Demographia World Urban Areas

[Pages:103]Demographia World

Urban Areas

19th Annual: 202308

DEMOGRAPHIA WORLD URBAN AREAS

(Built Up Urban Areas or World Agglomerations)

19th ANNUAL EDITION August 2023

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Demographia World Urban Areas:Technical Introduction

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SUMMARY TABLE

Schedule 1: World Summary: Built-Up Urban Areas Over 500,000

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URBAN AREA LISTINGS

Schedule 2: Largest Built-Up Urban Areas in the World

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Schedule 3: Built-Up Urban Areas Ranked by Land Area (Urban Footprint)

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Schedule 4: Built-Up Urban Areas Ranked by Urban Population Density

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Schedule 5: Alphabetical List of Built-Up Urban Areas

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COVER PHOTOGRAPH

Barcelona Urban Area, which stretches to include suburban areas of Valles Oriental, across the Serra de Collserola mountain range from the core city of Barcelona.



? Copyright Notice All rights reserved Permission granted to copy or republish only without alteration of any data, name of urban area or geography.

2023.08.31 Edition

Demographia World Urban Areas

(Built-Up Urban Areas or Urban Agglomerations) 19th Annual Edition: August 2023

TECHNICAL INTRODUCTION

CONTENTS 1. Introduction 2. Highlights: 2023 Edition 3. Built-Up Urban Areas: Definitional Issues 4. Population and Land Area Estimation 5. Specific Built-Up Urban Areas 6. Caution: Trend Analysis 7. Background: Demographia World Urban Areas 8. Cover Illustration: Barcelona Urban Area 9. Comments and Suggestions

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1. DEMOGRAPHIA WORLD URBAN AREAS: INTRODUCTION

Demographia World Urban Areas (Built-up Urban Areas or Urban Agglomerations) is the only annually published inventory of population, corresponding land area and population density for urban areas with more than 500,000 population. Unlike some other regularly produced lists, Demographia World Urban Areas applies a generally consistent definition to built-up urban areas.1 Urban footprint data is reported without regard to political boundaries that are generally associated with metropolitan areas or sub-national jurisdictions. A useful definition was supplied by Alex Blei, of the NYU (New York University) Stern Marron Institute Urban Expansion Project, who described urban areas as contiguous or mostly contiguous built-up

1 Some other urban agglomeration lists mix metropolitan areas, municipalities (parts of metropolitan areas) and urban areas (built up urban areas or agglomerations). None of these lists include urban land area data. The United Nations list is unique in providing notes that clarify the nature of its each of its listings (core cities, metropolitan areas, urban areas and others).

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areas that "function as an integrated economic unit, linked together by commuting flows, social and economic interactions."2

Demographia World Urban Areas contains population, land area and population density for the nearly 1,000 identified built-up urban areas in the world with 500,000 or more population. The total population of these urban areas is estimated at 2.36 billion, representing 52 percent of the world urban population.3

2: HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 2023 EDITION

The new decade brings updated census counts, though some censuses have been delayed due to the pandemic.

Largest Built-Up Urban Areas

There are 44 megacities (urban areas of at least 10 million population), the same number as last year. However, new estimates resulted in Luanda becoming a megacity, and Hyderabad (India) dropping below the 10 million criteria. There are a total of 100 urban areas with at least 5,000,000 residents, up from 97 last year.

The difference in population between Tokyo-Yokohama and Jakarta, the world's largest and second largest built-up urban areas narrowed markedly, as base populations from 2020 were lower than projected in Tokyo-Yokohama and higher (37.8 million) in Jakarta (35.4 million). Tokyo-Yokohama now is estimated to have a population 2.4 million greater than Jakarta. Jakarta extended its lead over third ranked Delhi (31.2 million) to 4.0 million, and Delhi's lead over fourth ranked Guangzhou-Foshan (27.1 million) was 4.1 million. Guangzhou-Foshan is now China's leading built-up urban area, as a result of a very substantial population increase in the second half of the 2010s and population controls in Shanghai (24.0 million), which had been China's largest urban area for decades. Mumbai (25.2 million), which had been predicted to become the world's largest urban area a decade or so ago, is now estimated to have six million fewer residents than Delhi.

