City Population 2022 Agglomeration Update

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Introduction

The website citypopulation.de has updated its Agglomerations of the World page. This page, which lists all agglomerations (urban areas) in the world with a population of over 1 million, is often used for JetPunk quizzes.


The data used in this blog is sourced from Thomas Brinkhoff: Major Agglomerations of the World, https://www.citypopulation.de/en/world/agglomerations/

Top 15 Agglomerations by Population

These are the top 15 largest agglomerations in the world, and compared to 2021's data.

Rank 2021 Agglom. 2021 Pop. 2022 Agglom. 2022 Pop.
1 Guangzhou 47,600,000 Guangzhou 65,100,000
2 Tokyo 40,500,000 Tokyo 40,700,000
3 Shanghai 34,100,000 Shanghai 39,300,000
4 Jakarta 32,100,000 Delhi 32,400,000
5 Delhi 31,300,000 Jakarta 28,600,000
6 Manila 26,300,000 Manila 26,400,000
7 Mumbai 25,600,000 Mumbai 26,100,000
8 Seoul 25,000,000 Seoul 24,800,000
9 Mexico City 24,500,000 Mexico City 24,700,000
10 São Paulo 22,600,000 New York 23,000,000
11 New York 21,800,000 São Paulo 22,700,000
12 Cairo 21,500,000 Cairo 21,900,000
13 Dhaka 20,300,000 Dhaka 20,900,000
14 Lagos 20,100,000 Lagos 20,700,000
15 Beijing 20,000,000 Beijing 20,500,000

There are a few things we can take from this:

  • The Guangzhou Agglomeration has a large population - its population of 65.1M is larger than Italy, Tanzania, and South Africa. If the Guangzhou Agglomeration were a country, it would be the 23rd most populous in the world, following the United Kingdom and France!
  • Delhi overtook Jakarta to become the fourth largest agglomeration. Also, New York overtook São Paulo to become the tenth largest agglomeration.
  • Jakarta and Seoul were the only two in the top 15 to have lost population.
Guangzhou-Shenzhen (Northern Pearl River Delta) remained as the largest agglomeration in the world, however its increase of 17.5M takes it to over 65M!
Tokyo remained as the second-largest agglomeration, however its growth of 200K was much lower than third place Shanghai.

Top 10 Agglomerations by Population Increase

These are the top 10 agglomerations with the largest population increase.

Rank Agglom. 2021 Pop. 2022 Pop. Change
1 Guangzhou 47,600,000 65,100,000 17,500,000
2 Chengdu 10,000,000 15,200,000 5,200,000
2 Shanghai 34,100,000 39,300,000 5,200,000
4 Changsha 5,050,000 10,000,000 4,950,000
5 Xi'an 7,100,000 11,600,000 4,500,000
6 Hangzhou 8,600,000 12,500,000 3,900,000
6 Xiamen 10,200,000 14,100,000 3,900,000
8 Zhengzhou 5,100,000 8,950,000 3,850,000
9 Ningbo 3,325,000 6,850,000 3,525,000
10 Nanjing 6,700,000 8,850,000 2,150,000

Since all of the top 19 agglomerations by population increase were all in China, here are the top 6 that are not in China.

Rank Agglom. 2021 Pop. 2022 Pop. Change
1 (20) New York 21,800,000 23,000,000 1,200,000
2 (21) Delhi 31,300,000 32,400,000 1,100,000
3 (24) Accra 5,200,000 6,150,000 950,000
4 (36) Dhaka 20,300,000 20,900,000 600,000
4 (36) Kinshasa 13,900,000 14,500,000 600,000
4 (36) Lagos 20,100,000 20,700,000 600,000
Chengdu had the second-largest population change of any agglomeration, increasing by over 5 million!
New York had the largest population change of an agglomeration outside of China.

Added Agglomerations

These are the agglomerations which were added to the Agglomerations list this year.

