Largest Cities in the World

One thing I would like to do in this blog is to occasionally post and comment on themed lists of various items related to world geography. So, to start things off in this post, the first of a series of "list" posts, I would like to list and discuss the largest cities in the world. But, when forming such a list, particularly pertaining to a geographic feature such as a city, one must ask what criteria will we take into account when classifying cities on the list. Do we just count the city itself (the city proper), the urbanized area, or the metropolitan area? Or perhaps we should form a separate list for each of those items. Various cities would most likely then appear at different points on the list. But for this post, I will list the twenty largest metropolitan areas by population (I also may come back to the post and add more lists based on different criteria as well). So, without further adieu, here we go:

Tokyo, Japan, with Mt. Fuji

Earth's twenty largest metropolitan areas by population (based on 2003 population data):
1. Tokyo, Japan - 32,450,000
2. Seoul, South Korea - 20,550,000
3. Mexico City, Mexico - 20,450,000
4. New York City, United States - 19,750,000
5. Mumbai (Bombay), India - 19,200,000
6. Jakarta, Indonesia - 18,900,000
7. Sao Paulo, Brazil - 18,850,000
8. Delhi, India - 18,600,000
9. Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, Japan - 17,375,000
10. Shanghai, China - 16,650,000
11. Metro Manila, Philippines - 16,300,000
12. Hong Kong/Shenzhen, China - 15,800,000
13. Los Angeles, United States - 15,250,000
14. Kolkata (Calcutta), India - 15,100,000
15. Moscow, Russia - 15,000,000
16. Cairo, Egypt - 14,450,000
17. Buenos Aires, Argentina - 13,170,000
18. London, United Kingdom - 12,875,000
19. Beijing, China - 12,500,000
20. Karachi, Pakistan - 11,800,000

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Earth's Population Distribution

The Earth contains over 6.6 billion people. But these six billion are not evenly spread over the world's habitable surface. Where are all these people located? Many factors contribute to the geography spread of people and populations around the globe, such as climate, terrain and topography, physical and political boundaries, and more. However, broad general patterns of populations on Earth can still be understood. In this post, I outline the general characteristics of Earth's human population distribution. This is based on an article I previously wrote for another website, "How to Understand Earth's Population Distribution", located at:
How to Understand Earth's Population Distribution


Two-thirds of Earth's population lives within the mid latitudes, and almost 90 percent of the world's population lives north of the equator. Around 90 percent of the world's population is concentrated on only 20 percent of the land surface. Therefore, a large majority of Earth's inhabitants live on and occupy a small portion of Earth's total habitable land area. Three major population centers around the world include: East Asia (China, the Koreas, and Japan); South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh); and Europe (Western, Eastern, and Southern Europe). In fact, two countries each contain over one billion people: China and India. Since Earth's population is over six billion, this means that China and India each contain at least one-sixth of the Earth's total human population. Each major world region contained the following percentage of the Earth's total population in 1999: Africa (12.8 %), Asia (60.8 %), Europe (12.2 %), Latin America and the Caribbean (8.5 %), North America (5.1 %), Oceania (0.5 %).

While low-lying areas are more preferable for the locations of settlements, still a large portion of the Earth remains quite uninhabited. The sparsely population regions include northern and western North America, northern and central Asia, and interior South America, interior Africa, and the interior of Australia. Cities and urban regions have seen dramatic increases in population over the last fifty years, with much growth continuing at present and into the future. Currently the Earth's urban population is estimated to be around 3.5 billion people.

Original article by Paul McDaniel is located at:
How to Understand Earth's Population Distribution