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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

You're using different standards for different entries in the table

As a result the information in your table is misleading. Does the population of the metropolitan area include the population of the city proper, or are they counted separately? Khayyam 77 (talk) 16:49, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the problem is. This is a list of 3 different definitions for what constitutes a city (according to the UN). So each column is consistent and comparable. You can read the definitions in the lead, but the metropolitan area usually includes the entire city proper, yes. There are some exceptions where only a part of the city proper is included: in the case of some Chinese cities, the city proper includes rural land that would not be included in metropolitan areas. I'm not exactly sure what the problem is though, can you clarify why this is misleading? Mattximus (talk) 18:01, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
I know I'm replying to an old comment, but there is a serious problem with this article.
* For instance, the "city proper" definition for Lagos includes the sum total of the populations of several municipalities. I'm not sure which one precisely is the city proper, but the state capital city is Ijeka, which is one of the LGAs included in the city sum. On the other hand, the population for Sydney is only the population of one particular council area.
* The definition of "metropolitan area" seems to be that it should consist of the sum total of several municipal districts (cities, communes, counties - something like that). This may be an intuitive definition to someone, but it's so far from my understanding of "metropolitan area" that I am not surprised to see it clearly hasn't been consistently followed. You just get a vague approximation of how big the city is, which probably follows the customs of the local statistics body, rather than the definition at the top. For instance, Mumbai is "built up area of central core and any suburbs linked by continuous urban area" - more like a definition of "urban area". Sydney's population is the GCCSA, which is not a political amalgam but a statistical tool intended to allow Australian capital cities to be analysed equally.
* There's also really bad problems with references and data quality.
Anyone hoping to come here and get something out of it other than a vague list of really big cities with amorphous, incomparable definitions, is a going to be terribly out of luck. It would be good to include a specific warning on this page.
Run to the hills! (talk) 21:39, 6 October 2019 (UTC)
I agree on all your counts. Metropolitan area is a vague term, which varies between countries. I wouldn't be upset if this entire column was removed, however it is one of the three categories used by the UN. As for reference and data quality, huge issues. All city proper numbers should come from respective countries' statistics bureaus, and not any third party website. Also agree that the "city proper" Lagos population figure should be removed if there is no "city of Lagos" municipality to remain consistent with all the other cities on the list. Mattximus (talk) 00:33, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

How to add a city

How do you add new cites, such as Sydney Australia, which is large by area. I can see that source data comes from /www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf. But is the table regularly updated from this source? Seems to be all hand coded with references at the city level. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Teraplane (talk • contribs) 00:54, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Change Name to List of Larges Cities by population

I believe the title is alittle misleading as in you might thing it's about area. Changing the name would help people looking for area and help people who want to find population as well BrandonALF (talk) 12:33, 19 June 2017 (UTC)


Istanbul

It is a common misconception that Turks do things properly, so when you get figures from Turkish Bureau of Statistics (TUIK)’s Address-Based Population Recording System (ADNKS) you would think that is a proper estimate of population. Here are the problems with that: our current official definition of a metropolitan area is simply the entire province, including rural areas sometimes over 100km away from the actual metro area (this was done recently as a gerrymandering tactic by the current government which gets more votes from rural areas). This usually results in overestimation of metro areas. However, in the case of Istanbul there is another problem: Istanbul’s urban sprawl has spilled over to the neighboring provinces decades ago, but those bits don’t count in the official figures. This makes Istanbul underestimated. (plus I think the figure here are 2014, so that adds to the underestimation)

The data I provide below are the official Dec.2015 figures (in thousands) from Turkish Bureau of Statistics’ ADNKS as well, but I am using county-level data under the guidance of GoogleEarth as well as first hand knowledge.

Istanbul province 14657 (i.e. official figure for metropolitan municipality). Substract rural Şile and Adalar from this to get 14608.

Uninterrupted urbanization that conects to this: Çayırova, Darıca, Dilovası, Gebze counties of Kocaeli province and MarmaraEreğlisi county of Tekirdağ province. Total population 720, bringing the total of Istanbul “urban area” or “urban agglomeration” (as defined in the respective wiki pages of these terms) to 15328.

In addition to these, there are towns that have daily commuter relations with Istanbul: Başiskele, Derince, Gölcük, İzmit, Kartepe and Körfez counties of Kocaeli province; Çerkezköy and Çorlu counties of Tekirdağ province. Total population 1375, bringing the total of Istanbul “metropolitan area” (as defined in the wiki page of this term) to 16703.

So the correct figures are 14.7 million city proper, 15.3 million urban and 16.7 million metro area, at the end of 2015.

Note: I'll post a copy of this to talk pages of other population lists in Wikipedia. Nkt777 (talk) 23:18, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

″It is a common misconception that Turks do things properly″ can you please elaborate more on the first sentence? It's Wikipedia not alex jones comment section. Thank you 37.210.185.129 (talk) 08:29, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

De-redirected

I see no reason why this page should confusingly redirect to the discussion on the agglomerations article. I've reverted it. - Aucitypops (talk) 12:43, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Dispute Disambiguation

I am not sure how this page can actually be declared to have the {{Disambig}} to quote the explanation

... is placed at the bottom of articles which exist to help readers find other articles with similar names (or which perhaps should have the same name). This concept is called Disambiguation and is used with common words such as cross, life, and work. This template automatically adds articles to Category:Disambiguation.

I would recommend that the DISAMBIG template be removed. -- billinghurst (talk) 13:55, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh my goodness yes. You're quite right. Stand by... --AndrewHowse (talk) 18:00, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

where can?

where can I find the biggest cities from a historical point of view? there's no article talking about that. I'd like to know which was the buggest city in each historical period --83.58.250.252 (talk) 17:07, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia has two articles on this topic: List of largest cities throughout history and Historical urban community sizes. They should probably be linked to from this article. --Polaron | Talk 17:12, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
And now they are.  ;-) —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 18:00, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Table

Mark J (talk · contribs) added this table, which I think is a good idea. And what's there certainly looks very nice. But I'm a bit confused about a few things:

  1. What are the numbers? Population? Land area? What's the scale? Millions? Thousands?
  2. Why are some numbers bold?
  3. What is the difference between "Morph." and "Morph. (UN)"?
  4. Any particular source for the information?

Just to be clear, I like the idea, I just think the presentation needs some clarification.  :) —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 23:37, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, so I forgot to add some text explaining the table. The numbers are the rankings in each of the different lists that we have on Wikipedia. If I put the cities in the ranking according to any particular list, that would be seen as favouring one list over the others (although if people think that one list should be given greater weight, please say...) so I put them in alphabetical order. A number gets bolded if it's in the top 20 in that list. Some cities are in the top 20 for every single list, so they get bold numbers in every column. I should put links into the table to reference the different lists - the table is a compilation of information from elsewhere on Wikipedia, so you'll have to look at the individual list pages for source information. Mark J (talk) 23:52, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I like the table. It's a nice little summary of all the other pages. Elockid (Talk·Contribs) 01:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Since another list was added, how about adding World Gazetteer and City Population? Elockid (Talk·Contribs) 16:04, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for finding these, they look like good sources, and these sorts of things aren't easy to find. I'll add them in when I have time or unless somebody else does it first. Mark J (talk) 17:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
Added them. Elockid (Talk·Contribs) 00:10, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Does "largest" refer to population or land area?

