Is Guangzhou bigger than Tokyo?

+1

Many Quizzes on Jetpunk insist that Guangzhou is the biggest city in the world by population with approximately 45.6M people. Does it really have that many though? Jetpunk includes Foshan, in the Guangzhou metropolitan area. If you google Foshan it is a city in China within the Guangdong province. So maybe Jetpunk is getting Guangdong and Guangzhou confused? It isn't though because the Population of Guangdong is approximately 113M which is far more than Jetpunk insists the population of Guangzhou is. If you google Guangzhou Metropolitan Area Population 2020 it says it is 13M. This isn't nearly as much as 45M. If you google the population of the Foshan Metropolitan Area, it says it is 7.3M. Even if you add those together to get 20.3M it isn't nearly as much as Jetpunk insists the population of Guangzhou is. This is just below the current Population of Beijing, which is 20.4M according to World Population Review.

So maybe, Jetpunk includes another city close to Guangzhou as part of the city. Two other major ones close by are Dongguan and Shenzhen. The Population of Dongguan is 7.4M. If you add that you get 27.7M. Then, if you add the population of Shenzhen, (which is 12.3M), it gets to exactly 40M. Which is just above Tokyo's population. This still isn't 45M though. So maybe Jetpunk includes some other small neighbouring cities such as Zhongshang. The population of Zhongshan is 2.9M which would add up to get 42.9M. Another small neighbouring city is Zhaoqing, which has a population of approximately 1M people. This brings the total up to 43.9M people. Qingyuan, one of the last neigbouring cities, has a small population of 700,000. If you add this to 43.9M you get 44.6M, 1M below Jetpunk says the population of Guangzhou is. Probably the last small neighbouring city is Huizhou, which has a population of 2.6M. If you add this you get 47.2M.This is very close to what Jetpunk says the Population of Guangzhou is. So lets just say this:

Jetpunk includes Foshan, Dongguan, Shenzhen, Zhongshan, Zhaoqing, Qingyuan and Huizhou as part of the Guangzhou metropolitan area. All of the above are their own cities so I would definitely say that Tokyo is more populous than Guangzhou.

What do you think?

46 Comments
+2
Level 52
Jan 2, 2021
Yes. It's bigger.
+1
Level 31
Jan 2, 2021
Really? Have you read the whole blog? - I only submitted it six minutes ago.
+1
Level 31
Jan 2, 2021
Foshan, Dongguan, Shenzhen, Zhongshang, Zhaoqing, Qingyuan and Huizhou are their own cities.
+1
Level 66
Jan 2, 2021
They’re all connected in one built-up urban area with Guangzhou. Most quizzes use urban area. By city proper, Guangzhou has around 11 million people.
+1
Level 66
Jan 2, 2021
Metropolitan area is also different from urban area.
+2
Level 55
Jan 2, 2021
Well, you could also divide Tokyo into Yohokama, Fukishima, kanto etc. So I don't get your point here.
+3
Level 52
Jan 2, 2021
Metro Areas use subdivisions and other tricky things, so they're really whatever the government decides. We use urban area for Guangzhou, which is the urban buildup, so a government cannot decide what it is.

Also don't compare apples to oranges, we use citypopulation.de on JetPunk

+2
Level 77
Jan 4, 2021
^

It is citypopulation.de that groups together Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other smaller cities, not JetPunk. cp.de might be the only website that lists Guangzhou's population as including Shenzhen and the other cities, not JetPunk. JetPunk just agrees and rolls with it.

+1
Level 31
Jan 4, 2021
Yes but Jetpunk is choosing that source because that is the one it agrees with
+1
Level 77
Jan 4, 2021
"Jetpunk includes Foshan, in the Guangzhou metropolitan area... So maybe Jetpunk is getting Guangdong and Guangzhou confused?"

Yes, but you keep referring as if it is JetPunk who groups these together which, as I explained above, is citypopulation.de that groups it and not JetPunk. Yes, the Guangzhou agglomeration that cp.de and JP does include Foshan, but it is more of an agglomeration than confusing it with a province.

Let me take another example. The Birmingham-Wolverhampton (aka West Midlands) agglomeration extends into Worcestershire and Staffordshire, despite Birmingham staying in the West Midlands county. Why? Because the urban area continues out of the county. It may include a town that is 15 miles south of it, but that is because the urban area hasn't stopped.

