably except for Chongqing. The city proper of a US city includes so many suburbs that I don't even consider any city in the US except for New York City a city, compared to cities in China. You find skyscrapers everywhere in a city proper of China, yet for any US city except New York (probably except Chicago too, but not any other), there are at most 10 blocks of downtown area, and then there are one-story residential houses. The contrast is very obvious. Hardly any intermediate buildings exist. A mid-sized China city might not have many super-talls, but if you look at the skyview of any such city, it is very dense and urbanized with tons of 8--9 storied buildings. If you think the city proper of a China city doesn't have an associated government, then the only equivalent of that part in a US city should be the downtown area. How big a population does downtown Los Angeles have? The definition of Chongqing might not be very proper, but that doesn't harm other really big Chinese cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, etc. I would say, even the definition of Chongqing is probably more proper than a city like Chicago. Chicago's skyline can be seen from miles and miles not because it is so much higher than other cities, but because the rest is so flat. I don't think I have to say anything about Los Angeles. Anybody who has been there knows it is just a giant village.

If you decide to remove all Chinese cities from the list, but include cities from anywhere else, please make the title "List of cities by population except China". I do believe that China doesn't have to compare with the rest of the world in terms of city sizes. China has 1.4 billion people and most of them live in big cities of the east coast. You can imagine how dense and urbanized those cities can be.

[edit] SYDNEY

there's like 4mil people in sydney, therefore it qualifies, yes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.216.91.186 (talk) 09:27, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

See directly below. Aucitypops (talk) 15:37, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Sydney is reported as having over 4 million people, yet it's not on the list - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.163.71.197 (talk) 21:48, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi, this list only includes "city proper" or municipality population for better or worse, an equivalent figure for Sydney would be the popn of the City of Sydney, i.e. only ~154,000 people. - Aucitypops (talk) 05:48, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes well London made it in as "Greater London" "Greater Sydney" is 4 million, put it on the list. this list is very inaccurate.

There's no such thing as "Greater Sydney". Aucitypops (talk) 06:27, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I sujest you research "The County of Cumberland" the city of Sydney is entirely enclosed within this county, as are its 4 million residence, Sydney has a place on the list!

Nope. Substantial parts of that 4 mil. figure dwell outside Cumberland County (whose border is the Hawkesbury/Nepean River), e.g. on the Central Coast and in the mountains. And the Cumberland County hasn't had anything resembling a government since the 1950s. This list is limited to municipalities. There's no Greater Sydney municipality. - Aucitypops (talk) 03:13, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Where are you from, Are you from Sydney? If you were you would know that the area classified as Greater Sydney does not include the central coast, the hawksbury, the blue mountains or wollongong. When you enter city, from all these places, you pass a sign, "Welcome to Greater Sydney, pop. 4 something million". The number 4 million included the CBD itself and its surounding suburbs, as in London, and London is on the list?

Yes, I live in Sydney. There is no official "Greater Sydney" that population figures are published for, so there's no figure which can be compared with the other entities on this list. The only official statistical entity covering the whole of Sydney is the Australian Bureau of Statistics' Sydney Statistical Division, which includes the Central Coast and Hawkesbury, the Blue Mountains and Wollondilly Shire (but not Wollongong). If there are signs at the Hawkesbury River crossing saying that 4 million people live south of there then they're wrong, I'm afraid, and a sign that even the authorities have trouble understanding their own definitions. - Aucitypops (talk) 04:47, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

OHHHH, GET BACK!, THIS MANS ON FIRE!

Many there be who come! from fear set free,
From anger, from desire; keeping their hearts
Fixed upon me- my Faithful- purified
By sacred flame of Knowledge.
-Aucitypops (talk) 05:12, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

The sacred flame of knowledge, I got one of those!

[edit] Should be at "List of cities proper" or "List of municipalities" by population

Like I mentioned in the deletion discussion, I think this article should be at one of the above for clarity, and "List of cities" should direct to the generic definitions page, World's largest cities. Any opinions? = Aucitypops (talk) 04:01, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

No objections then? I think "List of cities proper by population" will be best. - Aucitypops (talk) 05:56, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
moved. - Aucitypops (talk) 09:34, 12 May 2008 (UTC)