The stats used here for the US are Combined Statistical Areas and are much larger than what would usually be thought of as the cities metro area. The numbers here for Boston include the entire eastern half of MA, southern NH, and all of RI. Not really Boston's metro area.
The American idea of a city is different to the worldwide one. These are all urban areas joined by continuous urban landscape, not just adresses or city limits. For example, Guangzhou on its own only has 20 million, where as if you include other cities it reaches 45 million. Boston and Dallas are part of much larger urban areas.
For people who are "skeptical" of the numbers... I usually use Wikipedia, but for population they are inconsistent. They gather their numbers from a variety of sources, including citypopulation.de. Going with citypopulation.de seemed to be the most sensible. Metro population is something that is extremely subjective, but citypopulation.de applies a consistent methodology across the whole world. IMHO, it has a better claim to accuracy to any other organization. I don't just make this stuff up, people!!!
I am from Washington, DC, and we have a total metro population less than 8.6 M...much less the city. CityPopulation.de tells me the DC population is 601,723, based on the 2010 census data...Can you be more specific with wher e on the site you found this data? I'm only seeing 2010 data with 2011 projections...Not trying to attack you or anything, just curious.
looks like this 8.6 million figure is including the entire gigantic Washington/Baltimore urban area. Which itself is just part of the sprawling megalopolis that runs all the way from northern Virginia up through Boston on the east coast of the United States.
The 8.6 million includes the entire state of MD, the northeast counties of WV, VA all the down into the Shenandoah Valley, south central PA, and oh yeh also DC.
it doesn't include the entire state of Maryland. Most of it, sure, but Maryland is a little sliver of a state most of which is centered around the DC/Baltimore megalopolis area.
Right, it takes an hour to drive across Riyadh and that's with no traffic. Hell, it takes that long for me to drive from one side of Antalya to the other... Konyaalti to Muratpasa.
Chengdu urban pop is: 7.7 million, Chongqing at least 7 million, Hangzhou-Shaoxing 8.2 million. Shenzhen has recently joined up with the city of Dongguan in the north (check it out on Google Earth) - and arguably Guangzhou though a river divides them. Shenzhen-Dongguan counts 18.3 million. Dhaka is now 15 million (contiguous city not just the city limits). The Ruhr city in Germany of the merged cities of Essen, Dortmund, Duisburg, Bochum and Dusseldorf counts contiguously 8 million.
First of all, never trust the population charts of China, our Communist government lied, Chengdu has way more than 7.7 mil. Chongqing has significantly smaller but only the urban area. All of the Ruhr doesn't count as urban but instead something like megacity or metropolis
Oh yes Jakarta has physically merged into surrounding former-satellites and the Jabodetabek metropolis now counts 28 million at the least, though the suburbs stretch far beyond that even.
Oh yep, also for all the people moaning about inconsistencies in the US counts, basically US uses a different measure to other global cities, one based on commuting habits (as low as 10% of the population of a satellite town or county commuting to the next county will get them counted into the larger city) rather than the contiguous extent of a city and its suburbs. In effect it inflates the US figures even beyond the sprawl. The real contiguous count for NYC for example is really about 18-19 million rather than the 22 million, enacted a couple of years ago and that doubled the size of the area counted to include numerous small satellite towns and vast swathes of empty rural areas. These counts are called metropolitan areas, or CSAs or MCSAs.
-But don't tar all the cities with the same inflation, for example Washington DC is contiguously merged with Baltimore thanks to the sprawl. I think the count although not as high as 8 million still makes it 6 million anyhoo.
Thanks for your insightful comment. I hear so many complaints mostly because people don't understand the difference between city proper and urban area. I think you're probably giving most of the complainers too much credit. In any case, I am not a demographer. I just choose a single source which tries to provide a consistent methodology for the whole world. In this case, my source is citypopulation.de. I doubt any single other source does better, and I'm not knowledgeable enough to pick and choose between various sources.
forgot to mention, the biggest metro statistic inflation on the list is Los Angeles. The city is really about 12.8 million, increased to 15 million if you count the commuter habits, and increased all the way 17 million if you loosen up those commuter criteria even more, including large areas of desert, scrub and mountain. Double that and you get over 18 million in an area the size of a small country, say Scotland, Jordan or Serbia, with the actual urban area a fraction of it. The NYC area count is even larger. The commuting criteria are so loose now that for the town or area to be included they do not even need to commute to the central city, merely the next town or county along, which creates a hop-a-long effect (and as low as 10% of that town's population for the other 90% to be counted).
