City Population 2022 Agglomeration Update
First published: Wednesday March 2nd, 2022
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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.
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 |
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
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
- 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
Following the addition of these 6 megacities (in green), here is a map of where the megacities are:
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.
I find it hilarious that they found another 20M people in Guangzhou, but also surprising that Tokyo is increasing, despite Japan decreasing
All together, the data collection, process, and calculation; and then doing the blog, maybe 6 or 7 hours in total.
"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!
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.
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.
- 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
well i'll anyway have to cover it in my series nowWarangal: Second biggest city in Telangana, and home to the Warangal fort, capital of the medieval Kakatiya dynasty.
Good blog as always :)
Congrats to the six new megacities (Wuhan annoys me, but congrats anyway!)
which is anyway inactive