  • Beihai, China - 1,080,000
  • Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso - 1,010,000
  • Cancún, Mexico - 1,000,000
  • Dazhou, China - 1,220,000
  • Ezhou, China - 1,150,000
  • Fresno, United States - 1,000,000
  • Heze, China - 1,370,000
  • Honolulu, United States - 1,010,000
  • Huludao, China - 1,010,000
  • Huzhou, China - 1,580,000
  • Jinhua, China - 1,420,000
  • Liaocheng, China - 1,110,000
  • Morelia, Mexico - 1,000,000
  • Oshogbo, Nigeria - 1,020,000
  • Qujing, China - 1,020,000
  • Shaoyang, China - 1,080,000
  • Shiyan, China - 1,020,000
  • Taizhou, Jiangsu, China - 1,390,000
  • Warangal, India - 1,020,000
  • Xinyang, China - 1,290,000
  • Yulin, China - 1,480,000
  • Zhaoqing, China - 1,200,000
Cancún in Mexico was added to the Agglomerations list.
Honolulu in Hawaii was also added to the Agglomerations list.

Removed Agglomerations

These are the agglomerations which were removed from the Agglomerations list this year.

Agglomerations in brackets, such as (Guangzhou), indicate that the removed agglomeration was added to this agglomeration.

  • Benxi, China
  • Changshu, China - (Shanghai)
  • Cixi, China - (Ningbo)
  • Florence, Italy
  • Hechuan, China
  • Huizhou, China - (Guangzhou)
  • Jiangjin, China
  • Jingzhou, China
  • Ma'anshan, China - (Nanjing)
  • Pingxiang, China
  • Putian, China - (Xi'an)
  • Suzhou, Anhui, China
  • Tengzhou, China
  • Xiangtan, China - (Changsha)
  • Yingkou, China
  • Zhuzhou, China - (Changsha)
  • Zigong, China

Megacities

- A megacity is a city or agglomeration with over 10 million people.
- In the 2021 Major Agglomerations data, there were 39 megacities
- In the 2022 Major Agglomerations data, there were 45 megacities.

These are the new megacities:
  • Bogota, with 10,000,000 people
  • Changsha, with 10,000,000 people
  • Chongqing, with 10,100,000 people
  • Hangzhou, with 12,500,000 people
  • Wuhan, with 10,800,000 people
  • Xi'an, with 11,600,000 people
5 of the 6 new megacities are in China, which had a lot of growth in its largest cities for this data update. Bogota, the capital of Colombia, also reached 10 million people.

Following the addition of these 6 megacities (in green), here is a map of where the megacities are:

Megacities-of-the-World

Summary

To summarise the main points:

- China had a lot of growth to their agglomerations, also with 15 new agglomerations being added. Additionally, China was also home to 5 of the 6 new megacities for this update. A large contribution to China's prevalence of growth is due to previous underestimations, which census data has fixed.

- Some of China's agglomerations have also decreased in population, with 16 agglomerations being removed due to population loss or grouping of agglomerations.

- The top 15 agglomerations largely remained unchanged in rankings, but Jakarta / Delhi and Sao Paulo / New York were swapped. The population for the top 15 agglomerations is mainly increasing, however Jakarta and Seoul did decrease.

- There were also some new agglomerations not in China, however these only made up 7 of the 24 new agglomerations.

+11
Level 70
Mar 2, 2022
Unreliable chinese census data moment
+9
Level 68
Mar 2, 2022
A truly wonderful blog, insightful yet stylish.

I find it hilarious that they found another 20M people in Guangzhou, but also surprising that Tokyo is increasing, despite Japan decreasing

+4
Level 64
Mar 2, 2022
This is absolutely fascinating, how long did it take to put together?
+3
Level 77
Mar 2, 2022
I saved all the 2021 data two months ago, and I kept checking every day since as to when the update would be.

All together, the data collection, process, and calculation; and then doing the blog, maybe 6 or 7 hours in total.

+3
Level 63
Mar 2, 2022
Incredible blog, Fuse! It's just what the RUB needed lol. I can't believe how Guangzhou grew by 17 million in just a year. China really is growing very quickly.
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Level 77
Mar 2, 2022
It's not necessary the growth of Guangzhou Agglomeration which caused the 17.5M increase. I saw on Twitter earlier that someone asked the question, and this is what the Citypopulation Twitter account replied with:

"The results of the 2020 population census show that the population and especially the urban population in the Northern Pearl River Delta were significantly underestimated by previous official estimates (or in other words: we have to be careful with Chinese statistics)."

