The most populated cities in the world. List of cities in the world by population Top most populous cities in the world

The role of the city in the life of a modern person is increasing: many people no longer see prospects for development outside its borders. Scientists call this phenomenon urbanization. The most populated cities in the world - what are they? In this article you will find a list of the largest cities in the world.

Urbanization and its modern scale

Urbanization refers to the trend of increasing the role of the city in the life of society. The word urbanus is translated from Latin as “urban”.

Modern urbanization can take place in three ways:

1. Transformation of villages and villages into small and medium-sized cities.
2. The outflow of population from villages to cities.
3. Formation of extensive suburban residential areas.

The world's most populous cities are often held hostage by their sheer size. Poor ecology, a huge amount of transport on the streets, a shortage of green spaces and recreation areas, constant noise pollution - all this, of course, negatively affects the health (physical and mental) of a person, a resident of a metropolis.

Urbanization processes, according to scientists, began around the middle of the 19th century. But then they were local, local in nature. They reached the global level a century later - in the 50s of the twentieth century. At this time, the urban population of the planet is growing rapidly, and the largest megacities of our time are being formed.

If in 1950 the share of the urban population on the planet was only 30%, then in 2000 it had already reached 45%. Today, the level of global urbanization is about 57%.

The most urbanized countries on the planet are Luxembourg (100%), Belgium (98%), UK (90%), Australia (88%) and Chile (88%).

The most populated cities in the world

In fact, determining the population of a large city is quite difficult. Firstly, researchers are not always able to obtain up-to-date and reliable statistical information (especially when it comes to the megacities of third world countries - Asia, Africa or Latin America).

Secondly, the approaches to counting the number of city residents may be different. Thus, some demographers do not take into account people living in the suburban area, while others ignore temporary labor migrants. That is why it can be very difficult to name exactly the most populated city in the world.

Another problem that demographers and statisticians face is the problem of determining the boundaries of a metropolis. To solve this problem, a very interesting method was recently invented. To do this, a photograph of the populated area is taken from the air, in the evening. The city boundaries can then be easily drawn along the edge of the distribution of city lighting.

Top most populated cities in the world

In ancient times, Jericho was considered the largest (by population) city on the planet. About 2 thousand people lived there nine thousand years ago. Today this is the number of residents in a large village and a small European town.

The total number of inhabitants living in the ten most populated cities on the planet is almost 260 million people! In other words, this is 4% of the entire world population.

1. Tokyo (Japan, 37.7 million people);
2. Jakarta (Indonesia, 29.9);
3. Chongqing (China, 29.0);
4. Delhi (India, 24.2);
5. Manila (Philippines, 22.8);
6. Shanghai (China, 22.6);
7. Karachi (Venezuela, 21.7);
8. New York (United States of America, 20.8);
9. Mexico City (Mexico, 20.5).

Six out of ten of these cities are located in Asia, with 2 in China. It is worth noting that the largest city in Europe, Moscow, would take only 17th place in this ranking. About 16 million people live in the capital of the Russian Federation.

Tokyo, Japan)

The capital of Japan today is the most populous city in the world, home to at least 37 million people. For comparison: this is the number of inhabitants in the whole of Poland!

Today Tokyo is not only the largest metropolis, but also the most important financial, industrial and cultural center of East Asia. The world's largest metro operates here: it carries at least 8 million passengers a day. Tokyo will amaze any traveler with a huge number of faceless, gray streets and alleys. Some of them don't even have their own names.

It is surprising that the largest metropolis on the planet is located in a seismically unstable zone. Every year about a hundred fluctuations of varying intensity are recorded in Tokyo.

Chongqing (China)

Chinese Chongqing holds the absolute world championship among cities in terms of territory size. It occupies the same area as the state of Austria in Europe - 82,000 square kilometers.

The metropolis has an almost perfect circular shape: 470 by 460 kilometers. About 29 million Chinese live here. However, since a large number of them live in the suburban area, some statisticians sometimes do not include Chongqing in the lists of the most populated cities on the planet.

In addition to its colossal size, the city also boasts an ancient history. After all, it is already more than 3 thousand years old. Chongqing arose at the confluence of two Chinese rivers, surrounded by three picturesque hills.

