This list contains all cities with one million or more inhabitants. Cities are defined in the political-geographic sense (city proper). The population figures given therefore refer to the city or municipality in the political-administrative sense. In some cases, the population figures refer to capital districts or Metropolises and, in the case of the People's Republic of China, to the urban population of the city in question. In many cases, the city boundaries do not correspond to the settlement structure and the boundaries of metropolitan regions and agglomerations often extend far beyond the administrative city boundaries. In some cases, metropolitan regions and political municipalities cannot be separated, as in the case of metropolitan municipalities or city regions, which exist in some countries. There is no globally standardised definition of what constitutes a city, and municipal divisions differ from country to country.
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If only the administrative boundaries of a city were taken into account, Chongqing would be the largest city in the world, with 32 million inhabitants. However, the urban population is significantly smaller at just under 14 million (2020) and is spread across various urban settlements. The city's administrative area is almost as large as Austria and larger than the Czech Republic. It consists mainly of mountains, forest and agricultural areas with a rural settlement structure.
