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A megacity is a very large city, typically with a population of more than 10 million people. [1] [2] [3] [4] The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) in its 2018 "World Urbanization Prospects" report defines megacities as urban agglomerations with over 10 million inhabitants. [5] A University of Bonn report holds that they are "usually defined as metropolitan areas with a total population of 10 million or more people". [6] Elsewhere in other sources, from five to eight million is considered the minimum threshold, along with a population density of at least 2,000 per square kilometre. [7] The terms conurbation, metropolis, and metroplex are also applied to the latter. [7]
The total number of megacities in the world varies between different sources and their publication dates. The world had 33 according to UN DESA (in 2018), 25 according to the OCDE, 45 according to CityPopulation.de (in 2023), and 44 according to Demographia (in 2023). A good percentage of these urban agglomerations are in China and India. The other four countries with more than one megacity are Brazil, Japan, Pakistan, and the United States. African megacities are present in Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, Angola and the DRC; European megacities are present in Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and Turkey (also in Asia); megacities can be found in Latin America in the countries of Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina.
Some sources identify the Greater Tokyo Area as the largest megacity in the world, [5] [8] while some others give the title to the Pearl River Delta in China. [9] [10] [11]
Megacity | Image | Country | Region | Estimated population | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Citypopulation.de (2024) [9] | Demographia (2023) [8] | UN DESA (2018) [5] | OECD (2020) [12] | ||||
Bangalore | India | South Asia | 14,200,000 | 15,257,000 | 11,440,000 | 14,253,019 | |
Bangkok | Thailand | Southeast Asia | 21,200,000 | 18,884,000 | 10,156,000 | 18,601,400 | |
Beijing | China | East Asia | 21,200,000 | 18,883,000 | 19,618,000 | 20,738,738 | |
Bogotá | Colombia | South America | 10,400,000 | 10,252,000 | 10,574,000 | 10,544,590 | |
Buenos Aires | Argentina | South America | 16,700,000 | 15,748,000 | 14,967,000 | 14,590,526 | |
Cairo | Egypt | North Africa | 22,500,000 | 22,679,000 | 20,076,000 | 27,925,433 | |
Changsha | China | East Asia | 11,000,000 | 5,065,000 | 4,345,000 | 4,009,195 | |
Chengdu | China | East Asia | 17,300,000 | 15,016,000 | 8,813,000 | 9,768,500 | |
Chennai | India | South Asia | 12,600,000 | 11,570,000 | 10,456,000 | 11,528,915 | |
Chongqing | China | East Asia | 10,900,000 | 12,653,000 | 14,838,000 | 8,913,804 | |
Delhi | India | South Asia | 34,600,000 | 31,190,000 | 28,514,000 | 33,495,554 | |
Dhaka | Bangladesh | South Asia | 22,500,000 | 19,134,000 | 19,578,000 | 22,762,988 | |
Dongguan | China | East Asia | Combined with Guangzhou | 10,753,000 | 7,360,000 | Combined with Guangzhou | |
Guangzhou | China | East Asia | 70,100,000 | 27,119,000 | 12,638,000 | 45,428,435 | |
Hangzhou | China | East Asia | 13,900,000 | 9,618,000 | 7,236,000 | 9,013,951 | |
Ho Chi Minh City | Vietnam | Southeast Asia | 13,900,000 | 14,953,000 | 8,145,000 | 14,247,593 | |
Hyderabad | India | South Asia | 11,400,000 | 9,797,000 | 9,482,000 | 9,706,886 | |
Istanbul | Turkey | Europe, West Asia | 15,900,000 | 14,441,000 | 14,751,000 | 14,693,269 | |
Jakarta | Indonesia | Southeast Asia | 29,200,000 | 35,386,000 | 10,517,000 | 32,513,588 | |
Jieyang | China | East Asia | Combined with Shantou | 2,516,000 | - | 13,891,202 | |
Johannesburg | South Africa | Southern Africa | 14,600,000 | 15,551,000 | 5,486,000 | 9,497,036 | |
Karachi | Pakistan | South Asia | 20,900,000 | 20,249,000 | 15,400,000 | 18,916,709 | |
Kinshasa | DR Congo | Central Africa | 15,600,000 | 13,493,000 | 13,171,000 | 10,077,694 | |
Kolkata | India | South Asia | 17,700,000 | 21,747,000 | 14,681,000 | 24,106,859 | |
