Largest Metros in the World

[JMKeynes]

https://www.newsweek.com/25-most-pop...-world-1633845

[Yuri]

They got Seoul, Manila, Moscow, London underestimated. Rio de Janeiro is overestimated by 1 million.

[JMKeynes]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

They got Seoul, Manila, Moscow, London underestimated. Rio de Janeiro is overestimated by 1 million.

New York is also underestimated.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by JMKeynes

https://www.newsweek.com/25-most-pop...-world-1633845

where the fuck is Seoul? Where the fuck is Jakarta?

[jbermingham123]

From article:

According to Population Stat ,which uses sources from World Bank and United Nations, Census,New York City "is predicted to more than double in size by 2035, up to 20.8 million residents in the New York City urban area."

This article was clearly not proofread. it is obvious in the sloppy typing and the egregious logical errors. It doesnt take an SSP member to know that NYC is not going to double in size by 2035. Also, the list is not in order by population.. its not in any particular order at all

[homebucket]

Not surprised to see NYC and LA on the list. It's probably going to be long time before we see another US Metro hit 8 digits though. At least 2 more decades I'm guessing. The question is whether it'll be Chicago or DFW or Houston.

[MonkeyRonin]

"The city [Dhaka] is the most densely populated on Earth, with nearly 37 people living in every square kilometer."




Wat

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by homebucket

Not surprised to see NYC and LA on the list. It's probably going to be long time before we see another US Metro hit 8 digits though. At least 2 more decades I'm guessing. The question is whether it'll be Chicago or DFW or Houston.

Chicago just need a mere 4% growth to get there. It's not that difficult.

In the past, they had a mediocre growth (1970-1990, less than 2%/decade) and grew over 11% in the 1990's. New York went through the same process, horrible 1970-1990, great 1990's, bad 2000's and a rather good 2010's.

Chicago must do really bad in the next 20 years in order to have Dallas or Houston becoming a megacity before them.

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by JMKeynes

https://www.newsweek.com/25-most-pop...-world-1633845

Newsweek has not been a respectable news agency for almost 10 years now.

Should probably ignore what they print.

[Shawn]

Not to pile it on... it's not just the obvious stat mistakes ala NY's quoted population of 18+ million "doubling" to 20+ million. There are punctuation and possessive clause errors all over the place.

And this is behind a paywall

[memph]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

They got Seoul, Manila, Moscow, London underestimated. Rio de Janeiro is overestimated by 1 million.

Lol for real... Manilla is twice that size. And wtf is up with Jakarta not being on a list that cuts off at 12.5m when it has at least 30m? And yeah, Seoul is around 25m so it should definitely be on the list.

Mumbai's numbers seem low too.

Bangkok and Bangalore should be at 15m+ as well.

[Manitopiaaa]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

where the fuck is Seoul? Where the fuck is Jakarta?

This is based on those idiotic UN urban area estimates: https://population.un.org/wup/Publications/

(See first link)

Seoul has 9,963,000 people under this ranking, which is beyond absurd. The UN's data arm has less credibility than the UN Human Rights Council at this point.

[Tuckerman]

The UN estimates reminds me of that saying "All models are wrong, some are useful." I put this data set into the "some are useful category". Over many years of working with WHO on data related to health I can only reiterate how complicated and notoriously problematic these international comparisons are. Proceed with caution.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Manitopiaaa

This is based on those idiotic UN urban area estimates: https://population.un.org/wup/Publications/

(See first link)

Seoul has 9,963,000 people under this ranking, which is beyond absurd. The UN's data arm has less credibility than the UN Human Rights Council at this point.

That's the population of Seoul city proper, which is the size of New York's 4 big boroughs. Why do they bother to even release such nonsense?

[memph]

Originally Posted by Tuckerman

The UN estimates reminds me of that saying "All models are wrong, some are useful." I put this data set into the "some are useful category". Over many years of working with WHO on data related to health I can only reiterate how complicated and notoriously problematic these international comparisons are. Proceed with caution.

I mean I get you can haggle over whether to include certain exurbs and satellite cities but in what world does the Manila urban area have only 14 million, Jakarta only 10.5 million and Seoul only 10 million?

Seems like they didn't add any of the Central Luzon and Calabarzon suburbs for Manila. I mean I get that it's a bit confusing when what the Philippines call Metro Manila is really just the province/National Capital Region and not the whole metropolitan area in the way most countries would define it. In that sense it would be like if they had the 1996 population of the Toronto metropolitan area as 2.385 million because that was the population of the "Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto", even though the full metropolitan area had a population of 4.264 million by then (and 4.629 million for the GTA).

It seems like they just asked some intern at the census bureau for each country to send a list of the biggest cities in their country and didn't care to check if the methodology was remotely consistent.