The US is the only country to base it's counts on commuting habits, if other cities round the world would do the same places like Istanbul, Beijing, Cairo would increase to well over 20 million etc
Exactly zupermaus, if these geographic sample sizes were used in China the entire Pearl River Delta could be counted as one city, with a population approaching 100 million.
It's cute that you blast this while defending the numbers you use for the US. The CSA numbers used in this quiz certainly do not represent "one continuous urban area".
Plus, Chongqing is historically a major city in Sichuan, I suspect China converted the city and surrounding valleys as a special municipality just to face less administrative hurdles in building the Three Gorges Dam. They're not called "direct-controlled municipalities" for nothing, after all...
Chongqing is the biggest. His urban area is 20.000.000 but its municipal's area it's more than Canton, otherwise Shangai, Guangzhou, Taipei ecc. are smaller than here shows.
Damn I am good. Forgot ALL ABOUT LONDON! (also Paris and Istanbul, but...). How can anyone non-Chinese manage to get all the Chinese cities right? Kudos.
A European-country-sized area is included in the statistics for Chongqing municipality. Only a small minority of that number actually live in the city.
This may not be helpful a year and a half later, but in short: yes. That 8 million figure is only the five boroughs. This figure includes the vast sprawl beyond that, both in New York and New Jersey. Same with all of these cities.
Guangzhou-Foshan is now considered the biggest city in the world as of this year, with 41 million, as its just merged contiguously with Shenzhen-Dongguan (you can check it out on Google Earth). These 4 cities have grown so quickly they're now one continuous mass (not to be confused with a CSA or megalopolis).
I'm surprised Shenzhen dropped off the list. Did some of the districts merge with Guangzhou? So we trade that and Philly for Xiamen and Shantu... Neither of those was familiar to me but I'll remember them now.
German cities are very decentralised. Instead of having one massive city like London/Paris and lots of small cities, Germany has lots of medium sized cities.
This update I missed Lima, Xiamen (which is on my History by Letter - X quiz... shame), Shantou, and Shenyang. Not as good as my last performance. Never would have thought of Shantou.
Such as? I don't think Dakar, Abidjan, Accra, Kano, Ibadan or any of the other possibilities are that big, even if defined as loosely as the source sometimes does.
West like in west coast, and Luanda, my first thought, has now made the list. Abidjan for sure will not be too far off, once we get some proper estimates. We have no idea how many people actually live in these cities, and we usually grossly underestimate them.
Why are so many people asking to allow the misspelling "Sao Paolo"? LOL. Is there somwhere in the world that they actually spell it this way? Should I ask for Londres, Pequim and Nova Iorque?
Yes. I was in Bengaluru last month and that really is its name! Bangalore, Bombay and Calcutta were renamed to Bengaluru, Mumbai and Kolkata between 1995 and 2006. For consistency's sake, all three new names should appear as answers here.
Guys this list is for the continuous, contiguous urban area. As in all urban areas that are joined and conjoined to each other continuously.
Thus it ignores 'city proper' populations (that's the count of people within the official city boundaries). For example the City of San Francisco is only 800,000 but it continues well past these boundaries as one large urban area of 7-8 million.
It also tries to ignore 'agglomerations' or 'CSA' counts which lumps separated cities and towns together -these usually get counted together as one due to proximity or commuting habits. Truth be told some CSA counts have slipped through into here such as NYC's inflated figure (it really should be below 20 million, but gets an extra million or two by doubling its catchment size that takes in smaller communities in large tracts of open farmland and forest). Likewise as people have ponited out Boston is also a misnomer, a 4.7 million urban area that draws in 8 million via its 'commuter' belt.
Additionally there are some citiies here that have conjoined into each other - as in they are physically merged without a need to inflate via commuting habits or proximity. One can walk on urban roads with dense, continuous buildings (read: urbanity) on either side from one city to the next. These fully merged cities include San Francisco-Oakland, Washington DC- Baltimore, Tokyo-Yokohma and of course Guangzhou-Shenzhen.