Seoul-Incheon is only the second high-income urban area in the most populous ten, ranking 8th with 23.2 million residents. Fast growing Cairo ranks 9th, with 22.9 million residents, while Mexico City is the 10th largest, at 21.9 million residents.

Schedule 1 provides a summary of urbanization by continent and geography.

The Meaning of 57% Urban

In recent years, the world has become more than one-half urban for the first time in history (57 percent in 20224). Yet, it would be a mistake to believe that the world's urban residents live in settings similar to 5th Avenue in New York or within the fourth ring road of Beijing or in inner Paris, or for that matter in large

2 Jerry Chase (2021), "Geographic Information Systems Support for Mission to the Cities: Determining Options for Quantifying Population and Spatial Boundaries for Urban Agglomerations," Journal of Adventist Mission Studies: Vol. 16: No. 2, 180-202.. 3 Calculated from United Nations data. 4 This data is to be updated after the next release of the United Nations "World Urbanization Prospects."

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urban areas. Virtually all of the world's large urban areas have extensive suburbs of much lower density outside the historic cores that are characterized by higher densities. Moreover, some urban areas that largely developed after post-World War II, with its preponderance of an automobile oriented urban form, have little or no high-density urban core (See: What is a Half-Urban World?5)

Median Resident: In 2022, the median world urban resident6 lives in an urban area with a population of approximately 625,000. This would include for example, Springfield, MA-CT in the United States as well as Wroclaw, Poland, Geneva, Puyang, Henan, China and Jeonju, South Korea.

3. BUILT-UP URBAN AREAS: DEFINITIONAL ISSUES

There is considerable confusion about urban definitions, as is discussed below

3.1. What is a Built-Up Urban Area?

Built-up urban areas are not metropolitan areas.

An urban area ("built-up urban area,"7 urbanized area or urban agglomeration)8 is a continuously built up

land mass of urban development that is within a labor market (metropolitan area or metropolitan region). An

urban area contains no rural land (all

land in the world is either urban or rural). Urban Areas & Metropolitan Areas: Contrast

In some nations, the term "urban area" is

EXAMPLE: PARIS URBAN & METROPOLITAN AREA

used for larger areas, but does not

denote a built-up urban area.9

EXURBAN: RURAL (Non-urban)

An urban area is best thought of as the "urban footprint" --- the lighted area ("city lights") that can be observed from an airplane (or satellite) on a clear night.

By necessity, average population density data masks significant variations within

EXURBAN BUILT-UP URBAN AREA

(Example: Nemours)

PRINCIPAL BUILT-UP URBAN AREA 412 Municipalities Including Core

(Physical city: Area of continuous urbanization)

CORE 1 Municipality (Ville de Paris)

EXURBAN: RURAL (Non-urban)

urban areas. Within urban areas, urban population densities can range from below 400 per square kilometer (1,000 per square mile), particularly in North

METROPOLITAN AREA 1,798 Municipalities including Urban Municipalities

(Functional or economic city)

Figure 1

5 Wendell Cox (2012), "What is a Half-Urban World," The New Geography,

. 6 Where one half of the world population lives in larger or smaller urban areas. 7 "Built up urban area" is the new urban area term now used by National Statistics in the United Kingdom. It may be

the most descriptive short term for urban areas. 8 Called a "population centre" in Canada and an "urban centre" in Australia. 9 For example, in China, sub-city or sub-regional districts called "shixiaqu" () are sometimes referred to as

urban areas. Shixiaqu resemble metropolitan areas, containing both urban and rural land. Districts designated as

urban often have large tracts of rural land on which urban development is anticipated.

