Urban areas in the world

When I'm talking to my friends about "big cities" and urbanization, I sometimes get the feeling that the image my friends have in their heads are much smaller than what I have in mind. Also, whenever someone refers to Tokyo, they refer it as a humongous and gigantic place. My reaction was...

Yeah, Tokyo's a urban area, but is it THAT big?

So, I looked up for data in the Demographica, and this is what I got:

http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf

Largest Urban Areas in the Worlds

1. Tokyo-Yokohama, Japan: 35,200,000
2. Jakarta, Indonesia: 22,000,000
3. Mumbai-MAH, India: 21,255,000
4. Delhi, India: 20,995,000
5. Manila, Philippines: 20,795,000...

After looking at this, I thought,

Okay, then Tokyo is a large place in international standards. But where are the western countries? I thought many of them were really big, and attractive!

So, I looked down on the list and found them like this...

6. New York NY-NJ-CT, USA: 20,610,000
7. Sao Paolo, Brazil: 20,180,000
8. Seoul-Incheon, South Korea: 19,910,000
9. Mexico City, Mexico: 18,690,000
10. Shanghai, China: 18,400,000

Yes, finally, New York from the States. But no Europe Yet...

So, further down the list, we go:

11. Cairo, Egypt: 17,290,000
12. Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, Japan: 17,000,000
13. Kolkota, India: 15,535,000
14. Los Angelos, USA: 14,775,000
15. Shenzhen, China: 14,470,000

Wow, another Japanese region!

16. Beijing, China: 13,955,000
17. Moscow, Russia: 13,675,000
18. Guangzhou-Foshan, China: 13,245,000
19. Istanbul, Turkey: 13,135,000
20. Karachi, Pakistan: 13,085,000

Okay... Is Turkey Europe? Sort of...

But I was imagining more major cities like London and Paris! Where are they??

Further down the list, we find the following:

24. Paris, France: 10,195,000

26. Nagoya, Japan: 10,025,000

29. London, UK: 8,580,000

So, I guess the largest the Europeans can think of, is a city somewhat like the size of Nagoya.

No wonder the scales are different.

• The Tokyo urban area is more than 3 times larger than Paris, the biggest urban area in Europe.
• Asia is crowded! All of the top 5 areas are in Asia.
• Madrid (5.39 mil.) is about half of Nagoya (10.0 mil.)
• Lisbon (2.39 mil.) is smaller than Sapporo (2.48 mil.)
• India is a amazingly big country!

Taking a look at the national demographics, you can also find that...

• If Tokyo was a country, it would be ranked 35th after Poland (38 mil.)

So...

Conclusion: Tokyo is REALLY BIG!!!

Living in the Tokyo-Yokohama urban region, I never thought Tokyo would be so special. But then, it seems like Tokyo really is crazy. I miss the crowded trains, although it's a bit annoying...