Lagos | Nigeria | West Africa | 20,700,000 | 14,540,000 | 13,463,000 | 12,642,198 | |
Lahore | Pakistan | South Asia | 14,500,000 | 13,504,000 | 11,738,000 | 15,696,939 | |
Lima | Peru | South America | 11,800,000 | 10,556,000 | 10,391,000 | 10,496,389 | |
London | United Kingdom | Europe | 14,900,000 | 10,803,000 | 9,046,000 | 13,475,297 | |
Los Angeles | United States | North America | 17,200,000 | 15,587,000 | 12,458,000 | 16,206,529 | |
Luanda | Angola | Central Africa | 9,350,000 | 10,914,000 | 7,774,000 | 10,212,263 | |
Metro Manila | Philippines | Southeast Asia | 27,200,000 | 24,156,000 | 13,482,000 | 27,327,889 | |
Mexico City | Mexico | North America | 25,100,000 | 21,905,000 | 21,581,000 | 19,229,491 | |
Moscow | Russia | Europe | 19,700,000 | 17,878,000 | 12,410,000 | 17,217,606 | |
Mumbai | India | South Asia | 27,100,000 | 25,189,000 | 19,980,000 | 23,435,141 | |
Nagoya | Japan | East Asia | 10,500,000 | 9,439,000 | 9,507,000 | 9,853,994 | |
New York City | United States | North America | 22,000,000 | 21,396,000 | 18,819,000 | 20,106,617 | |
Osaka | Japan | East Asia | 17,700,000 | 14,916,000 | 19,281,000 | 16,866,788 | |
Paris | France | Europe | 11,500,000 | 11,108,000 | 10,901,000 | 11,249,025 | |
Rio de Janeiro | Brazil | South America | 12,500,000 | 12,306,000 | 13,293,000 | 11,068,999 | |
São Paulo | Brazil | South America | 22,100,000 | 21,486,000 | 21,650,000 | 21,671,857 | |
Seoul | South Korea | East Asia | 25,100,000 | 23,225,000 | 9,963,000 | 25,199,125 | |
Shanghai | China | East Asia | 40,800,000 | 24,042,000 | 25,582,000 | 30,504,083 | |
Shenzhen | China | East Asia | Combined with Guangzhou | 17,778,000 | 11,908,000 | Combined with Guangzhou | |
Surabaya | Indonesia | Southeast Asia | 5,900,000 | 6,556,000 | - | 10,695,358 | |
Suzhou | China | East Asia | Combined with Shanghai | 6,091,000 | 6,339,000 | 13,458,006 | |
Taipei | Taiwan | East Asia | 9,950,000 | 9,662,000 | - | 10,048,037 | |
Tehran | Iran | West Asia | 16,500,000 | 13,382,000 | 8,896,000 | 13,563,316 | |
Tianjin | China | East Asia | 11,500,000 | 10,047,000 | 13,215,000 | 8,963,397 | |
Tokyo | Japan | East Asia | 41,000,000 | 37,785,000 | 37,468,000 | 36,697,549 | |
Wuhan | China | East Asia | 12,200,000 | 10,353,000 | 8,176,000 | 8,947,812 | |
Xiamen | China | East Asia | 14,900,000 | 5,253,000 | 3,585,000 | 4,261,898 | |
Xi'an | China | East Asia | 12,800,000 | 12,211,000 | 7,444,000 | 6,818,858 | |
Zhengzhou | China | East Asia | 9,800,000 | 11,068,000 | 4,940,000 | 6,381,637 |
The term "megacity" entered common use in the late 19th or early 20th centuries; one of the earliest documented uses of the term was by the University of Texas in 1904. [13] Initially the United Nations used the term to describe cities of 8 million or more inhabitants, but now uses the threshold of 10 million. [14] In the mid 1970s the term was coined by urbanist Janice Perlman referring to the phenomenon of very large urban agglomerations. [15]
In 1800, only 3% of the world's population lived in cities, a figure that rose to 47% by the end of the twentieth century. In 1950, there were 83 cities with populations exceeding one million; by 2007, this number had risen to 468. [16] The UN forecasts that today's urban population of 3.2 billion will rise to nearly 5 billion by 2030, when three out of five, or 60%, of people will live in cities. [17] This increase will be most dramatic on the least-urbanized continents, Asia and Africa. Surveys and projections indicate that all urban growth over the next 25 years will be in developing countries. [18] One billion people, almost one-seventh of the world's population, now live in shanty towns. [19] In many poor countries, overcrowded slums exhibit high rates of disease due to unsanitary conditions, malnutrition, and lack of basic health care. [20] By 2030, over 2 billion people in the world will be living in slums. [21] Over 90% of the urban population of Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda, three of the world's most rural countries, already live in slums.