+1
Level 31
Jan 5, 2021
Yes but Jetpunk is choosing citypopulation.de as a source and is therefore agreeing with. If I am making a quiz and I need a source and find one which I don't think is correct I will find a different one. Jetpunk would choose a different source if it didn't agree with citypopulation.de
+1
Level 31
Jan 5, 2021
Wolverhampton is one of Birmingham's satellite cities and I have never heard anywhere that they are in the same agglomeration.
+1
Level 77
Jan 6, 2021
Check citypopulation.de here. (The agglomeration page is here.)
+1
Level 31
Jan 2, 2021
We don't always use citypopulation.de on jetpunk
+1
Level 31
Jan 2, 2021
https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/216303/100-biggest-cities-in-europe-with-a-map

we do here

+2
Level 52
Jan 2, 2021
That's urban area, the standard on JetPunk.
+1
Level 31
Jan 2, 2021
sometimes city proper
+1
Level 31
Jan 2, 2021
and here

https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/6121/100-biggest-cities-on-a-world-map

+2
Level 53
Jan 2, 2021
All of the places that you mentioned are separate cities, and that might seem like the most logical way to measure population due to its simplicity. However, to anyone moving through the cities, they all merge into one as there is no non-urban land between them.
+1
Level 31
Jan 2, 2021
like Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto
+1
Level 31
Jan 2, 2021
and Tokyo and Yokohama
+1
Level 31
Jan 2, 2021
https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/6121/100-biggest-us-cities-on-a-map

city proper

+3
Level 52
Jan 2, 2021
Notice how it isn't featured.
+2
Level 66
Jan 2, 2021
Most quizzes use urban area. City proper doesn’t always give an accurate representation of the city. For example, you would think that Miami is a big city, right? It has an urban area of 6 million. But city proper, it’s only around 500,000. Also, by city proper, Chongqing has a population of 30 million. Urban area gives an idea of if city limits included all urbanized area around it. City proper limits may be very vague in some countries. Finally, city proper is only accurate in places with reliable censuses, such as the United States and Canada. It’s very hard and maybe impossible to find accurate city proper data for China.
+1
Level 31
Jan 2, 2021
That doesn't mean it is not a good quiz
+1
Level 31
Jan 2, 2021
Does anyone here agree with me and this blog?
+1
Level 52
Jan 2, 2021
Never been to any of these, so I don't know when a city's limits should "end". I see everyone's point. Urban population is the most used as well.
+2
Level 55
Jan 2, 2021
One of my relatives lives in Shenzhen, and it acts like it is a different city. When I went back to Shenzhen a few years ago, it was very separate from Guangzhou, with its own metro system separate from Guangzhou's own. There is a station in which you can ride a train directly from Shenzhen to Guangzhou, but other than that, the only real way to get to Guangzhou is a 2-hour car/taxi ride.
+1
Level 66
Jan 2, 2021
I wouldn’t agree with Shenzhen being added to Guangzhou, but everything else should.
+1
Level 66
Jan 2, 2021
By city proper, Guangzhou (11 million) is still bigger than Tokyo (9 million).
+1
Level 66
Jan 2, 2021
By your logic then Yokohama shouldn’t be counted in Tokyo’s population either.
+1
Level 31
Jan 2, 2021
You have a point actually
+1
Level 26
Feb 2, 2021
Yes but Tokyo is often considered to include Yokohama, Fukushima etc whereas Guangzhou isn't often considered to include Foshan, Dongguan etc
+1
Level 26
Feb 2, 2021
If you don't clarify whether you mean city proper, urban area or metro area and you google Tokyo Population, it says 37M. If you google Guangzhou population without clarifying these things it says 14M
+1
Level 55
Jan 2, 2021
That's flawed logic because you could divide Tokyo into other small cities too.
+1
Level 52
Jan 2, 2021
How? Do you mean wards of Tokyo?
+1
Level 66
Jan 2, 2021
Yokohama, Chiba, Saitama, Kawasaki, etc.
+1
Level 31
Jan 2, 2021
yes
+1
Level 31
Jan 2, 2021
You're right
+1
Level 51
Jan 2, 2021
Urban Agglomeration
+1
Level 31
Jan 3, 2021
This quiz seems to agree with me.

https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/6121/20-biggest-cities-in-china-on-a-map

+1
Level 77
Jan 4, 2021
The Guangzhou Agglomeration, which has a population of 46,700,000 includes the cities of:

Shēnzhèn - 13,374,300

Guăngzhōu - 13,233,500

Dōngguān - 7,795,800

Fóshān - 7,750,700

Zhōngshān - 2,987,900

Jiāngmén - 1,650,000

This adds up to 46,792,200, which is around 46,700,000

+1
Level 67
Jan 5, 2021
It's Zhongshan, not Zhongshang
+1
Level 31
Jan 5, 2021
Fixed, thanks
+1
Level 65
Jul 31, 2021
lol
+1
Level 55
Jan 3, 2022
Also u said Jet*unk