I want to repeat the original question. Are these rankings based on population or area? The introduction to this article states: The "size" of a city can refer to either its land area or, more typically, its population. But it never says which of these definitions is used in the remainder of the article or in the table.

The table itself has seven number columns, each with a different ranking. My suspicion is that all seven of these columns are based on population, not land area. The reason that the rankings are different is because they reflect different determinations of the boundary of a city, and perhaps because they use different statistical data. But they all define "size" as population, not land area. Is this correct?

If the entire article deals solely with population rankings, then this needs to be specified clearly in the introductory paragraph and before the table itself. On the other hand, if some portions of this article deal with population rankings and other portions deal with land area rankings, that needs to be made clear. — Lawrence King (talk) 17:49, 9 November 2010 (UTC)


Also, the very first sentence in this article should tell you what this article is about. What information is the article going to provide to the reader? Right now, the first sentence tells the reader the difficulties encountered in providing some kind of information, but there's no sign what that information is. I suggest a sentence such as "This article ranks the world's largest cities, in population and in land area, using a variety of ranking methods." — Lawrence King (talk) 19:22, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Since nobody has replied, I have provided a tentative introductory sentence. But since it's not clear whether this article ranks cities by population and land area, or just by population, I left the introductory sentence vague. — Lawrence King (talk) 20:26, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Single most lagest city

I fail to see that there is any disagreement as to what is the single most largest city in the world, as is stated in the article introduction. That sigle answer is Tokyo which on all accounts given here - apart from one, absolute official administrative size - is the definite largest (that is, most populous) city. Can we do something about said article introduction? Martinor (talk) 21:39, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Do you want to get really technical? Tokyo isn't even a city. It's a prefecture (if you're from the US, that means it's the equivalent of a State). I'm not even joking. Tokyo is a prefecture consisting mainly of towns that appear to be blended together, but in a legal sense, it's not a city. Smyslov (talk) 02:12, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
And yet Tokyo is a city and has been one for over 500 years. Just a fact. Khayyam 77 (talk) 16:53, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
I'm not seeing the disagreement. The introduction doesn't refer to any one city in particular. Rather it's stating that it's difficult to create a list of largest cities in the world, hence the reason why there are multiple lists on the page. Elockid (Alternate) (Talk) 15:19, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Redirect from "Smallest city in the world"

A person who would want to find the smallest city in the world would definitely not want to go the the list of largest cities. --99.20.128.154 (talk) 22:29, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Same question in 2015… I wanted to know if there was a smaller commune than Castelmoron-d'Albret (tricky question) but I wasn't really expecting an answer but I surely didn't expect to get the exact opposite of what I was looking for! VIGNERON * discut. 23:15, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Chongching

There is debate as to whether the list is correct. For example if you look at the wiki entry for Chongching in China it is much larger (28 million) than the cities on this list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rustygecko (talk • contribs) 17:08, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Largest cities by land area?

I have no problem including the most populous cities in this article to cater to everyone, however, just because most people are not bright enough to search for 'most populous cities', we shouldn't be penalised by having no info about land area since technically that's what largest city means. 'Largest population' are the terms one uses when describing the largest population. 'Largest cities' are the terms one uses to describe the cities with the largest city limits. This is an encyclopaedia, we don't need to be supporting people's misuse of the English language. At worst, I'd expect to see a table listing the largest cities by land area. Defined by the land the particular city has control over. Forget all this nonsense about the distance commuters travel and blah blah blah, we're here to find exact numbers, not how each city ranks in a bunch of lists. I'm sure this info could be obtained from each country's respective government website. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.104.78.159 (talk) 03:59, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Zany Zanhe

I am sorry that I have to disturb the peace of this discussion with these comments, but a persistent editor does not leave me much choice.

Zanhe again removed a link to World's largest municipalities by population, a link that lived in peace until Zanhe became bothered because he thinks that it is a link to an "article nominated for deletion." As so often, Zanhe is wrong. The article is not nominated for deletion. The article was nominated for deletion, on 24 September 2010. Unsuccessfully, otherwise it would no longer be here.

The article has the honor to be on the long list of articles that once had been nominated for deletion. It's easy. Anybody can do that. Whether it is successful is another question.

Again, Mr. Zanhe has a difficulty discerning what is from what he wishes that should be. Also, Zanhe's wishes are highly selective. If former nomination for deletion would exclude an article from being linked to, then several links in this article would have to go as well.

As a matter of fact, this very article World's largest cities had been nominated for deletion on 2 May 2008 (under it's old name List of cities by population.)

Honestly, at this point, I stopped looking. The search tool goes only back to 2005 anyway, and I don't have too much time on my hands.

Anyway, I don't know what to think. Several possibilities:

  • Zanhe is confused
  • Zanhe does not know the difference between "is" and "was"
  • Zanhe does not know the difference between "nominated" and "deleted"
  • Zanhe is vindictive and engages in Wikistalking
  • Zanhe engages in revisionist editing and simply wants pages to go away that contradict his erroneous claim that Shanghai is the world's largest city proper by population

Be is as it may, having once been nominated for deletion is no grounds for removal. If it is, then Zanhe would have his hands full and could start right here. BsBsBs (talk) 14:47, 23 September 2011 (UTC)


BsBsBs, while I admire your knack for imagining conspiracy theories, you really need a good read of WP:Civility.
I'm well aware of the difference between nominated for deletion and pages that are actually deleted. The decision on World's largest municipalities by population was merge or redirect, meaning it should only stay as a redirect to the main article List of cities proper by population. The decision and the discussion that led to it are archived on WP:Articles for deletion/World's largest municipalities by population and I'm not going to repeat them here. Zanhe (talk) 18:15, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
You need to address your selective attention. You have problems with that. "Merge or redirect" does not mean "merge." It means "Merge or redirect." If you would take the time to go through the discussion archives, then you would find that an attempt to merge failed due to a lack of enthusiasm to do the work. Now, where is the official proof I had asked you for? I'm not holding my breath. BsBsBs (talk) 18:44, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
In other words, nobody deemed any content on World's largest municipalities by population worth merging into the main article List of cities proper by population, which is exactly why the page was nominated for deletion to begin with. And that leaves us with redirect. Whether that article is eventually merged or redirected, I don't see any reason why we should link to the low-quality content from this page. Zanhe (talk) 20:29, 28 September 2011 (UTC)


Again, you suffer from selective attention, to avoid stronger language. You need to be aware that nothing is lost in WP, and everything is documented.

There had been a first attempt on a merge before the AFD. It fizzled. Nobody wanted to do the work.

After the AFD was denied, nobody wanted to do the work either. Even the nominating editor was "happy to take part in a discussion about what to merge if anyone in favour or merging would put forward such a suggestion." No suggestion forthcoming, nothing was merged, because again, it was work.

When a few months ago you asked "How to implement the decision to merge/redirect World's largest municipalities by population?" you received exactly no answer. Nobody was interested.

Your assertion that nobody deemed the content worth of merging falls flat on its crimson-read face when an editor who originally wanted the article to be killed suddenly is "happy to take part in a discussion about what to merge."

You are flogging a long dead horse.