By 2025, Asia alone will have at least 30 megacities, including Mumbai, India (2015 population of 20.75 million people), Shanghai, China (2015 population of 35.5 million people), Delhi, India (2015 population of 21.8 million people), Tokyo, Japan (2015 population of 38.8 million people) and Seoul, South Korea (2015 population of 25.6 million people). In Africa, Lagos, Nigeria has grown from 300,000 in 1950 to an estimated 21 million today.
For almost five hundred years, during the period of the Republic and later of the Empire, Rome was the largest, wealthiest, and most politically important city of the ancient world, rulling over Europe, Western Asia and Northern Africa. [22] [23] It is often stated that its population passed one million people by the end of the 1st century BC, however, its sometimes debated about whether the population actually reached such a large size. [24] [25] Rome's population started declining in 402 AD when Flavius Honorius, Western Roman Emperor from 395 to 423, moved the government to Ravenna and Rome's population declined to a mere 20,000 during the Early Middle Ages, reducing the sprawling city to groups of inhabited buildings interspersed among large areas of ruins and vegetation.
Baghdad was likely the largest city in the world from shortly after its foundation in 762 AD until the 930s, with some estimates putting its population at over one million. [26] Chinese capital cities Chang'an and Kaifeng also experienced huge population booms during prosperous empires. According to the census in the year 742 recorded in the New Book of Tang , 362,921 families with 1,960,188 persons were counted in Jingzhao Fu (京兆府), the metropolitan area including small cities in the vicinity of Chang'an. [27] The medieval settlement surrounding Angkor, the one-time capital of the Khmer Empire which flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, could have supported a population of up to one million people. [28]
From around 1825 to 1918 London was the largest city in the world, with the population growing rapidly; it was the first city to reach a population of over 5 million in 1900. In 1950, New York City was the only urban area with a population of over 10 million. [29] Geographers had identified 25 such areas as of October 2005, [30] as compared with 19 megacities in 2004 and only nine in 1985. This increase has happened as the world's population moves towards the high (75–85%) urbanization levels of North America and Western Europe.
Since the 2000s, the largest megacity has been the Greater Tokyo Area. The population of this urban agglomeration includes areas such as Yokohama and Kawasaki, and is estimated to be between 37 and 38 million. This variation in estimates can be accounted for by different definitions of what the area encompasses. While the prefectures of Tokyo, Chiba, Kanagawa, and Saitama are commonly included in statistical information, the Japan Statistics Bureau only includes the area within 50 kilometers of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Offices in Shinjuku, thus arriving at a smaller population estimate. [31] [32] A characteristic issue of megacities is the difficulty in defining their outer limits and accurately estimating the populations.
Another list defines megacities as urban agglomerations instead of metropolitan areas. [33] As of 2021, there are 28 megacities by this definition, like Tokyo. [34] Other sources list Nagoya [9] and the Rhein-Ruhr [35] as megacities.
This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: A lot of vague statements without up-to-date / worldwide-applicable supporting examples or data. Can also be further expanded.(May 2014) |
According to the United Nations, the proportion of urban dwellers living in slums or informal settlements decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the developing world between 1990 and 2005. [36] However, due to rising population, the absolute number of slum dwellers is rising. The majority of these are located in informal settlements which often lack sufficient quality housing, sanitation, drainage, water access, and officially recognized addresses. The increase in informal settlement population has been caused by massive migration, both internal and transnational, into cities, which has caused growth rates of urban populations and spatial concentrations not seen before in history.[ citation needed ] These issues raise problems in the political, social, and economic arenas.[ citation needed ] People who live in slums or informal settlements often have minimal or no access to education, healthcare, or the urban economy.