For Seoul and Jakarta, the UN study does have their big edge cities on their list of world cities, but they categorize them as cities while the Special Capital Region of Jakarta is tagged as a metropolitan area despite being only the core 1/3 of the metropolitan area. The Seoul Special City is listed as the urban agglomeration, when it encompasses less than half of the urban area population.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by memph

I mean I get you can haggle over whether to include certain exurbs and satellite cities but in what world does the Manila urban area have only 14 million, Jakarta only 10.5 million and Seoul only 10 million?

Seems like they didn't add any of the Central Luzon and Calabarzon suburbs for Manila. I mean I get that it's a bit confusing when what the Philippines call Metro Manila is really just the province/National Capital Region and not the whole metropolitan area in the way most countries would define it. In that sense it would be like if they had the 1996 population of the Toronto metropolitan area as 2.385 million because that was the population of the "Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto", even though the full metropolitan area had a population of 4.264 million by then (and 4.629 million for the GTA).

It seems like they just asked some intern at the census bureau for each country to send a list of the biggest cities in their country and didn't care to check if the methodology was remotely consistent.

For Seoul and Jakarta, the UN study does have their big edge cities on their list of world cities, but they categorize them as cities while the Special Capital Region of Jakarta is tagged as a metropolitan area despite being only the core 1/3 of the metropolitan area. The Seoul Special City is listed as the urban agglomeration, when it encompasses less than half of the urban area population.

Jakarta metro area fits 33.7 million people in 3,100 sq mi only; Manila 28.2 million in 2,900 sq mi; Seoul 26 million in 4,500 sq mi.

UN population office apparently can't tell the difference between city proper, urban area and metro area. I guess the worst geography college in the world will teach this to their freshmen.

[Manitopiaaa]

According to the UN report, here are major American cities by population (2018) and 2030 projections:

• Atlanta: 5,572,000 > 6,602,000
• Austin: 1,915,000 > 2,453,000
• Boston: 4,308,000 > 4,581,000
• Charlotte: 1,886,000 > 2,520,000
• Chicago: 8,864,000 > 9,424,000
• Cincinnati: 1,733,000 > 1,881,000
• Cleveland: 1,776,000 > 1,852,000
• Dallas: 6,099,000 > 7,073,000
• Denver: 2,753,000 > 3,141,000
• Detroit: 3,600,000 > 3,679,000
• Houston: 6,115,000 > 7,254,000 (bigger than Dallas!)
• Kansas City: 1,663,000 > 1,834,000
• Las Vegas: 2,541,000 > 3,173,000
• Los Angeles: 12,458,000 > 13,209,000
• Memphis: 1,139,000 > 1,241,000
• Miami: 6,036,000 > 6,664,000
• Minneapolis: 2,889,000 > 3,177,000
• Nashville: 1,199,000 > 1,422,000
• New York: 18,819,000 > 19,958,000
• Orlando: 1,882,000> 2,242,000
• Philadelphia: 5,695,000 > 6,114,000
• Phoenix: 4,359,000 > 5,081,000
• Pittsburgh: 1,718,000 > 1,785,000
• Portland: 2,104,000 > 2,373,000
• Saint Louis: 2,213,000 > 2,351,000
• Salt Lake City: 1,147,000 > 1,284,000
• San Diego: 3,212,000 > 3,526,000
• San Francisco: 3,325,000 > 3,501,000
• Seattle: 3,379,000 > 3,747,000
• Tampa: 2,807,000 > 3,188,000
• Washington: 5,207,000 > 5,868,000

These numbers, especially San Francisco as the smoking gun, show these are based on older urban area estimates for the USA. So these aren't metropolitan area, but urban agglomerations. Which begs the question: why do you need to use old urban area data when MSA estimates are provided annually and the report is literally based around metro area populations?

It seems UN is using lots of different datasets without squaring them away. For Canada, they use "Metropolitan Area" (presumably CMA), yet for Ecuador they use "City Proper" They acknowledge this in the report and blame "lack of data" but it's absurd to insinuate the U.S. doesn't have metropolitan data. It's literally THE basis for comparing cities across academia, media, sports market, realtors, etc.

There's also clear errors in the report. They code Madrid's estimate as "City Proper" but the 2018 count is 6,497,000, which is assuredly metro area.

Seoul has 9,963,000, but is coded as "Urban Agglomeration" which is clearly untrue as Yuri notes. They have Suwon as a separate "Urban Agglomeration" even though they too list city propers, and Suwon is a Seoul suburb by any stretch of the imagination.

For China, they use 2010 Census counts (labeled as 2018 data) and often just use the municipal boundary, but label is "Urban Agglomeration" (aka Urban Area), which is also wrong since Chinese municipal borders often include tons of rural land and are frequently bigger than small U.S. states like Connecticut.

For Brazil, they use City Proper for Manaus, Metropolitan Area for Porto Alegre, and Urban Agglomeration for Natal. Why do you need three datasets, all measuring differing things, under the same country? Brazilian metro area data is among the easiest to find in the world.