New York, USA)

Although New York is not the largest city on the planet by population, it can be considered the most popular metropolis in the world.

The city is often called the Big Apple. Why? Everything is very simple: according to one of the legends, it was the apple tree that was the first to take root within the boundaries of the future metropolis.

New York is an important financial center of the world; about 700 thousand (!) different companies are located here. City residents are served daily by at least 6 thousand metro cars and about 13 thousand taxi cars. By the way, it is no coincidence that local taxis are painted yellow. The founder of a shipping company once conducted special research trying to determine which color is most pleasing to the human eye. It turned out that it was yellow.

Conclusion

Amazing fact: if you collect all the residents of the 10 most populous cities in the world, you will get a number that is almost twice the total population of Russia! In addition, these already huge megacities continue to grow.

The most populated cities in the world are Tokyo, Jakarta, Chongqing, Delhi and Seoul. All of them are located in Asia.

Over the past decades, the planet's population has begun to increase at a tremendous pace, and therefore the endless increase in the urban population no longer surprises anyone. Two tens of millions of people can live in one city, and even more - Chinese and Indian megacities prove this. However, numbers are one issue and population density another.

There are cities in the world with huge density indicators - it seems that people there literally walk over each other. The Top 5 will allow us to consider cities where the number of people per square kilometer creates real problems.

Fifth place - Shanghai

Despite the fact that Shanghai, with its more than 14 million inhabitants, is perceived as synonymous with a huge crowd of people, it occupies only fifth position in this ranking. There are an average of 18,630 people per 1 square kilometer of space. This huge anthill is one of the powerful industrial centers of China, which is characterized by serious environmental problems. Sometimes you can’t even breathe here; local authorities installed oxygen booths several years ago, which allow residents of the smog-covered area to catch their breath at least occasionally.

Fourth place – Karachi

The city of Karachi is located in Pakistan, and in total it is home to about 10 million people. Wherein The population density is enormous, amounting to 18,900 inhabitants per square kilometer. And if you can still imagine this with Chinese Shanghai, because the city consists of skyscrapers and high-rise buildings, then the situation here appears completely incomprehensible and comical, because there are no such benefits of civilization here, and the city is represented mainly by low buildings of a couple of floors.

Third place - Dhaka

Many people have never even heard of this city, yet it is the capital of Bangladesh and ranks third in terms of population density in the world! Not so many people live in the city, by the standards of megacities, of course. The population is less than 10 million people, but for every square kilometer of area there are 23,029 people! People flock to the capital of their state in search of a better life, and the features of the relief and the area as a whole do not allow for wider settlement, which creates such a crowd.

Second place - Kolkata

The population density in the capital of Bangladesh is enormous, but the Indians were able to stay even denser. Kolkata has a population of more than 14 million people, it is a large urban agglomeration, which consists of several settlements that have become a single whole. The possibility of distributing people throughout the surrounding areas was of no interest to the local residents, and they apparently liked living in such crowded conditions. The population density in the city is 23,900 people per square kilometer space.

The most populous city in the world

The most populous city in the world is Mumbai. The love of Indians for living in crowded conditions is confirmed by the fact that an Indian city also becomes the undisputed leader of this rating. In the past it was called Bombay- in those days when people did not literally walk over each other here. Currently, about 14 million people live in the city, and for every square kilometer of area there are 28,515 people! If you calculate the total area of ​​this settlement and divide it by local residents, it turns out that each person has 35 square meters. And it’s one thing if such an area was provided in an apartment - this is the space per person in the entire city, including its built-up and undeveloped areas, roads and obstacles!

High-rise buildings for Indian cities are a luxury that can only be seen in the center. And the rest of the territory is occupied by numerous slum areas with houses of one floor, or more prosperous options of 2-3 floors, no more.

What about Moscow?

The population density in Moscow is especially noticeable in the metro in the morning, which local residents and visitors actively complain about. But in fact the indicator density for the most densely populated metropolis in Russia is 4834 people per square kilometer. Compared to the leaders of the world ranking, this is not at all a lot, especially since 12.5 million people live in the Russian capital. There are other data that take into account not only local residents, but also the visiting population, and in this case the density is already indicated at 9682 people per square kilometer.