If that's how you do your research, no wonder that the result often is fantasy, or, to put it charitably, misunderstood facts. BsBsBs (talk) 21:37, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Tehran

Nytimes article today [1] cites Tehran as having 22 million people in the greater metro area. should it be on this list? Ronboid (talk) 13:34, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Paris

Paris is not listed in the top 20 of any of the lists, so why is it even on the chart? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.214.139.45 (talk) 16:31, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Removed. -- ferret (talk) 19:43, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


VANDALISM There has been vandalism, and where is placed "Buenos Aires" should be placed "Mexico, D.F.", obviously.--83.32.84.197 (talk) 13:27, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

São Paulo is wrong

São Paulo is bigger than Rio. It's wrong on this list. --FML talk - me at pt 15:54, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Why alphabetical listing?

90% of the people coming here will want to know the largest cities in the world in order of population. I get that there are different ways of counting the population, but please, save us time and give us the basic 1-2-3 largest cities. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.14.170.177 (talk) 23:53, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

moreover, I think the list needs to be greatly simplified. Population is the primary comparative element. It should be foremost in the statistics, and should follow the example of how we've done similar lists for the US. I can tell a lot of work went into this, but honestly, it's a bit incomprehensible. Tokyo seems to be at 1 million people? Several US cities should be listed if the list were down to cities of a million people, including Chicago and Houston first and foremost. I hate to recommend scrapping and starting over, but it may be at that point.204.65.34.128 (talk) 17:35, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Photo caption

Should the picture of Tokyo in the template be captioned? --SchutteGod (not logged in) 76.174.139.1 (talk) 16:42, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

World's largest city should be synonymous with largest city proper

The other qualifications added to determine the largest city seems arbitrary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.111.88.66 (talk) 03:00, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Numbers seem completely wrong by ANY source

Tokyo's population is not 1 million by any measure, and Bogota's population is not 37 million by any measure. This article was vandalized at one point and nobody caught it. I have not corrected anything but it seems as though the whole thing should be rewritten from scratch; it is a fairly poor article for its importance level (currently Top). AstarothCY (talk) 14:28, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Is it vandalism that has made this article completely useless? Are any of the population figures right? The city proper population of Los Angeles is 3.8 million, not 47 million, which is more than in the whole of California. And how did New York City's metro area population end up at 4 million when, according to this article, its city population is 13 million? And both figures are way wrong. Rio's population is not 2-4 times larger than Sao Paulo's - it's considerably smaller. So far you can find the real populations by clicking on the city names, but how much longer will that last? People work hard on these articles, and people rely on them too. I guess whoever is vandalizing it is having a great time. But then, sociopaths have fun at other people's expense - it's, like, their job.Wlegro (talk) 22:17, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

The numbers are their ranks, not the population. But I concur that the table is not very useful and should be removed. -Zanhe (talk) 00:09, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
I completely disagree. The subject with the wide variety of potential sources and points of comparison is confusing, maybe it needs better explanation. But with a little understanding of what the ranks are talking about, the table explains it better than the specifics of the article would without the table. Trackinfo (talk) 00:35, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
The confusion between ranks and populations keeps on recurring. We should think of a better way to make this more obvious. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arif Zaman (talk • contribs) 17:18, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

"city proper" is notorious for not telling you how big a city actually is

why is there a city proper column? its as if its there just to pull kids and lazy journalists in. im surprised, their boundaries are useless and capricious. an urban or metro area definition is invariably much closer to giving you the real sizeof a city — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flapski (talk • contribs) 15:55, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

i am not attacking the person who made the list, im simply querying what is clearly a highly flawed way of measuring city size — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flapski (talk • contribs) 16:13, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

The Numbers don't Match

The ranks in the table given here don't match the ranks in the table of the List of cities proper by population.

According to the table on this page the cities are

  1. Shanghai
  2. Islambul
  3. Mumbai
  4. Delhi

But according to the List of cities proper by population page, they are

  1. Shanghai
  2. Karachi
  3. Beijing
  4. Lagos

So which one is right? --Arif Zaman (talk) 17:29, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Same question as Arif 3 years ago. When two WP pages show different values (for example, the Urban Area column here vs the List of urban areas by population) is there a protocol for picking the "correct" one (other than "use your judgement")? - Frankie1969 (talk) 16:29, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Assuming both figures match their sources, I'd also check the value on the article for the city/urban area itself, and use the most recent. Batternut (talk) 17:09, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Urban areas in Southern Europe

As a Southern European, I'd like to know why the Nordic urban areas are given more relevance than the Southern European urban areas (most of them are actually much larger and significant than the Nordic ones, apart from Stockholm and Copenhagen): Lisbon, Porto, Sevilla, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao, Milan, Torino, Florence, Venice, Rome, Naples, Athens, Marseille, Nice, Toulouse, Istanbul, etc... It looks like this English WP is really biased (and it is), and this situation must be changed, absolutely.Viet-hoian1 (talk) 05:47, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

New Format?

There has been lots of discussion, especially on the List of cities proper by population talk page, about the difficulties in maintaining these three separate lists, and the confusion surrounding the multiple definitions. I propose merging the lists into a single list using all three definitions of cities, as defined by the UN. If we list the metropolitan, urban, and municipal boundaries in a single list, it should mitigate the confusion between these definitions, and make it easier for editors to maintain accurate and well sourced population estimates. The next step would be to encourage more reliable sources, many are from newspapers or third party sites.

I will begin the list, and am of course open to any changes and criticisms. Help filling it out would be very welcome. Regardless, the way we have now is confusing and difficult to maintain, so some form of change is needed. Thanks for your input. Mattximus (talk) 16:38, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Just so people who are maintaining this list are aware: with the release of the US Census Bureau estimates today, Largest cities in the Americas and List of metropolitan areas in the Americas are fully up to date as of 2015. Cobblet (talk) 18:56, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

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Sao Paulo metro population does not match source

Sao Paulo metropolitan area shows a population of nearly 37 million on this page. The referenced document actually shows 20,935,204 for that figure.

There seem to be a ton of complaints about wildly inaccurate figures. Maybe there was some confusion around sorting of data? The 37-million number seems more likely to have referred to Tokyo at some point since no other city approaches that size in other sources I've seen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.52.51.32 (talk) 12:16, 26 July 2016 (UTC)


Metropolitan should be the number seen by default

Some people have already mentioned that "city proper" is not the most informative number at all. For example Paris and London have been "twin" cities for centuries, nowadays they are both in the 10-12 million range, but Paris-proper is 2 million and London-proper is 8 million. Also, many figures have zero reference. It comes as a surprise for a page with that much visitors, and a topic covered so many times in books and documents LinguisticStudent (talk) 00:54, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Baku is not included

Hi Guys, Baku has a population of more than 2.1 Million putting it above Perth but it is no included in the list? Could someone fix this please Thank you 37.210.185.129 (talk) 08:30, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Vienna is missing!

It is the 6th largest city in the EU now! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.81.97.102 (talk) 20:07, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Don't worry, because Vienna (and Budapest) are added! - Nin-5H (talk · contributions) April 29 2017, 14:14 (UTC).

Iran cities

Hi guys I can see only Tehran in the list but there are some other cities in Iran which could be included in this list. Mashhad 3,372,660 Isfahan 2,243,249 Karaj 1,973,470 Shiraz 1,869,001 Tabriz 1,773,033 Ahvaz 1,302,591 Kermanshah 1,083,833 Orumieh 1,040,565

RezaCh1974 (talk) 09:57, 25 March 2017 (UTC)RezaCh1974 Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page). source : Iran census 2016 http://irandataportal.syr.edu/census

Australian cities

The Australian cities are all wrong. None of the quoted populations are for their 'city propers' (which would be the council aresa, ALL well under a million!) I will move them to the correct column if nobody objects. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.228.3.204 (talk) 08:29, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

I took the initiative and corrected this list. On second thoughts, only brisbane belongs here because it's the only 'city proper' with more than 1 million in Aus, and the others wouldn't meet this list's criteria. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.228.3.204 (talk) 13:10, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

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Would anyone oppose a merger?