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American urban areas, to over 1,000,000 per square kilometer (2,500,000 per square mile) in informal neighborhoods10 of some Asian urban areas, such as Dhaka (See: The Evolving Urban Form: Dhaka).11

Varying densities within urban areas are illustrated by comparing the Phoenix and Boston urban areas. Phoenix is at least 60 percent denser than the Boston-Providence urban area. Yet, the highest small area population densities within Boston-Providence are at least five times that of the highest density areas in Phoenix. Moreover, Boston-Providence has a far larger commercial core ("central business district" or "downtown"). The difference is that the Phoenix suburbs are denser than the Boston-Providence suburbs.

Higher density suburbs are also responsible for making Los Angeles the most densely populated large urban area in the United States, despite its much lower urban core densities relative to New York (See: California's Dense Suburbs and Urbanization12). This creates an irony that the city most associated with urban dispersion ("urban sprawl") in the United States is, in reality, the least dispersed (least "sprawling") in the country. At the same time, no urban area in the world sprawls over a larger area than New York, as is indicated in Schedule 3.

Similarly, London and Athens have similar population densities. Yet, the core densities in Athens are considerably higher than in London. The Athens suburbs, however, are among the least dense in the highincome world. The Essen-Dusseldorf and Milan urban areas have almost identical densities, yet core densities are considerably higher in Milan. Demographia World Urban Areas reports the estimated population and density of entire urban footprints, regardless of their internal density profiles.

3.2: Urban Areas Contrasted with Metropolitan Areas

An urban area (built-up urban area or urban agglomeration) is fundamentally different from a metropolitan area. A metropolitan area is a labor market (and a housing market). It includes a principal built-up urban area (the largest built-up urban area in the metropolitan area) as well as economically connected rural areas (and smaller urban areas) to the outside. (Figure 1).13

Urban areas draw employees from a labor market area larger than the area of continuous development. For example, INSEE, the census authority of France defines the Paris urban area ("unit? urbaine") as 2,845 square kilometers and the Paris metropolitan area (aire urbaine) as 17,100 square kilometers, indicating that more than 80 percent of the land area is outside the Paris urban area (See: The Evolving Urban Form: Paris14). Similarly, in the United States, 52 metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population in 2010 had only 19 percent of land in urban use, with the remainder of 81 percent being rural (See: Rural Character in America's Metropolitan Areas15). According to the 2021 census, Canada's census

10 Called slums, shantytowns or favelas in various geographical areas. 11 Wendell Cox, (2012), "The Evolving Urban Form: Dhaka," The New Geography, . 12 See: Wendell Cox (2018), "California's Dense Suburbs and Urbanization," The New Geography, . 13 All land is that is not urban is rural. 14 Wendell Cox (2018), "The Evolving Urban Form: Paris," The New Geography, . 15 Wendell Cox (2013), "Rural character in America's Metropolitan Areas," The New Geography, .

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metropolitan areas have 87% rural and 13% urban (See: The Rural Character of Canada's Census Metropolitan Areas16)

Because of the fundamental differences between urban areas (or urban agglomerations) and metropolitan areas, population comparisons should be made only within the two categories, not between. To mix the two is akin to comparing "apples and oranges."

3.3: Metropolitan Area Densities are Urban and Rural Densities

Metropolitan area densities can be calculated, but are not urban densities. Virtually all metropolitan areas are composed primarily of rural land, which is by definition not urban.

Moreover, comparing metropolitan densities areas is fraught with difficulty, because (1) there are no international standards for delineating metropolitan areas, rendering them non-comparable between nations and (2) geographical "building blocks" may be too large to reasonably estimate the geographical extent of the commuting sheds that are metropolitan areas.

Even within nations, comparison of metropolitan area densities can be invalid. This is illustrated by metropolitan areas in the United States, where counties are used as the building blocks. The size of counties in the United States varies up to 1,500 times and, as a result, metropolitan densities are strongly influenced by the densities of the rural areas surrounding the built-up urban areas. The metropolitan area with the largest land area in the United States is Riverside-San Bernardino, at 27,300 square miles (71,000 square kilometers). This is nearly as large as Austria. Most of this area is well beyond commuting range, which means that Riverside-San Bernardino is much larger than its genuine labor or housing market. The situation is similar, but not as extreme in some other metropolitan areas of the United States. Metropolitan area densities in the United States therefore cannot be compared with sufficient precision. Using metropolitan area densities as an urban density variable so imprecise as to distort multivariate analyses (including regression analyses).