As with any large concentration of people, there is usually crime. [37] [38] High population densities often result in higher crime rates, as visibly seen in growing megacities such as Karachi, Delhi, Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, and Lagos. [39]
Megacities often have significant numbers of homeless people. The actual legal definition of homelessness varies from country to country, or among different entities or institutions in the same country or region. [40]
In 2002, research showed that children and families were the largest growing segment of the homeless population in the United States, [41] [42] and this has presented new challenges, especially in services, to agencies. In the US, the government asked many major cities to come up with a ten-year plan to end homelessness. One of the results of this was a "Housing first" solution, rather than to have a homeless person remain in an emergency homeless shelter it was thought to be better to quickly get the person permanent housing of some sort and the necessary support services to sustain a new home. But there are many complications with this kind of program and these must be dealt with to make such an initiative work successfully in the middle to long term. [43] [44]
Traffic congestion is a condition on road networks that occurs as use increases, and is characterized by slower speeds, longer trip times, increased pollution, and increased vehicular queueing. The Texas Transportation Institute estimated that, in 2000, the 75 largest metropolitan areas experienced 3.6 billion vehicle-hours of delay, resulting in 5.7 billion U.S. gallons (21.6 billion liters) in wasted fuel and $67.5 billion in lost productivity, or about 0.7% of the nation's GDP. It also estimated that the annual cost of congestion for each driver was approximately $1,000 in very large cities and $200 in small cities. [45] Traffic congestion is increasing in major cities and delays are becoming more frequent in smaller cities and rural areas.
Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a multifaceted concept, which includes the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs to its outskirts to low-density, auto-dependent development on rural land, with associated design features that encourage car dependency. [46] As a result, some critics argue that sprawl has certain disadvantages including longer transport distances to work, high car dependence, inadequate facilities (e.g. health, cultural. etc.) and higher per-person infrastructure costs. Discussions and debates about sprawl are often obfuscated by the ambiguity associated with the phrase. For example, some commentators measure sprawl only with the average number of residential units per acre in a given area. But others associate it with decentralization (spread of population without a well-defined center), discontinuity (leapfrog development), segregation of uses, etc. [47]
Gentrification and urban gentrification are terms for the socio-cultural changes in an area as a result of wealthier people buying property in a less prosperous community. [48] As living costs rise, lower-income residents are forced to move out of the community leading to an increase in average income, which in turn makes the area more desirable to other wealthier property or business owners, further pushing the living costs up. This process also tends to lead to a decrease in average family size in the area. This type of population change reduces industrial land use when it is redeveloped for commerce and housing.
Air pollution is the introduction into the atmosphere of chemicals, particulate matter, or biological materials that cause harm or discomfort to humans or other living organisms, or damages the natural environment. [49] [50] Many urban areas have significant problems with smog, a type of air pollution derived from vehicle emissions from internal combustion engines and industrial fumes that react in the atmosphere with sunlight to form secondary pollutants that also combine with the primary emissions to form photochemical smog.
The sheer size and complexity of megacities gives rise to enormous social and environmental challenges. Whether megacities can develop sustainably depends to a large extent on how they obtain, share, and manage their energy and material resources. There are correlations between electricity consumption, heating and industrial fuel use, ground transportation energy use, water consumption, waste generation, and steel production in terms of level of consumption and how efficiently they use resources. [51]
Megacities are a common backdrop in dystopian science fiction, with examples such as the Sprawl in William Gibson's Neuromancer , [52] and Mega-City One, a megalopolis of between 50 and 800 million people (fluctuations due to war and disaster) across the east coast of the United States, in the Judge Dredd comic. [53] In Demolition Man a megacity called "San Angeles" was formed from the joining of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego and the surrounding metropolitan regions following a massive earthquake in 2010. [54] Fictional planet-wide megacities (ecumenopoleis) include Trantor in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series of books and Coruscant (population two trillion) in the Star Wars universe. [55]
A metropolitan area or metro is a region consisting of a densely populated urban agglomeration and its surrounding territories which are sharing industries, commercial areas, transport network, infrastructures and housing. A metropolitan area usually comprises multiple principal cities, jurisdictions and municipalities: neighborhoods, townships, boroughs, cities, towns, exurbs, suburbs, counties, districts and even states and nations in areas like the eurodistricts. As social, economic and political institutions have changed, metropolitan areas have become key economic and political regions.