This list contains exact copies of the three lists that are linked to in the body of the text. I don't see why we should have 4 pages showing the exact same concept. It's rather important we maintain a single high-standard list for "largest cities" using all definitions (to reduce arguments) since this page is one of the higher viewed pages on wikiepdia. More eyes on one page should help ensure higher standards.

I also think we should have a population cut off as the list is getting a bit too long. Would anyone disagree with the need for at least one of the definitions to exceed 3 million to be considered on this list? If we keep it at the present 1 million, we will need to add many dozens more... Mattximus (talk) 18:00, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi Mattximus, on the one hand I agree with your concern about the proliferation of pages. On the other hand don't you think it's kind of useful to have a sortable table with all three values? On the first hand again the current page seems to wrongly list Karachi as the world's biggest city proper, twice citing a single source which doesn't distinguish between city proper and metro, and which actually says Karachi "is the third largest city in the world by population within city limits"!! Errors such as these are no doubt abetted by the redundancy you identify. groupuscule (talk) 07:23, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Oh I completely agree, my proposal was to merge the other one into this one so we just have 1 page with 1 list which has all 3 sortable values. Isolating them doesn't make sense for reasons you say above. Mattximus (talk) 11:03, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
You know what, that makes more sense and it's clearly what you wrote the first time. I guess the argument against a single page is that not every reader can or will easily operate a table and some will miss out on the sorting by metropolitan size. (Maybe the metro size listing should get foregrounded somewhat by mentioning the biggest five or something.) I won't be too sad to see List of urban areas by population go, as it's based only on Demographia and hardly differs from the metro area list.
By the way, also in the currently top-ranked entry for Karachi, here, the listed population of the city proper exceeds that of the metro area, which is really quite impressive. groupuscule (talk) 15:27, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
The big list already does have the sorting by urban areas and metropolitan area so it should have the best of all three worlds. I don't think we lose anything. And I don't really care which one goes first on the list, just that everything is available on one page. Mattximus (talk) 19:52, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Support merger per Mattximus. There are way too many poorly maintained, poorly sourced city lists. Better to keep them in one place and redirect others. -Zanhe (talk) 17:39, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Ok it seems we have unanimous support. I don't think it's controversial as the data is 100% exact copy, so I will try to merge now. Mattximus (talk) 17:28, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Missed this debate, I thought the article on the list of largest urban areas was great. I loved the table that has countries with number cities over a certain size. Can you point me to a historic copy of this at least? Harburg (talk) 18:23, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Sure, the entire list of urban areas is replicated here. But I see what you mean with the second list. It was mostly unsourced, but I think it may deserve it's own article. I've made one here: Number of urban areas by country and will link to it in the text. Mattximus (talk) 19:06, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Someone deleted my entry of Tel Aviv

They wrote that cities under 1,000,000 aren't allowed. Where does it say so? The point is that Tel Aviv's metro area is almost 4 million people, but the "city proper" of Tel Aviv Yafo is less than half a million. Shouldn't such a big metro be on the list? Yarenn Šagor (talk) 19:22, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Should we decide on a population cut off?

I see that someone added some very small cities that I don't think anyone would include on a "list of largest cities". Does anybody know of a cutoff that would be reasonable? Mattximus (talk) 17:42, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

The cutoff for the old city proper list was 3 million, which sounds sensible to me. I guess for the metro area, the cutoff should be higher, maybe 5 million? -Zanhe (talk) 22:33, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
Sounds reasonable to me. I wonder if there is a non-arbitrary cut off that could be employed. Otherwise, I agree with those two figures. Mattximus (talk) 01:31, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
I agree the list is too long and needs to be trimmed. The figures above seem reasonable. I guess if a city hits the one cut-off and not the other it should remain on the list, and this would need to be suitably explained. Eldumpo (talk) 07:17, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes, too long. I would aim for a list of about 100 cities - which a city proper 3 million threshold gives. Batternut (talk) 11:16, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
As for large metro areas not centred on one big city, eg Keihanshin, Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metroplex, it would be misleading to include them in the same list. Batternut (talk) 11:16, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Another large metro area that is not centred on a big city would be Sydney, Australia, that has 208,374 people, but in a metro of several million. It should absolutely be on this list. So we do need a separate cut off for city proper and metro area. Mattximus (talk) 23:05, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
The approach taken in List of cities by GDP is to give combined names for such metro areas, eg "Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington", "Osaka–Kobe", "Minneapolis–Saint Paul". Also the lead section "This is a list of cities and/or their metropolitan areas" describes the scope of the article, being broader than the title would suggest. Batternut (talk) 08:49, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Yeah we don't need to have everything and the kitchen sink. It's a list of cities. We should stick with the most common city term for the area. For example "Dallas" instead of "Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington" and "Manila" or "Sydney" instead of the many cities that make them up. Mattximus (talk) 02:23, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
I'd presume the Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metroplex article has the WP:Commonname. Batternut (talk) 08:05, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
Not Dallas? Mattximus (talk) 22:58, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
Well it's policy to name article's with wp:commonname. The lead does though say "Residents of the area refer to it as the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, DFW, or The Metroplex"! You could always propose a renaming of it, if you don't like the current name. Batternut (talk) 23:38, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
No, I think both names are appropriate for their respective articles. They are for different entities so it makes sense. I think this list should just use Dallas though, since that's the name of the city. Mattximus (talk) 00:33, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
"Different entities" indeed, hence misleading to associate the population of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex as being simply that of Dallas. Batternut (talk) 08:30, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

I just logged onto this population page for the first time and found it very interesting.Especially, I like the three definitions being given in advance, and the three column format of the table. I sympathise with the difficulty of fitting people's perceptions into the tables, but the definitions are properly spelt out in advance and the figures are verifiable to a large extent, I assume. I agree a population cutoff is a good idea, and maybe two (or more) tables could be done - one of cities over 3 million population by at least one of the three definitions, one of cities 1 million to 3 million by at least one of the definitions. This way, us poor Australians, who KNOW that Sydney is our largest city, can have it listed somewhere, ahead of Brisbane, which all Australians KNOW is our third largest city after Sydney and Melbourne. The vagaries of over-government in a country like Australia, giving lots of separate "city" administrations where one would do, doesn't make our metropolitan populations any smaller. Please put Australia's biggest cities back in. {Seems like some other countries have found a similar problem). AuntFred (talk) 07:13, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your support, I've been trying for months to create a list that shows Australian cities, by including all three definitions. This list should absolutely include Sydney and Melbourne if we say that the city must have 3 million people in any one category. I've tried to pipe the three individual pages into this one page but have encountered both support and opposition for this move so I kinda gave up. Mattximus (talk) 13:24, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Redundant list

This largely list duplicates List of cities proper by population, List of urban areas by population, List of metropolitan areas by population. The other lists are able to do a better job.