So it seems that the citypopulation.de figures for Guangzhou were largely underestimated!

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Level 63
Mar 3, 2022
Ah, I see :)
+3
Level 66
Mar 2, 2022
Amazing blog Fuse! You beat me to it (I was about to do a similar one myself). Needless to say, this is much better than mine would have been. I noticed the update yesterday, and then studied mostly Chinese cities for the rest of the day!

One thing though, I could have sworn Honolulu was a new inclusion in the 2021 updates, not the 2022 ones. I may be wrong though.

+1
Level 77
Mar 2, 2022
Thank you :D

I've just checked the Wayback Machine, and it turns out that Honolulu was included in the 2020 data, removed for the 2021 data, and re-added in this 2022 data.

+1
Level 66
Mar 2, 2022
Ok, my bad. I wish I had access to the Wayback!
+1
Level 65
Mar 3, 2022
You don't?
+1
Level 66
Jun 21, 2022
It's blocked at my school as an unsecure website. I don't think I've tried it at home.
+5
Level 71
Mar 2, 2022
Was quite surprised about Jakarta losing 4 million people, as well as New York having the largest increase of any non-Chinese city. Cool blog
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Level 66
Mar 2, 2022
Same, although Indonesia are moving their capital from Jakarta because of the flooding issue. Still surprising they lost that many people though!
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Level 43
Mar 2, 2022
Brilliant work! Hopefully, we’ll see Belo Horizonte joining the list. São Paulo looks to be growing in a slow rate in comparison to other cities. Recently SP was ninth, in 2021 they were tenth, and were overpassed by NYC this year. I can see BH is next to the 6m on metro area. Hopefully we’ll be higher! I think the data for Brazil are overall a bit static. And China always having 10m everywhere lol.
+8
Level 67
Mar 2, 2022
Brief intro on those "new" Chinese cities and what they are famous for:

- Beihai - infamous for scams and pyramid schemes

- Dazhou - natural gas fields

- Ezhou - origin of "E" as the abbrev. of Hubei province

- Heze - paeony flower

- Huludao - submarine base

- Huzhou - silk

- Jinhua - cured ham

- Liaocheng - ass-hide glue (TCM)

- Qujing - source of Pearl River

- Shaoyang - entrepreneurs and migrants

- Shiyan - Wudang Mountain, Taoism and kung-fu (rival to Shaolin)

- Taizhou - ginkgo

- Xinyang - Maojian (hair-tip) green tea

- Yulin - infamous for its annual dog meat festival

- Zhaoqing - giant sticky rice dumplings

+1
Level 75
Mar 2, 2022
Calabash Island
+2
Level 65
Mar 3, 2022
And for my part, here's a brief introduction of the one new Indian city well i'll anyway have to cover it in my series now

Warangal: Second biggest city in Telangana, and home to the Warangal fort, capital of the medieval Kakatiya dynasty.

+4
Level 75
Mar 2, 2022
At the point I feel like the entire of China becoming one massive conurbation wouldn't be impossible. It would be funny to see 1.4 billion people in one agglomeration on cp.de someday.

Good blog as always :)

+1
Level 59
Mar 2, 2022
well China is getting closer with a 35% population in agglomerations. (511,560,000 people)
+4
Level 73
Mar 3, 2022
Amazing blog Fuse! Just the one we needed to combat the present dull state of RUB! Anyway, the agglomeration one was especially interesting with 19 from the top 20 being Chinese cities.

Congrats to the six new megacities (Wuhan annoys me, but congrats anyway!)

+3
Level 66
Mar 3, 2022
Time to learn all of these again
+1
Level 77
Mar 3, 2022
Good luck!
+2
Level 65
Mar 3, 2022
Amazing! I'm glad there's only one new Indian one, mainly so I don't have to do a lot more for my series lol which is anyway inactive
+2
Level 57
Mar 3, 2022
What a great blog Fuse! Keep it up!