A conurbation is a region comprising a number of metropolises, cities, large towns, and other urban areas which, through population growth and physical expansion, have merged to form one continuous urban or industrially developed area. In most cases, a conurbation is a polycentric urbanised area in which transportation has developed to link areas. They create a single urban labour market or travel to work area.
The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, consisting of the Kantō region of Japan as well as the prefecture of Yamanashi of the neighboring Chūbu region. In Japanese, it is referred to by various terms, one of the most common being Capital Region.
An urban area is a human settlement with a high population density and an infrastructure of built environment. This is the core of a metropolitan statistical area in the United States, if it contains a population of more than 50,000.
A primate city is a city that is the largest in its country, province, state, or region, and disproportionately larger than any others in the urban hierarchy. A primate city distribution is a rank-size distribution that has one very large city with many much smaller cities and towns and no intermediate-sized urban centers, creating a statistical king effect.
A city proper is the geographical area contained within city limits. The term proper is not exclusive to cities; it can describe the geographical area within the boundaries of any given locality. The United Nations defines the term as "... the single political jurisdiction which contains the historical city centre."
The Madrid metropolitan area is a monocentric metropolitan area in the centre of the Iberian peninsula, around the municipality of Madrid, Spain. It is not related to any sort of administrative delimitation, and thus, its limits are ambiguous.
A metropolis is a large city or conurbation which is a significant economic, political, and cultural area for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections, commerce, and communications.
The Naples metropolitan area, or Greater Naples, is a metropolitan area in Campania, Italy, centered on the city of Naples.
The Katowice urban area, also known as the Upper Silesian urban area, is an urban area/conurbation in southern Poland, centered on Katowice. It is located in the Silesian Voivodeship. The Katowice urban area is the largest urban area in Poland and 22nd largest urban area in the European Union. According to Demographia, its population is 1,903,000.
A secondary city is an urban hub that fills specific regional and local needs related to governance, economics, finance, education, trade, transportation. A secondary city is defined by population, area, function, and economic status, but also by their relationship to neighboring and distant cities and their socio-economic status. A secondary city may emerge from a cluster of smaller cities in a metropolitan region or may be the capital city of a province, state, or second-tier administrative unit within a country. Secondary cities are the fastest-growing urban areas in lower- and middle-income countries, experiencing unplanned growth and development. By 2030, there will be twice as many medium-size cities as there were in 1990, outnumbering the total number of megacities. According to the World Bank, secondary cities make up almost 40% of the world cities population. Many secondary cities in the Global South are expected to undergo massive expansions in the next few decades comparable to city growth in Europe and North America over the past two centuries. These cities are unique environments that generally have limited data and information on infrastructure, land tenure, and planning.
Kollam Metropolitan Area is the 4th largest Metropolis in Kerala and 14th largest urban agglomeration in South India. It is one of the 10 fastest growing cities in the world covering an area of 364.51 km2 (2015) with a 31.1% urban growth between 2015 and 2020 as per the survey conducted by Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) based on urban area growth during January 2020.
The Abidjan–Lagos Corridor, also known as the Abidjan–Lagos Megalopolis, is an emerging transnational megalopolis on the coast of southern West Africa. It stretches from Abidjan to Lagos, crossing five independent states from west to east, and includes two political capitals and many regional economic centers. The corridor has a length of approximately 965 kilometers. Within the megalopolis, a significant portion of West Africa's economic output is generated, and cities within the corridor are among the most economically developed of their respective countries, for which agglomeration effects and access to the Atlantic Ocean are responsible. The population within the region is experiencing rapid growth, and nearly 50 million people are expected to live within the corridor by 2035. According to projections, by the end of the 21st century, the region could become the largest urban region with continuous settlement in the world, then with up to half a billion inhabitants.
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