I appreciate Mattximus's efforts to remove the redundancy, but I think a different solution might be sought. That might be just deleting this article. The pre-amble above the list is OK, maybe this article should just provide an overview of large cities, and link to all the city/urban/metro list pages, including List of cities by GDP and the like. Batternut (talk) 09:49, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

That is a possibility. The reason behind the amalgamation of lists was that there is no single definition for what makes a city. This is the best effort (but of course not perfect!) to reconcile 3 different definitions used by the UN. It's very important to have them on one page, as there will be people complaining about why Sydney is not included in list of city proper for example. I can tell you that over the past 5 years, the city/urban/metro separate lists do not work, and just lead to endless confusion. Do you know of a better way of presenting different definitions on one page? I'm always open to hearing alternatives...! Mattximus (talk) 03:26, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
The main problems I have seen with these lists is poor state of maintenance, and vandalism by local patriots keen to show their city bigger than the neighbours. A single page would improve maintainability, but listing different types of entities together seems too problematic. I don't quite understand the Sydney issue - your figure of 208,374 is not in the article, where did it come from? Batternut (talk) 10:10, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes I agree, having it in one page will increase the quality, and reduce local patriot problems (I've been fighting these for years across all three pages, in 1 page will be a lot easier). And I'm not sure what you mean with the figure 208,374, it's in the infobox: City of Sydney. Mattximus (talk) 11:06, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
Oh, thanks, I didn't see the City of Sydney page - seems a bit like City of London or Mumbai City district, a bit of a relic from the past - but if that's how Sydneyites define the city, so be it. Batternut (talk) 13:18, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Two trends are apparent that are confusing the issue of what a city is: population growth/urban sprawl, and an economic pressure based on the belief that large metro areas see more economic growth, so governments are directing investment into their creation. The result being a boom in polycentric metro areas. Hence the Ruhr now being lumped in with Cologne as the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region, the so-called Northern Powerhouse, and of course the Pearl River Delta. Metro regions are popping up everywhere, and they are not just big cities. I don't see how they can be sensibly included in a city article. Batternut (talk) 13:18, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Zunyi

Zunyi is not a very large city, the population number 6,127,009 is for all the area of this Prefecture-level city, an administrative division area, not a human settlement.--xiliuheshui※MESSAGE BOARD 02:56, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, appears to wrong to include Zunyi. Other "Prefecture-level city" entries exist, but they seem justifiable. Batternut (talk) 09:41, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
This is exactly why we should have multiple definitions of cities on one page. Prefecture-level city has a very high population using the administrative (city proper) definition, but often much lower if you consider urban area/metro area population. If they were separate pages you and only clicked on city proper, you would assume that Zunyi is a very large city, or that Syndey is very small (only 200k people in the administrative core). Neither is true. Having separate lists is very misleading. Mattximus (talk) 13:21, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
The OP says Zunyi city is "not a very large city", implying that it is out of place on this list. I agree. How would quoting its urban/metro populations resolve the issue, when it should just be removed? Batternut (talk) 19:38, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
This is a perfect example, so I will go into detail. The city proper of Zunyi is 6,127,009 people. So it should be on this list. Chinese cities have amalgamated their suburbs and rural lands around many major cities, inflating the number. If you just talk about the urban area it is around 1 million (there is no specific data for urban area), and the metro population will be around 1 million too since there are no other major cities nearby.
So:
  • Option 1, keep it on this list, but users will never know that the 6 million figure does not reflect the urban area. This is confusing.
  • Option 2, delete it, but this will be for arbitrary reasons, and hard to justify (if you delete this one, why not half the list?).
  • Option 3, have a single list with both definitions so users will not be confused.
  • Or if there is a fourth option, I'm open to hear it.
Which one works for you? Mattximus (talk) 20:15, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
For 'city proper' generally using the urban population figure within the city looks best (1,095,189 for Zunyi in 2010) - that would position it better in the list, or completely off the list if below a new cut-off. Batternut (talk) 22:14, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
By the way, these problems occur all the time. The other famous one is questioning why there are no Australian cities on this list. It is just a logistical mess having 3 separate lists. Mattximus (talk) 20:18, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
Sydney etc are a different type of problem, (already mentioned mentioned in #Redundant list above). Batternut (talk) 22:14, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
For 'city proper' generally using the urban population figure is something that you cannot do. You are referring to the urban area which is another list found here: List of urban areas by population. In other words, you can't just arbitrary change the definition of this list (change what it means to be city proper) for one city without any justification. That's Wikipedia:OR. Are you seeing the issue? Mattximus (talk) 02:07, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Don't shout, Mattximus! I'm afraid you may be confused, but I'm not surprised. The List of urban areas by population actually lists urban agglomeration populations. (By the way, have you seen List of agglomerations by population? I think there's scope for merging List of urban areas by population with that).
Anyway, back to Zunyi, whose administration type is "Prefecture-level city", the 6 million figure is for the made up of roughly 1 million city dwellers, 5 million in the rest of the prefecture. I suggest, as the OP does, that there is no 6 million inhabitant city there. A prefecture is not a city, even if jointly administered. Batternut (talk) 08:11, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
But you just made that up, Chinese cities are centrally administered and so, in this case, the whole prefecture-level city would be the "city proper". Remember, city proper (according the the UN) is an administrative boundary definition for city. It has nothing to do with density, or urban continuity. That is urban or metro area which have their own lists. Your suggestion brings up several problems. First, there is no way to know how many people are in the "urban core" even if it did fit the definition, the Chinese statistics are for city proper (which includes subunits, but they are not divided between urban and rural). So you would, without exaggeration, have to make up a number arbitrarily. The second is, would you then go through the list and reduce the number of every other city to match what you did to that one city? Otherwise, it's inconsistent. Chinese cities are quite like Indianapolis, in which the core amalgamated with the suburbs. I'm not arguing it is representative of the city, I'm just saying it's very hard to apply one single definition to a city. Sorry for sounding like I'm yelling, I've had this exact conversation for over 5 years. Merging the lists would have stopped the confusion. Mattximus (talk) 22:04, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
I made up nothing - the figures are from Zunyi, (which upon closer inspection seems pretty thin on citations). Some countries do publish urban stats (eg Delhi), I don't know about China, but the UN's WUP put Zunyi's urban pop at 803,000 in 2015, so the article seems credible. Batternut (talk) 08:49, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes, you changed the definition for one city... but not others. Mattximus (talk) 11:08, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
I proposed (you say "made up") another option, invited by you, above. I'll repeat it...

