Talk:List of largest cities

Use of both CSA and MSA for select US cities

New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago include both MSA and CSA population statistics in the metropolitan area column which is causing the table to not sort properly. Is there a standard we could refer to, or could we reach a consensus to use only one number or the other to allow the table to rank them appropriately? Antcomp (talk) 23:13, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Agree! Without standardizing the format so that it at least starts with something sortable, the sorting buttons on the table are useless, and for me as a user it was the main reason for coming to this page.

Even the -- entries in any of the population columns need to be fixed, as otherwise they are sorted to be the minimum, which kicks out Lagos from a sensible ranking by Urban area. Finallymadeanaccount (talk) 18:46, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Metropolitan areas update

Demographia updated its report for 2025: https://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf

Guangzhou-Shenzhen and Shanghai-Changzhou are now above Tokyo. I don't have time updating everything but if someone wants to do it... a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 12:30, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

Actually those are not metro areas as Demographia notes:

• "Demographia World Urban Areas contains population, land area and population density for the nearly 1,000 identified built-up urban areas in the world with 500,000 or more population."
• "Built-up urban areas are not metropolitan areas."
• "An urban area ("built-up urban area,"6 urbanized area or urban agglomeration)7 is a continuously built up land mass of urban development that is within a labor market (metropolitan area or metropolitan region)."

a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 13:23, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

@A455bcd9 The four "population" columns should be made sortable. ~2025-33639-16 (talk) 16:16, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

Tokyo should be at the top of the List

Tokyo is no1 ~2025-43943-46 (talk) 11:39, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

If you sort by urban area population, Toyko is.

(Happy New Year) Jonathan Sims, The Archivist (talk) 22:47, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

But it's also highest by all three metrics. Why is it #3? ~2026-29682-48 (talk) 19:17, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

By default it sorts by UN estimated 2025 population, to compare by different metrics you can tap the headers for the columns. I do agree that it is a partly misleading metric, but classifying the true area of a city is hard, and this is a reliable and likely accurate value. Jonathan Sims, The Archivist (talk) 20:08, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Chongqing's Rural population

I'm not a wikipedia editor, but I just happened to notice that the article says that Chongqing has 70% of it's population in Rural areas when in reality that's outdated early 2000's data, and now it's around 73% that live in urbanized areas. As of 2024, Chongqing had an urban population of 23 million out of its total 31.9 million. That does also means almost 9 million are still rural, which is still pretty significant, but no where close to the current statement of 70% of the population. I just felt that I should point this out. ~2026-32939-13 (talk) 18:38, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Taipei

Taipei is listed at 9,137,000 per the UN's report - easily enough to be in this report. Other sources have similar numbers (7M+). It's also a very famous city, so I'm not sure why it is not in this article? Tyler938484 (talk) 03:01, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

It would actually only make it by that single metric given first, which isn't a good one but an estimate as clearly indicated and also explained above. There's probably dozens of examples like that and not like it's the only "famous" city missing from here: see famous != large, and this is a list of largest cities. -~2026-35614-70 (talk) 04:46, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

Looks like Taipei and some other cities were removed by this edit in 2021. Declangi (talk) 00:09, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

@Tyler938484: I have now restored Taipei to the list. As you pointed out, it's in the UN report with a qualifying population and also in the Demographia report. Declangi (talk) 04:55, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Are There Missing Cities?

(I apologize if what I say is wrong)

When I checked on the list the UN made, while most cities that appear on there are in this list, I've noticed there are a few ones that are missing like Hanoi, Vietnam. CrystalQuartz12 (talk) 09:14, 16 July 2026 (UTC)