Demographia World Urban Areas

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

1

SUMMARY TABLE

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

20

URBAN AREA LISTINGS

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

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

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

Schedule 5: Alphabetical List of Built-Up Urban Areas

21

41

61

82

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

RELATED PUBLICATIONS

1. Introduction

Toward More Prosperous Cities:

Framing Essay on Urban Policy

2. Highlights: 2023 Edition

Demographia International Housing Affordability

3. Built-Up Urban Areas: Definitional Issues

4. Population and Land Area Estimation

The Evolving Urban Form

(Profiles of World Urban Areas)

5. Specific Built-Up Urban Areas

A Question of Values: Middle-Income Housing

Affordability and Urban Containment Policy

6. Caution: Trend Analysis

7. Background: Demographia World Urban Areas

City Sector Model

(Urban Core & Suburban Small Area Analysis within

US Metropolitan Areas)

8. Cover Illustration: Barcelona Urban Area

9. Comments and Suggestions

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.

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)

By necessity, average population density

data masks significant variations within

urban areas. Within urban areas, urban

population densities can range from

below 400 per square kilometer (1,000

per square mile), particularly in North

EXURBAN: RURAL

(Non-urban)

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¡± (ÊÐϽÇø) 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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