For 'city proper' generally using the urban population figure within the city looks best. That would apply to all cities. In most large cities it would make little or no difference as cities are generally urban. Note that urban population within the city admin area can differ from an urban agglomeration population which can extend beyond the city admin area. Although the UN defines "city proper" as being the admin area I haven't seen the UN tabulating "city proper" populations except those that match their urban agglomeration concept, ie simple cases not overspilling their boundaries, and where better figures just are not available. The extensive notes in their WUP reports itemize such use. Batternut (talk) 01:17, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

The problem with this solution, and I appreciate that you are trying, is that you just made it up. I'm not saying that to be insulting, it's just the UN has a very clear and very precise definition for what constitutes a city proper, and you just made up your own definition without a source. That's not encyclopedic I'm afraid. We are stuck using the official city proper definition, as outlined by the UN (and to be fair, all nations that I am aware of use this same definitions as the UN in their demographic reports, which means you won't have any concrete data for what you propose from census databases). I hope you are starting to see how one definition can't pigeonhole all cities on Earth. We should use all 3 UN definitions. Mattximus (talk) 02:04, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Let us look carefully at this Prefecture-level city status of Zunyi's. Some quote from the article: "A prefectural level city is often not a "city" in the usual sense of the term", "nearly always contain multiple counties, county level cities, and other such sub-divisions", "To distinguish a prefectural level city from its actual urban area (city in the strict sense), the term 市区 shìqū ("urban area"), is used." So, doesn't sound much like a city - but the administrative division is of type "blah-city" so we call it a city? Feeble reasoning! What about Puning, a County-level city with 2 million inhabitants - also a city? But Puning lies within Jieyang, a prefecture level city with nearly 6 million inhabitants. Oh yes, let's have that too! But I don't reckon many folk would actually accept that a real city can contain a real city. Just because the admin area is styled as "some region level city", that doesn't mean it is a city. London contains a city called "City of London", but it isn't really a city. Zunyi contains "Chishui City" and "Renhuai City" - something is wrong because they cannot all be cities. Hence calling itself a city doesn't make it a city. Batternut (talk) 21:48, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

  • I think you are missing the point actually. I'm not arguing that the city proper definition is applicable to Zunyi. In fact, for the reasons you described, it does not. However, that's why we should have more than one definition for what a city is, because cities can be defined different ways. If you use this page's definition, then you have to cut the borders around the administrative unit, which in this case, is the entire prefecture (care to show me otherwise what another administrative boundary would look like for this city?). If you want to just include urban areas, then you should change the number on the urban areas list. Can you see now why several of us wanted to merge the lists? Mattximus (talk) 01:36, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
Sticking to the Zunyi question, its article says "The built-up (or metro) area made of two urban districts of the city, Huichuan and Honghuagang". WUP 2014 says "Statistical concept: Urban Agglomeration. Note: For the 1990 census the data reflect all residents of urban areas of the city. For the 2000 and 2010 censuses, the population of the city is composed of population in all urban areas of Honghuagang and Huichuan districts". So I'd say this "city" is a non-city, it is a pair of neighbouring districts. So we don't have to draw up our own border for it at all, we omit it from the list. Batternut (talk) 22:17, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
Sorry but I think you are missing the bigger picture here. "(metro) area made of two urban districts of the city, Huichuan and Honghuagang", so that means those populations would constitute the metro population, which is another list, not this list which is just for the administrative boundaries. You can't just change the definition of "city proper" for one city, and not then change it for every city on this list. Also, what happens for places like Xi'an using your new definition (which is not sourced by the way)? Xi'an is just like Zunyi, except the urban core meets the list minimum, but city proper also includes the suburbs and rural areas around the city. What you propose is completely arbitrary, just based on what you think might be a good idea for this one case. This list, and really all wikipedia, is based on sourced clearly defined terms (like the united nations one we use here), not original research. If you do want to change the definition of what makes a city, you need a better source than the UN definition we are using now. Mattximus (talk) 23:18, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
What is the difference between a city and a centrally administered region? For example Bavaria - why is that not a city? Well, it is some kind of region, but what is the difference, and why should Zunyi be a city rather than a region? Batternut (talk) 23:44, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
Because a city-level prefecture is the lowest administrative unit, equivalent to Munich, not Bavaria. There is no smaller administrative unit with any significant power within this prefecture. To compare Zunyi city proper to Munich city proper, you would use the entire prefecture. To compare the next level, you would compare Guizhou to Bavaria. Remember not all prefectures in China are city-level! Mattximus (talk) 00:08, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
That's a bit vague isn't it, the "significant power" test? Batternut (talk) 00:26, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
Ok I'm sorry but I'm not sure if you know how the government is administered in China. If you want to use sub-city divisions (like a district) even though it is insignificant administratively, then you would have to delete Beijing from this list since it's divided into 16 districts, and then delete every other Chinese city. You would have to delete NYC, or at least change the numbers, because you would instead include Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn... Mattximus (talk) 01:40, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
The "lowest administrative unit" might throw up some oddities with Unitary authority regions, such as Howard County, Maryland, Cheshire East, which are clearly not cities. Worse still, many big cities are split into lower administrative units with significant power, eg Tokyo's 23 municipalities and London's 33 boroughs. Batternut (talk) 22:49, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
Good, you are coming to the conclusion that many of us had already. There is no single definition that works for all cities. Check out Pigeonholing. The best way I found was to include several definitions on the same page. I've had this conversation many times, usually it's with Australian cities ("why isn't Sydney on here?" is a common one), but the Chinese cities one came up a few times. You are trying to fit what you think cities are into this definition, instead of using the definition to determine the population the cities. Which is backwards. I'm not even clear what you think the solution to this problem is, you've changed your mind several times. I've made my opinion very clear, but I would like to hear yours too. Mattximus (talk) 00:35, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
Your commitment to a rigid lowest administrative unit city proper definition seems to have weakened. Or will you be changing the London/Tokyo city proper populations to approx 1/33 and 1/23 their current values? No, I haven't (as yet) reached your conclusion, but appreciate your efforts to persuade me! Batternut (talk) 09:03, 25 July 2017 (UTC) (BTW, I'm going to be quiet for a month, due to holidaying)

Incorrect City Proper Figures

I was looking at the city proper column for the largest cities in the world and when I went to the individual city articles and compared the figures, they were vastly different. Dhaka's city proper is 8.9 million, while on its article it clearly says that Dhaka and its suburbs combined reach around 15 million people, compared to the figure of 14.6 million mentioned there. I fixed the figure for Delhi but a lot more need to be fixed. Can the created verify their sources and change the figures accordingly? RainWizard29422 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:06, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

List inconsistent

Where is e.g. Sydney on the list? It's bigger than Berlin in terms of population, urban area, metropolitan area... Seems a bit deliberate. --60.242.175.237 (talk) 21:15, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

It should be on the list, even though the city proper only has a population of 208,374, the metro area has 5,029,768 people which should put it on this list. Why not add it? Mattximus (talk) 22:42, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria

I noticed a user has arbitrarily decided on a 1 million minimum cut-off for city proper populations. I don't think this is a good idea, because large cities like Syndey would be excluded, even though it is one of the largest cities in the world. I think we should vote on/discuss inclusion criteria to avoid future conflicts. If you have any proposal please add below.

  • Proposal A Cities must have a minimum city proper population of 3 million OR a minimum metro or urban area of 5 million.

