What are the Top Cities by Population in the World?

And where do New York and London fall on the list? Guess before looking.

Posted in * General Interest

12 comments on “What are the Top Cities by Population in the World?

  1. Steven in Falls Church says:

    Wichita’s new slogan: “We’re not last!”

  2. Jason Miller says:

    I had Shanghai at #1, so I was really surprised that 1-3 were India-Pakistan-India.

  3. Jill C. says:

    Strange but there are some cities listed twice: Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Manchester are among them — and with different population figures.
    Cool to see Arlington, TX make the list!

  4. Hursley says:

    Bogota, Colombia, is also listed twice: #15 & #20. Makes one wonder how accurate the list is.

  5. azusa says:

    a bit arbitrary – seems to follow political boundaries of cities rather than greater urban areas in which one ‘city’ melds into another.

  6. Karen B. says:

    Yes, #5, I was thinking the same thing. Especially with Cairo and Giza (Egypt) listed separately. They’re kind of like New York and Newark in proximity. Greater Cairo has something like 12-13 million I believe, and so the figures listed here don’t do it justice. I thought I’d seen bad traffic in the NY area… HAH! You ain’t seen traffic until you’ve seen Cairo or Bangkok in Thailand.

  7. flabellum says:

    This link here gives a listing by urban areas rather than administrative areas.

  8. Dale Rye says:

    The trick is that they are ranked by individual city population, not metropolitan area population. Consequently, neighboring cities are usually counted separately: Omdurman, Khartoum, and North Khartoum in Sudan would be #26 if they were a single city, for example. El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, would nearly be in the top 100.

    Different countries define “cities” differently. Delhi is #3 partly because New Delhi and the other neighboring cities have been lumped in. If you rank the same data by metro area, Delhi comes in as #8 rather than #3, Mumbai is #13 rather than #1, and Karachi is #23 rather than #2. Tokyo is #1 rather than #13, New York is #2 rather than #12, Mexico City is #3 rather than #10. London has a metropolitan government, so it ranks #19 among cities and #20 among metro areas.

  9. saj says:

    … am I blind — where is Atlanta?

  10. Dale Rye says:

    Atlanta is indeed missing from the city list, where it should be #818, just above Sheffield.

    Atlanta is on the urban area list:
    — Metro pop 3,988,900; rank #69
    — City pop 435,500; rank #709.

  11. azusa says:

    #9: Sherman’s ghost strikes again!

  12. Ex-Catholic says:

    I grew up in Manila and was a bit surprised that MetroManila has grown to more than 10 M!!! Yikes, no wonder, I thought it was a “bit” crowded when I visited last November 🙂