Top 5 World's Largest Metropolitan Areas
One concept which measures the world's largest cities is that of the metropolitan area, which is based on the concept of a labor market area and is typically defined as an employment core (an area with a high density of available jobs) and the surrounding areas that have strong commuting ties to the core. There is currently no generally accepted, globally consistent definition of exactly what constitutes a metropolitan area, thus making comparisons between cities in different countries especially difficult.
One attempt at arriving at a consistently defined metropolitan area concept is the study by Richard Forstall, Richard Greene, and James Pick. The basic principles of their definition involve delineating the urban area as the core, then adding surrounding communities that meet two criteria: (1) Less than 35% of the resident workforce must be engaged in agriculture or fishing; and (2) At least 20% of the working residents commute to the urban core.
Based on their consistently defined metropolitan area criteria, they tabulate a list of the twenty largest metropolitan areas in 2003. As population figures are interpreted and presented differently according to different methods of data collection, definitions and sources, these numbers should be viewed as approximate. Data from other sources may be equally valid but differ due to being measured according to different criteria or taken from different census years.
| Rank | Metropolitan area | Country | Population | Area (km2) | Population Density (People/km2) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tokyo | Japan | 32,450,000 | 8,014 | 4,049 |
| 2 | Seoul | South Korea | 20,550,000 | 5,076 | 4,048 |
| 3 | Mexico City | Mexico | 20,450,000 | 7,346 | 2,784 |
| 4 | São Paulo | Brazil | 19,889,559 | 8,479 | 2,223 |
| 5 | New York City | United States | 19,750,000 | 17,884 | 1,104 |
| 6 | Mumbai | India | 19,200,000 | 2,350 | 8,170 |
| 7 | Jakarta | Indonesia | 18,900,000 | 5,100 | 3,706 |
| 8 | New Delhi | India | 18,600,000 | 3,182 | 5,845 |
| 9 | Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto | Japan | 17,375,000 | 6,930 | 2,507 |
| 10 | Shanghai | China | 16,650,000 | 5,177 | 3,216 |
| 11 | Manila | Philippines | 16,300,000 | 2,521 | 6,466 |
| 12 | Hong Kong | Hong Kong, China | 15,800,000 | 3,051 | 5,179 |
| 13 | Los Angeles | United States | 15,250,000 | 10,780 | 1,415 |
| 14 | Kolkata | India | 15,100,000 | 1,785 | 8,459 |
| 15 | Moscow | Russia | 15,000,000 | 14,925 | 1,005 |
| 16 | Cairo | Egypt | 14,450,000 | 1,600 | 9,031 |
| 17 | Buenos Aires | Argentina | 13,170,000 | 10,888 | 1,210 |
| 18 | London | United Kingdom | 12,875,000 | 11,391 | 1,130 |
| 19 | Beijing | China | 12,500,000 | 6,562 | 1,905 |
| 20 | Karachi | Pakistan | 11,800,000 | 1,100 | 10,727 |
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, metropolitan, areas and/or population:
“Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives—from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango—with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to- date scripts for actors on the tourists’ stage.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“In metropolitan cases, the love of the most single-eyed lover, almost invariably, is nothing more than the ultimate settling of innumerable wandering glances upon some one specific object.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Helping children at a level of genuine intellectual inquiry takes imagination on the part of the adult. Even more, it takes the courage to become a resource in unfamiliar areas of knowledge and in ones for which one has no taste. But parents, no less than teachers, must respect a child’s mind and not exploit it for their own vanity or ambition, or to soothe their own anxiety.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“In our large cities, the population is godless, materialized,—no bond, no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. These are not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites walking. How is it people manage to live on,—so aimless as they are? After their peppercorn aims are gained, it seems as if the lime in their bones alone held them together, and not any worthy purpose.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)