What do you think? Support proposal A Mattximus (talk) 15:34, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

  • Adding a different cutoff level based on a different definition (actually, two different definitions: metro and urban areas are not equivalent) makes this proposal seem even more arbitrary than the original rule. Cobblet (talk) 00:27, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Good idea to nail this down! Batternut (talk) 22:47, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

  • Proposal B Min urban population of 3 million. No other criteria. Reasoning: avoids prefecture-level-city problems like Zunyi issues (above), and excludes metro areas that are just collections of nearby big-ish towns but don't actually contain a large city. Simple too. Batternut (talk) 22:47, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
I'd be happy with UN WUP or Demographia figures. Batternut (talk) 23:22, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
  • What is the problem with including "metro areas that are just collections of nearby big-ish towns but don't actually contain a large city"? And I don't see how this criterion actually works to exclude such areas (e.g. the Ruhr) while simultaneously not excluding places like Sydney. Without your added reasoning I would have supported this proposal, but now I'm not sure what you mean by "urban population." Urban population of what? A single administrative unit? The metropolitan area? Does it matter whether the latter is monocentric or polycentric? Cobblet (talk) 00:27, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Thanks, this was what I was trying to say above, but you said it far more clearly. Sydney, which I think we all agree should be on a list of largest cities, is made up of many small administrative units, but has a large metro population, whereas Chinese cities have a single large administrative unit, which may contain multiple smaller urban units within. How do we harmonize those two concepts into this one list? Mattximus (talk) 01:18, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
One thinks of a city as being a place with a high population - a distinct settlement rather than a region. If you want a list of large regions, that would be a different article. For me the Ruhr etc get listed elsewhere. WUP and Demographia use the urban agglomeration idea, a continuous urban area. Whatever their criteria are, neither WUP nor Demog list the Ruhr. It's obviously a contentious subject, so I'm happy to let them decide. Batternut (talk) 13:56, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
Actually, Demographia has "Essen–Dusseldorf" at #57 with a population of 6.67 million, the largest in Germany. Its definition of this conurbation lies somewhere between Wikipedia's definition of the Ruhr and Rhine-Ruhr areas. In fact plenty of its entries are conurbations: see pp. 11–14 of the report you linked. I think we should be using reliable sources to tell us what constitutes a city or urban area rather than relying on a subjective interpretation of what settlements are "distinct." Are Wuhan, Budapest, or even Mexico City each distinct settlements? Like the Ruhr, they certainly weren't at some point in the past. Cobblet (talk) 15:09, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
So Demographia has "Essen–Dusseldorf" but WUP doesn't. No surprise, "experts disagree", but let's pick our favourite "expert" and use them somehow to settle which places get listed. Sure as eggs is eggs, us wikipedians will endlessly argue over our favourites. Zunyi, Sydney, Essen - let someone else decide, and let's abdicate this tedious responsibility!Batternut (talk) 15:44, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

@Mattximus:, I think your objection might be a little different than mine. Ignoring Batternut's subsequent comments, I think we can tell what an "urban population" is if we follow WUP: "de facto population living in areas classified as urban according to the criteria used by each area or country." Are you saying that you're worried there are administrative or statistical agencies that don't classify local units as urban or rural? Can you point to cases where this would actually pose a problem? It isn't in China, where "districts" are urban while "counties" are rural. Cobblet (talk) 19:30, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Question?

What is the difference between those cities whose urban area is larger than their metropolitan area, and those cities whose metropolitan area is larger than their urban area? For example, New York is listed as having a slightly larger urban area than its metropolitan area, but Houston has a larger metropolitan area than its urban area. Can you generalize about the character of the one kind of city versus the other, for example, with regards to demographics? 2600:1003:B016:6344:0:4C:8C43:A001 (talk) 18:13, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

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Chonqching discontuinity

In the wikipedia article List of largest cities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities the city Chonqching is noted as having 30,165,500 inhabitants in its city proper, while in List_of_cities_proper_by_population this is given as 8,189,800. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.72.44.229 (talk) 15:04, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

The first figure is for the city proper (which uses municipal boundaries as the limit), the second figure is the continuous urban area (also called the downtown core, which uses an arbitrary measure to determine what is "city" and what is suburbs/rural when no political boundary exists). Mattximus (talk) 14:58, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Are you sure that Chongqing is the largest city in the world?

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_largest_cities&diff=838177380&oldid=838177049

There might be an error with this population number. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:27, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

I've done some more searches and am not convinced that "Chongquing", as used in this table, is really a city in the way the other cities are. I lack knowledge about this topic, but having Chongquing at the top of the list appears to be somehow wrong to me. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:39, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
@ToBeFree: well you're right in one sense - the municipality of Chongqing includes vast areas which are not part of the city in a cultural sense, being rural areas. However, the definition of the first column in the table is "city proper", which means the administrative boundaries of the city, wherever they might fall. In some cases, the administrative city is a small subset of the built-up urban area (see City of Sydney for example), which means that the listed population seems much too small. In other cases, and Chongqing is the leader of this one, the municipal boundaries extend far beyond the built-up area. Anchorage, Jacksonville and City of Leeds are other examples of this. I personally think it might make more sense to order this list by the urban or metropolitan populations rather than the city proper, but what we can't do is simply delete Chongqing in isolation and leave everything else the same. The list must be true to its definition and treat every place to the same definition. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 08:35, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
The problem is you can't define all cities in one way, so this table provides 3 different definitions. The first definition, city proper, Chongqing is the largest city in the world, it is a unified municipality, with well defined borders and a mayor. Other definitions ignore municipal/political borders and set up arbitrary circles around dense areas to constitute a city. Although arbitrary, it does better represent cities like Sydney, since the municipal boundaries are within the traditional definition of city. You can sort the list for whichever definition you are interested in, but we can't change factually correct numbers. Mattximus (talk) 10:43, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
@Amakuru: @Mattximus: Ah, okay, I think I can understand that-- now there's another thing that confuses me. There is an article about exactly this sorting, "List of cities proper by size". As mentioned above my sub-heading, Chongquing is much smaller there. Am I still misunderstanding something? Is the other list wrong? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:00, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
Fundamentally, yes. The editors at List of cities proper by population evidently decided to apply a different standard for Chongqing, using a made-up definition of "Central Chongqing" as being a subset of the districts in the municipality. Despite the fact that the title explicitly defines its scope as being "cities proper" (i.e. administrative municipalities). Personally I think that other article is pretty much redundant, since other than including area and density, it doesn't add anything over this article. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 14:30, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
I completely agree, the other article is 100% redundant, and also incorrect. This article has the correct values for Chongqing. Mattximus (talk) 23:00, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
The List of cities proper by population shows area and density which this list does not, which makes that list anything but redundant. Batternut (talk) 12:10, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

I will respectfully disagree here. Listing the administrative district of Chongqing as if it were the city boundaries of Chongqing is absurd. The administrative district Chongqing contains several cities: it is administratively a province that includes the city. Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 21:05, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

