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).
1
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.¡±
2
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.
3
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