3.4: Urban Areas Contrasted with Municipalities (Cities or Communes)

An urban area is different from a municipality (also called a city, city proper, or a local government authority). Municipalities have political boundaries that usually constitute only a part of the urban area. For example, the city of Seoul represents less than one-half of the population (and a declining proportion) of the Seoul-Incheon urban area, which extends well beyond the municipality. On the other hand, a municipality may be considerably larger than an urban area and therefore contain considerable non-urban (or rural) territory. Zaragoza, Spain is an example. A large part of the municipality of Mumbai is rural, composed of the Rajiv Gandhi National Park and thus not included in the built up urban area.

The translated term "city" is generally used to denote sub-provincial (or in some cases provincial) government areas in China. These were formally referred to as "prefectures." Generally, they include rural areas and extend far beyond their built-up areas (such as Beijing, Tianjin, Wuhan and Guangzhou). The city of Chongqing, which has the largest population of any entity called a city (municipality) in the world stretches far beyond any reasonable definition of a metropolitan area as a commuting shed. Like the

16 Wendell Cox (2023), "The Rural Character of Canada's Census Metropolitan Areas," The New Geography,

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Riverside-San Bernardino metropolitan area, Chongqing covers a land area similar to that of Austria. Most of the municipality is well beyond the commuting range of the urban area.

The Chinese term "shi" is popularly translated as "city" in English. Chinese "shi" and equivalent terms are divisions of divisions of provinces or province equivalent. China is divided into more than 3,000 "shi" (including equivalent geographical units) which are similar in number to the more than 3,000 counties (including equivalent geographical units) of the United States. France has more than 30,000 communes, with most of their respective land areas typically being rural.

3.5: Adjacent and Nearby Urban Areas

This report defines urban areas as within single labor markets (as an "integrated economic unit, linked together by commuting flows"). As a result, where urban areas have grown together but are in more than one labor market are considered "adjacent urban areas." Each component urban area is separately listed.

Examples of adjacent urban areas follow:

The Greater Bay Area (Pearl River Delta) urban areas of Shenzhen, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen, Huizhou, Zhuhai, Guangzhou and Foshan in China's Guangdong province are very close to one-another and in some cases the built-up urban areas are virtually adjacent. Yet, this is not considered a single urban area because commuting requires too much time to be practical at this time. However, Demographia World Urban Areas considers Guangzhou and Foshan a single urban area. Guangzhou and Foshan have become more economically integrated than the other urban areas, as evidenced by the comprehensive expressway system and the Metro system that serves both urban area. Otherwise, each of the other urban areas in the Pearl River Delta economic region is considered to be separate. The Hong Kong and Macau urban areas also the adjacent urban areas of Guangdong. See: Ultimate City: Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area (with Photographic Tour).17

The Yangtze River Delta (broadly defined to include Hangzhou Bay) contains a number of nearby urban areas stretching from Zhoushan/Ningbo to Shanghai, and Nanjing. This includes the municipalities (prefectures) of Zhougshan, Ningbo, Shaoxing, Hangzhou, Jiaxing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Zhenjiang, Nanjing and other smaller urban areas. Adjacent urban areas in the Yangtze River Delta extend from Shanghai, through Suzhou and Wuxi to Changzhou. There are two other adjacent urban areas, Hangzhou and Shaoxing as well as Ningbo and Zhoushan. There is rural territory between Changzhou and Zhenjiang, and between Zhenjiang and Nanjing, Shanghai and Hangzhou as well as between Shaoxing and Ningbo. Plans call for significant transport improvements that could combine some of these adjacent urban areas into single urban areas in the future.

The coast of Japan from Tokyo-Yokohama to Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto has nearly "grown together." Yet, this ribbon of urbanization is far too expensive to be a single urban area (labor market).

17 Wendell Cox (2018), "Ultimate City: Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area (with Photographic Tour)," The New Geography, .

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