What you said is factually incorrect. It has been a unified municipality since 1997, with a single mayor and administrative structure. By the "city proper definition" it is one city and the population figure in that column is correct. If you want to count just urban built up areas as your definition of a city, then it will be far less (around 8 million people depending how you choose to count "built up"). Both of these facts are evident in the table. Not all cities are best described by one definition, so three alternative definitions are provided for you to choose (based on the UN delineations). Mattximus (talk) 23:59, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
I really think you are conflating the administrative district with the city. Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 15:35, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
Not according to the UN[2], which states that there are 3 ways of defining a city (of course there are more...) and one way is city proper, which is the administrative definition (municipal boundaries). The other ways are urban area and metropolitan area, both of which are arbitrary in their definitions, but in the case of Chongqing (and Syndey the other way) are better descriptors of the "city". The only reasonable list of largest cities should include multiple definitions as no one definition is appropriate for every city. Mattximus (talk) 21:39, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
The "administrative boundary" referred to here has confused the administrative boundary of the province of Chongqing with the city of Chongqing. It makes as much sense to conflate these as it would if the United States said "it doesn't make sense to have a city named New York in a state named New York, we will just name the whole state "city of New York", and it will be both a city and also a state." (And note that at 31,816 square miles, the province of Chongqing is large enough to be a State-- it's the size of South Carolina. Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 17:57, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
No, as has already been explained above, the city and the province are the same thing. There is no administrative city of Chongqing within the province, the city is the province, even though it's clearly much larger than the urban area. The leader of the city/province is the mayor. This makes it different from the New York City / New York (state) example, where the two are different administrative entities. If you're looking at US cities, the two most similar to Chongqing are Anchorage (see map here) and Jacksonville (see map here). In both cases, the official city boundary (the red line) is a long way outside the built-up area, and includes lots of rural countryside. That's why Jacksonville ends up as the largest city-proper in Florida, despite Miami being a much larger urban area.  — Amakuru (talk) 20:47, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
Just noticing this and tuning in now. With all do respect to User:Amakuru, they are wrong, User:Skepticalgiraffe is correct. While Chongqing is technically a "municipality", it is considered a "province-level administration" (see Chongqing). Pointing out that the urban core does not have a separate municipal government/administration is not justification for considering the entire province as if it were a city. This defies most basic and common sense definitions of cities. Rather, the urban areas (sometimes delineated as the 9 urban districts) comprise a city that lacks a municipal government, much like Bethesda, Maryland. While it forces some stretching of the standards for lists like this, constraining oneself to a definition of a city as a municipal administration, with no exceptions for where those municipal administrations are lacking, forces you to erroneously exclude some cities that have no separate municipal governance, and erroneously include some higher-level administrative boundaries that may be called "municipalities" even when they clearly refer to a much larger area than just one city within it. Fredwerner (talk) 19:40, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
Actually, I agree with the other editor. According to the United Nations definition above, "city proper" refers to the administrative limits of the local government. In the case of Chongqing, pointing out that the urban core does not have a separate municipal government/administration IS justification for considering the entire municipality as "city proper". But that is the beauty of this list, we are using all three UN definitions for "city" so readers can easily see how large the urban area is (arbitrary) or metropolitan area (also arbitrary). There is never going to be one definition for what makes up a city, the best we have are the 3 UN definitions, which is what Chongqing has at the moment. If you want to change it, then you will need to find a better definition for cities than the one provided by the United Nations. Mattximus (talk) 21:50, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

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Perhaps

Perhaps under the heading (Largest Cities) you could say (something like) “these figures come from all over the place and are not consistent”. Perhaps you could provide a link (to a Wiki page) that is consistent (like the UN)? Is there one? MBG02 (talk) 21:42, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

There might actually be a good consistent resource for metro and urban populations, since those are completely arbitrary in their definitions so any organization (such as the UN) will define it differently and may produce a large list. As for city proper populations, those are non-arbitrary and official statistics and must come from official censuses (ideally) or official estimates (if no census data is available). Mattximus (talk) 00:03, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
Yeh, I know it’s impossible. Perhaps an extra column with an explanation for each city. So the reader (ie me) doesn’t have to read each link to decide what to count. In particular 30m for an 82.4k km² “city” (size of Austria, or S Carolina), or 10m for Jakarta (when “somewhere near 30m” looks best). Any Google satellite or maths-type results? ie Analysing data for density changes to get a (more) consistent definition of “city area”? MBG02 (talk) 02:39, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean exactly. If you are referring to Chongqing city proper, then yeah it's giant and includes a lot of suburban and rural areas, but there is an urban population column which more closely resembles what is more traditionally thought of as a city. You want a column explaining each of 3 entries for each column? So 3 extra columns? Mattximus (talk) 11:23, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
I don’t know what I mean either!
I’m hoping for a list of “largest cities”... By population (not area), by whoever’s-there (on “average”) (including homeless, visitors, babies). But with the “same definition”; ie a definition that is independent of the city’s (or country’s) definition; and can define where one city ends and the next begins.
And everyone agrees on it!
Mostly I just wanted a list that didn’t need study... I suppose I want List of metropolitan areas by population but with a “here’s what we’re counting” comment. MBG02 (talk) 21:45, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
You actually more or less have that here. First, you will never get 1 definition of city, so you have to accept several columns (these are based on UN criteria). Two are arbitrary (metro and urban) so you will always get fluctuations in those populations. City proper is the only non-arbitrarily defined unit, which is municipal boundaries. That's the only one that can technically be consistent, but like you point out with Chongqing (and Sydney) it is not always the best. Mattximus (talk) 11:27, 21 September 2018 (UTC)


I realised (later) that I’m asking for a definition of "city" that doesn’t (necessarily) match “local” boundaries; some god-like definition that says “here’s where your city ends” “according to this formula”. So are Google there yet? MBG02 (talk) 00:45, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
Actually that definition you are talking about is kinda the metropolitan area, or even urban area. It's completely arbitrary but it gets at what you are looking for I think. Mattximus (talk) 16:11, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
The problem with metro and urban areas is that there seems to be no authority or source that has done an objective and like for like list covering all cities in the world. It's the sort of question which, as a geography nerd, I've always thought should be answered with rigourous research, but I've never seen that anyone has done it. Our list here uses government and domestic figures from each country which likely differ widely in their methodologies.  — Amakuru (talk) 19:38, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

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Do we need a gallery in addition to an image at each city? Why have 2 images per city? What order is this in? It seems random... Mattximus (talk) 22:49, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

You're right. That's really odd. --the eloquent peasant (talk) 00:23, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Large cities weirdly unfamiliar

Because this list of largest cities as listed on this page is in some ways weirdly unfamiliar, I added the following sentence at the end of the lead:

For a view of largest cities by economic stature and integration within the global economy, see Globalization and World Cities Research Network.

This list does not look weirdly unfamiliar, but contains all the usual suspects, in a relatively unsurprising order (Sydney cracking the very top echelon surprised me just a bit).

I think it's important to send readers to where they want to be, as much as possible. — MaxEnt 10:11, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure that link is appropriate, but is definitely not appropriate in the lead. This is a list of largest cities by population, that is a link to "most interconnected cities". I'm not sure they are related... Mattximus (talk) 11:28, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Recent changes have messed up the table

I noticed recent changes from an IP user has really messed up the table. The table is broken at points, and the sort order appears to be based sometimes off of metropolitan area and sometimes off of city proper? Anyway it's inconsistent. Does anyone like these new improvements or should we go back to an older version? Mattximus (talk) 22:15, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

I'd have to look in more detail, although it appears at first glam e that the list is based on urban population where available , which isn't too unreasonable. I do think city proper is a poor way to rank them myself because the definition is so different in different countries. But changes should usually be from a bassoons if the status quo.  — Amakuru (talk) 22:43, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
Actually the city proper is the only column that is not arbitrarily defined and has a fixed border. It's the only one with a clear definition: the area governed by the local government. Although Metropolitan area and urban area may give a more intuitive sense, they are both arbitrary and undefined measures. Nobody can say when the urban area stops, or what cities to include in metropolitan area and which to exclude. Mattximus (talk) 23:35, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

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Innacurate population for Chongqing

The population for Chongqing city proper, metropolitan area, and urban area, are currently listed at 3, 10, and 8 respectively. Could someone get on this with the proper data? Thank you, Cynthia-Coriníon 19:27, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

The urban population and city proper population appear to be correct now. I'm not sure if the Chinese government uses the term "metropolitan area" however. Mattximus (talk) 00:30, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

no Bogota, Cali and Medellin?

you have listed both Barranquilla and Cartagena but not these other 3 even thought all 3 are higher in population than Cartagena and Barranquilla — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:A4C8:EB00:A4A5:7B8A:AC1D:4DC9 (talk) 04:38, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

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