How We Memorized Every 1M City - Part 1

We hope that this blog will be helpful to people who are working on or interested in memorizing large quantities of abstract information.

DISCLAIMER: this blog is based on 2022 citypopulation.de populations. Some cities may differ from the current quiz (2021 populations).

Parentheses denote groups of cities that can be memorized together.

Grouping cities by country is a basic method of memorization. Here is a list of countries that (we think) take minimal effort to memorize (most of these can be answered by looking at the map):

Afghanistan: Kabul

Algeria: Algiers, Oran

Angola: Luanda, Benguela

Argentina: Buenos Aires, (Córdoba, Rosario, Mendoza), San Miguel de Tucumán

Armenia: Yerevan

Australia: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide

Austria: Vienna

Azerbaijan: Baku

Bahrain: Manama

Bangladesh: Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna

Belarus: Minsk

Belgium: Brussels, Antwerp

Benin: Cotonou

Bolivia: Santa Cruz, La Paz, Cochabamba

Bulgaria: Sofia

Burkina Faso: Ouagadougou, Bobo-Dioulasso

Cambodia: Phnom Penh

Cameroon: Yaoundé, Douala

Canada: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, (Calgary, Edmonton), Ottawa

Central African Republic: Bangui

Chad: N'Djamena

Chile: Santiago, Valparaíso

D.R. Congo: Kinshasa, Lubumbashi, Mbuji-Mayi, (Kananga, Kisangani)

Republic of the Congo: Brazzaville, Pointe-Noire

Costa Rica: San José

Cuba: Havana

Czech Republic: Prague

Denmark: Copenhagen

Dominican Republic: Santo Domingo

Ecuador: Guayaquil, Quito

Egypt: Cairo, Alexandria

El Salvador: San Salvador

France: Paris, (Lyon, Lille), Marseille, Bordeaux, Toulouse

Gambia: Banjul

Georgia: Tbilisi

Ghana: Accra, Kumasi

Greece: Athens

Guatemala: Guatemala City

Guinea: Conakry

Haiti: Port-au-Prince

Honduras: San Pedro Sula, Tegucigalpa

Hungary: Budapest

Iraq: Baghdad, Basra, (Mosul, Erbil), Kirkuk

Ireland: Dublin

Israel: Tel Aviv, Jerusalem

Italy: Milan, Naples, Rome, Turin

Ivory Coast: Abidjan

Jordan: Amman

Kazakhstan: Almaty, Nur-Sultan, Shymkent

Kenya: Nairobi, Mombasa

North Korea: Pyongyang

Kuwait: Kuwait City

Kyrgyzstan: Bishkek

Lebanon: Beirut

Liberia: Monrovia

Libya: Tripoli

Madagascar: Antananarivo

Malawi: Lilongwe

Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur, George Town

Mali: Bamako

Mauritania: Nouakchott

Mongolia: Ulaanbaatar

Morocco: Casablanca, Rabat, Fes, (Agadir, Tangier), Marrakesh

Mozambique: Maputo

Myanmar: Yangon, Mandalay

Nepal: Kathmandu

Netherlands: Rotterdam, Amsterdam

New Zealand: Auckland

Nicaragua: Managua

Niger: Niamey

Norway: Oslo

Oman: Muscat

Palestine: Gaza

Panama: Panama City

Paraguay: Asunción

Peru: Lima, Arequipa

Philippines: Manila, Cebu, Davao, Angeles

Poland: Warsaw, Katowice

Portugal: Lisbon, Porto

Qatar: Doha

Romania: Bucharest

Rwanda: Kigali

Saudi Arabia: Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, (Mecca, Medina)

Senegal: Dakar, Touba

Serbia: Belgrade

Sierra Leone: Freetown

Singapore: Singapore

Somalia: Mogadishu

South Africa: Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth

Spain: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Málaga

Sri Lanka: Colombo

Sudan: Khartoum

Sweden: Stockholm

Switzerland: Zürich

Syria: Damascus, Aleppo

Taiwan: (Taipei, Taichung, Tainan), Kaohsiung

Tajikistan: Dushanbe

Tanzania: Dar es Salaam

Thailand: Bangkok, Chonburi

Togo: Lomé

Tunisia: Tunis, Sousse

Turkmenistan: Ashgabat

Uganda: Kampala

Ukraine: Kiev, Kharkiv, (Donetsk, Dnipro), Odessa

United Arab Emirates: Dubai, Abu Dhabi

Uruguay: Montevideo

Uzbekistan: Tashkent

Venezuela: Caracas, (Maracaibo, Maracay), Valencia, Barquisimeto

Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Da Nang

Yemen: Sana'a

Zambia: Lusaka

Zimbabwe: Harare

Here are also some alternate methods of memorization:

D. R. Congo: (Kinshasa, Kisangani, Kananga), Lubumbashi, Mbuji-Mayi

France (in a circle around Paris): Paris, Lyon, Nice, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Lille

Iraq: (Baghdad, Basra), (Mosul, Erbil, Kirkuk)

Kazakhstan: (Almaty, Astana), Shymkent

Philippines: Can choose to memorize Angeles with Los Angeles

DISCLAIMER: Melbourne, Australia and United States, and Valencia, Venezuela and Spain both are accepted for a single answer. Don't try to get confused with the type-ins.

We hope that this blog will help people in memorizing all 1M cities. If you realized that we skipped some countries, don't worry! Two more parts will be coming soon.

If you would like to practice the quiz with 2022 populations, here is the HTML file for a quiz. To use, download the file from Drive. Find the file in your file navigator and click on the dropdown next to "Open" and open the file in a browser.

To change type-ins, open the file in a text editor such as Notepad. There should be a large block of text at the top which contains the type-ins. Be sure to note that regex does not work on this quiz, so you must type the city exactly the same as the type-in to get it correct.