But even in this case, Moscow does not even reach 10th place in the world ranking, being in the second ten if visitors are taken into account, and far beyond the 30th if only official data is taken into account. Moscow traffic jams and crowds in the metro are trifles compared to what you can see in the world, especially in Asian countries.

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You can compare cities with each other using many criteria. And even such a concept as “The Biggest City” is somewhat abstract. Some ratings consider cities in terms of their area. Others based on the number of people living in the city itself. Moreover, each rating will have different leaders. This article will consider only the most populous cities in the world. Let's see how “rubbery” a populated area can be?

5th place – Karachi
Karachi is a port city located in the south of Pakistan. The city's population is more than 13,000,000 residents. At the same time, it increases annually by an average of 5%.

4th place – Tokyo
Tokyo is the well-known capital of Japan. The city is located on the island of Honshu in Tokyo Bay. The population of this locality is about 13,500,000 people. In addition, the Tokyo metropolitan area (together with its suburbs) is considered the largest in the world with a population of more than 37 million people. Demotivators from Tokyo often appear on the Internet, since about 6,000 inhabitants live in every square kilometer of the earth, and some people are truly frightened by such a density of people.

3rd place – Bangkok
Bangkok is the largest city in Thailand, which is also its capital. The name of the city can be translated as “the place where olives grow.” The population has already exceeded 14 million people. The rapid growth of the city has led to the fact that Bangkok has gone beyond the boundaries of its province.

2nd place - Beijing
Beijing is the capital of the most populous country in the world, namely China. More than 20 million people live here. Moreover, this number includes only permanent residents of the city, as well as temporary ones who have been living in Beijing for more than 6 months. In fact, there are many more people living in the city who are not taken into account by statistics.

1st place - Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city in China. It is located in the east of the country. The most populous city in the world has not only 23,800,000 people. Today Shanghai is rightfully a world-class city.

The total number of people living on the planet is huge - in 2018, according to UN statistics, the world's population is 7.6 billion people. The largest number of people live in the Northern and Eastern hemispheres of the planet - 90% and 85%, respectively. More than 57% of the world's inhabitants are Asian, 12.5% ​​of the total number of people live in North America, more than 11% in Africa, almost 10% in Europe, 8% in South America and less than 1% in Oceania. At the same time, the average population density is 55.7 people per km². And this figure is steadily growing - in 1890 this figure was 12 people per km², in 1950 - 18 people per km², and some quarter of a century ago - at the end of 1992 - already 40 people. per km².

5. Chennai 25,845 people/km²

Twenty years ago, the city of Chennai had a different name - Madras, and in some English-language sources this name is still found. The main problem of the sixth largest city in India is overpopulation. The reason for such a high population density over a fairly large area is the absence of modern high-rise buildings. According to statistics, there is practically no construction of residential high-rise buildings in the city, which leads to the growth of slums and difficulties with public transport.

4. Caloocan 27,916 people/km²

A satellite of Manila, or rather, one of the adjacent cities; is part of the Greater Manila agglomeration and is actually considered an independent metropolitan area. Caloocan is the only city in the Philippines with its own train station; The railway network in the region is almost undeveloped. Among the features is a sharp social division: in the center of the city there are modern skyscrapers, supermarkets, on the outskirts there are slums, with dense, chaotic buildings, causing unsanitary conditions. Caloocan is recognized as a settlement suffering an environmental disaster due to undeveloped urban infrastructure.

3. Dhaka 28,410 people/km²

One of the oldest operating cities not only in the region, but also in the world, Dhaka arose in the Ganges River delta back in the 7th century. The population within the administrative boundaries of the city is more than 8.5 million people, within the boundaries of the agglomeration - more than 15 million. International organizations find it difficult to accurately calculate: part of the city is represented by slums, where it is not easy to determine the number of residents. In addition, Dhaka is one of the fastest growing cities - the annual population growth is 4-5%.