I'm still amazed that San Francisco metro is one of those places where the core city (San Francisco) is actually not the largest in the Urban Area anymore - that title goes to San Jose. Yet for historical purposes, San Francisco will remain the core city. Brussels is another example, where the core is not the largest city in the urban area.
I've seen this occasionally come up, including in the comments section here. For those wondering - Shenzhen is now contiguous with Guangzhou and Dongguan as well as a host of smaller cities in the Pearl River Delta area. Hong Kong is not included in this not just because it is an SAR and has a border separating it, but also because most of the New Territories (i.e. the northern part of the HKSAR) is sparsely populated. Of HKSAR's 1000+ sq km, only about 15% is urbanised - large areas like the Saikung Peninsula and many outlying islands are devoid of human habitation. For this reason it makes sense to consider HK separately, but include Shenzhen and Dongguan in the Guangzhou figure.
Not really. All the cities appear to be the same. I only gave it a quick once over, but the order seems to be the same too. Only difference is the populations have changed slightly.
Many of the other quizzes do accept "Saigon" instead of "Ho Chi Minh City". When you visit Vietnam most of the Vietnamese refer to it as "Saigon", although Communist Party members tend to insist upon its formal name of "Ho Chi Minh City."
42 correct. I have only been to 8. 34 cities correct which I have never visited. Good, right? ... I WAS BORN AND RAISED IN BOSTON AND MISSED IT!!! I MISSED MY HOMETOWN!!!
I'm a little confused. As far as I know Tokyo is the largest city in the world and definitely not Guangzhou, which has a population of 14 million. Also, Xiamen is a very small city with a population of 3.5 million. There also are a lot more cities that have way too much population as shown, which is how I only got 50/50 on my fifth try.
Some of the numbers in this quiz are beyond bizarre. The supposed source, citypopulation.de, lists the urban area population of Boston as 4.2 million (not 7.5 million - which is larger than the state of Massachusetts). This makes Boston the 10th largest U.S. urban area, well behind Dallas, Houston, Philly, Phoenix and others. San Francisco isn't in the top 10. Seriously, please accurately reflect the sources you cite.
An "agglomeration" is not a technical demographic term. In the Boston case, to get to 7.55 million, you have to include the entire populations of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
That's not an urban count, but takes in outlying towns also that lie within its jurisdiction (much like US metros). The contiguous city count for Harbin is 5.3 million.
49/50. Got Shantou... missed Beijing. Thirty seconds remaining and trying to work out which giant, 20 million plus metropolis I've missed. Was quite sure I'd already entered Beijing. Almost missed Ho Chi Minh, because I typed Saigon (which is how most people actually from there still refer to it) and it wasn't accepted.
Nowhere can I find a source that states Xiamen has 10 million people. Even the source for this quiz shows an urban population of less than 4 million people. I have visited and that city is nowhere near that population. It isn't even the biggest city in Fujian Province.
It is the informal name that Vietnamese generally use, more so than Ho Chi Minh City. A very different situation to one where very few people still call St Petersburg Leningrad.
GZ is the centre of the Pearl River City, which recently formed when GZ (14 million) connected up to Shenzhen (12 million) via Dongguan (8 million). 3 smaller cities also on the sides. The World Bank declared it the worlds biggest single, contiguous city in 2015. You can walk from one end to the other on city streets surrounded by buildings - or catch a commercial flight even.
Inaccurate data and information. Metro Manila population is only 21 million and that includes other provinces. Please check your source. And stop spreading fake information.
Houston is the fourth largest U.S. city and it is more populous than DC. I’ve been in DC the past 20 years and lived in Texas for more than 33 years before that. My Census contacts work in a dangerous area here and provide many federal employees with accurate data.
I don't personally know any census employees, nor have I ever lived in Texas or DC. However, I don't believe that this matters. The source of the quiz is listed, and if you go there, they list their sources as well. Ultimately, this data is coming from the U.S. government.
The horrible website used as data for these quizzes utilizes broad "combined statistical areas" for populations, instead of more accurate "metropolitan statistical areas." So, one "city" in the U.S. can really cover most of an entire state's population.