2. Mumbai 28,508 people/km²

The country's first city in terms of population, with an area of ​​603 sq. km (including suburbs), is one of the top 10 agglomerations in the world and at the same time one of the top 5 cities with the highest population density. For many centuries it was called Bombay - after the name of the island where the central part of the city is located; at the end of the 20th century it was renamed Mumbai. A city with a predominantly male population: the ratio of men to women is estimated to be 10 to 8, respectively. This inequality is explained by the fact that residents of the state flock to the economically developed city, which is also a major transport hub and port, to work.

This long-term “turnover” makes it difficult to calculate the city’s population.

1. Manila 41,515 people/km²

The capital of the Philippines, with a relatively small area of ​​38.55 square kilometers, is one of the five most populous cities in the world. Manila is a city with a rich history: founded at the end of the 16th century, it has survived several pirate raids and wars, including World War II. Today Manila is a city suffering an environmental disaster: polluted air, huge landfills, biologically dead rivers flowing through the city. The reason for this deplorable situation is the low level of infrastructure development.

10

Hacca is the capital and largest city of Bangladesh. Located in the Ganges delta, on the left bank of the Buriganga. Dhaka is considered the “rickshaw capital of the world” - more than 300 thousand of these colorfully painted “carts” are officially registered here, without which not a single event can take place.

9

Moscow is the capital of the Russian Federation, a city of federal significance, the administrative center of the Central Federal District and the center of the Moscow Region, which it is not part of. Moscow is the largest financial center on an all-Russian scale, an international business center and a management center for a large part of the country's economy. For example, about half of the banks registered in Russia are concentrated in Moscow. According to Ernst & Young, Moscow ranks 7th among European cities in terms of investment attractiveness.

8

Mumbai is a city in western India, on the coast of the Arabian Sea. The administrative center of the state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the cultural center of the country, with many museums and art galleries, concerts with the participation of both national performers and world-famous stars, and the largest film companies in all of India are located here.

7

Guangzhou is a city of sub-provincial significance of the People's Republic of China, the capital of Guangdong Province, the political, economic, scientific, technical, educational, cultural and transport center of all southern China.

6

Tambul is the largest city in Turkey, the main commercial, industrial and cultural center, and the main port of the country. It is located on the banks of the Bosphorus Strait, dividing it into European and Asian parts, connected by bridges and a metro tunnel. It is the first city in Europe in terms of population (taking into account the population living in both the European and Asian parts). Former capital of the Roman, Byzantine, Latin and Ottoman empires.

5

Lagos is a port city in southwestern Nigeria, the largest city in the country. Lagos is the most populous city in Africa. Lagos is home to approximately half of Nigeria's industry.

4

Delhi is located in northern India on the banks of the Jamna River. Delhi is a cosmopolitan city where different cultures are mixed. Delhi has also become a city of science, and occupies a leading position not only in the field of information technology and telecommunications, but also in natural sciences and applied sciences. 30% of India's IT is concentrated in Delhi (here Delhi is second only to Bangalore, which has 35% of IT specialists).

3

Beijing is the capital and one of the central cities of the People's Republic of China. Beijing is surrounded on three sides by Hebei Province and borders Tianjin in the southeast. The headquarters of most national companies in China are located in Beijing. China's largest transportation hub, Beijing is the origin of many highways and railways, and Beijing Capital International Airport is the second-largest airport in the world in terms of passenger traffic.

2

Arachi is a port city in the south of Pakistan, the largest city in the country and one of the largest cities in the world, the administrative center of the Sindh province. The favorable geographical position of the city, located in a convenient natural harbor, contributed to its rapid growth and development during the colonial period and especially after the division of British India into two independent states in 1947 - India and Pakistan.

1

Shanghai is the largest city in China and one of the largest cities in the world by population. Located in the Yangtze River Delta in eastern China. The industrial sector of the city occupies a leading position in the state. The most profitable and developed areas are automotive production, mechanical engineering, petrochemical refining, metallurgy, textile and light industry.

Shanghai is a cozy, hospitable and, at the same time, the most highly developed metropolis in China. It miraculously intertwines western chic and oriental charm. The metropolis is replete with expensive restaurants, breathtaking skyscrapers, fashionable shopping centers, casinos, luxury hotels and ancient architectural buildings. Europeans often compare it with Venice and Paris, and therefore the city has even acquired many beautiful nicknames - Pearl of the East, shopping paradise, Eastern Paris.