The difference between CSAs and MSAs is just 10% employment interchange. 25% being the standard for the latter and 15% the standard for the former. Part of the reason why American cities can end up so huge is because in reality American urban areas are actually much more spread out than urban areas in much of the rest of the world. Americans own cars, they commute long distances to work, and cities in the USA are built with this in mind and realistically every major American city includes the sprawling network of suburbs around it. Often when two large cities in the USA are close together they start functioning as one large city, with substantial economic overlap and large numbers of people commuting back and forth between them for work in both directions. MSA and CSA designations both reflect this in roughly the same way, though the latter uses looser standards of connectivity and therefore ends up creating much larger areas.
It's entirely accurate. You just don't understand it. It's also not an estimate. It's the exact figure that they use. To include an area in a city's CSA it should have 15% employment interchange with the city (15% of the population commutes to work in one direction or the other). To include an area in a city's MSA it should have 25% employment interchange. This is a difference in 10% employment interchange. And it results in a significantly smaller area.
It's not that simple. For example, Washington DC's combined statistical area is 7,055,340, while the MSA is only 4,168,621 - that's a big difference. The MSA is a much more accurate measure of "city" population (at least in the U.S.).
On my latest go at the latest version of this quiz I got 48/50, missing Chennai and Luanda. This despite having hung out with someone from Chennai just two nights ago. Oh well. It seems everyone of these larger list quizzes, there's always one obvious answer I miss. At least this time it was't Beijing like on a past attempt.
The list cites the 2019 version of the website, but that version is no longer accessible - only the 2020 version. I suggest updating the quiz to match. It involves a few citiies changing places, and removed Riyadh in favour of Shenyang. Also, it gives local names and English names. Some of the English names are accepted, some are not. E.g., the list gives Tianjin=Tientsin, but this quiz rejects Tientsin. At the same time, it the quiz accepts Calcutta (=Kolkata). I suggest that all English names given be accepted alternates.
looks like this 8.6 million figure is including the entire gigantic Washington/Baltimore urban area. Which itself is just part of the sprawling megalopolis that runs all the way from northern Virginia up through Boston on the east coast of the United States.
I'm ashamed that I missed Chennai. I was thinking of all the Indian cities, and I somehow forgot chennai.
Chengdu urban pop is: 7.7 million, Chongqing at least 7 million, Hangzhou-Shaoxing 8.2 million. Shenzhen has recently joined up with the city of Dongguan in the north (check it out on Google Earth) - and arguably Guangzhou though a river divides them. Shenzhen-Dongguan counts 18.3 million. Dhaka is now 15 million (contiguous city not just the city limits). The Ruhr city in Germany of the merged cities of Essen, Dortmund, Duisburg, Bochum and Dusseldorf counts contiguously 8 million.
-But don't tar all the cities with the same inflation, for example Washington DC is contiguously merged with Baltimore thanks to the sprawl. I think the count although not as high as 8 million still makes it 6 million anyhoo.
The US is the only country to base it's counts on commuting habits, if other cities round the world would do the same places like Istanbul, Beijing, Cairo would increase to well over 20 million etc
I got all the hard Chinese cities that I just recently new of so it was hard and I missed out the more obvious ones like Bangalore and Kinshasa
Missed San Francisco
*Facepalm*
Does anyone know why?
Thus it ignores 'city proper' populations (that's the count of people within the official city boundaries). For example the City of San Francisco is only 800,000 but it continues well past these boundaries as one large urban area of 7-8 million.
It also tries to ignore 'agglomerations' or 'CSA' counts which lumps separated cities and towns together -these usually get counted together as one due to proximity or commuting habits. Truth be told some CSA counts have slipped through into here such as NYC's inflated figure (it really should be below 20 million, but gets an extra million or two by doubling its catchment size that takes in smaller communities in large tracts of open farmland and forest). Likewise as people have ponited out Boston is also a misnomer, a 4.7 million urban area that draws in 8 million via its 'commuter' belt.
DC and San Francisco jump it in CSA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongqing
Also Baghdad, 8.765 million has swollen with refugees, up from 7 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad
and Xian, 8.55 million
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi%27an#Demographics
I missed Nagoya and some Chinese city.
I don't get how D.C is on this list I have been to d.c several times and it is not big
Quizmaster, please update the statistics of the city to make it better
Great JetPunk!!!
Corona Virus-I'm gonna end this town's whole career
Chengdu 11,940,000 (2019)
This adds up to 46,792,200, which is around 46,700,000