Largest city?

[oliver999]

Originally Posted by megacity30

What about Shanghai and his brother?

shanghai and suzhou are china's 1st and 2nd largest industrial city. almost merge together.

by 小刺猬

[castermaild55]

tokyo. the biggest concrete urban Jungle...

[the spliff fairy]

This btw is the dividing line between Shanghai bottom right and Suzhou top left. This imo is contiguous (via the strip under the main highway):



Shanghai 23 million + Suzhou 7 million is another 30 million+ city.


However Shanghai also spreads south to Hangzhou (8 million). Imo this is fragmented with fields between the tracts of high density housing, but if you consider NYC-Philly then this is applicable. This is Chinese style 'suburbia' (farmers apartment blocks), that stretches 100 miles between the two cities, and for much of Zhejiang province as a whole (although I haven't shown them, it's also dotted with cities):








close up of apartment blocks:

[the spliff fairy]

Similarly much of Western Europe would also fall into this criteria, especially within the 'Blue Banana' megalopolis (that's what it looks like from space apparently), the world's largest. All this is actually protected greenbelt countryside where sprawl is prohibited, including even parts of National Parks in these pics. Its the densest stretch of urbanites in the world despite. England alone manages to cram near 50 million urbanites into an area the size of Maine this way:

[Tbite]

Ibadan is apparently the largest city in Africa, but I have not seen statistics to prove this

[-Corey-]

I thought that Lagos was Africa's largest city

[Metro007]

No i think it's Cairo.

[Dralcoffin]

By population, the list of African cities usually goes Cairo, Lagos, Kinshasa, Johannesburg.

[Galro]

Yes, but we are talking about by area in this tread ... Not population.

[Dralcoffin]

Originally Posted by Galro

Yes, but we are talking about by area in this tread ... Not population.

I know. By area, I'd be inclined to say the Johannesburg-Pretoria complex. Both Cairo and Lagos have that extreme density of the Third World meaning that their urban footprints are rather smaller for their vast populations.

[megacity30]

Originally Posted by the spliff fairy

This btw is the dividing line between Shanghai bottom right and Suzhou top left. This imo is contiguous (via the strip under the main highway):

Shanghai 23 million + Suzhou 7 million is another 30 million+ city.

However Shanghai also spreads south to Hangzhou (8 million). Imo this is fragmented with fields between the tracts of high density housing, but if you consider NYC-Philly then this is applicable. This is Chinese style 'suburbia' (farmers apartment blocks), that stretches 100 miles between the two cities, and for much of Zhejiang province as a whole (although I haven't shown them, it's also dotted with cities):

close up of apartment blocks:

The Yangtze River Delta and eastern Anhui Province contain about 120 million residents in about 120,000 sq km. (population density: ~1000 people per sq km)

The country of Bangladesh contains 148 million residents in about 148,000 sq km. (population density: ~1000 people per sq km)

The heavily populated states of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) and Bihar in India contain nearly 304 million residents in 337,449 sq km (population density: 900 people per sq km).


So going by your logic, Spliff Fairy, the entire country of Bangladesh or the contiguous states of U.P. and Bihar should have been monolithic urban areas - the world's largest.

However, none of these examples (YRD, Bangladesh, U.P. - Bihar) are single urban areas because they contain massive swathes of rural population. All three examples are among the world's most agriculturally fertile regions and contain enormous numbers of closely connected cities and towns interspersed by massive numbers of rural population.

NYC - Philly, on the other hand, is urban and contiguous along the axis discussed earlier.

The question remains whether the YRD could be one metropolitan area although it's definitely not one urban area yet. However, this question is easily answered.
Until the Municipality of Shanghai and the Provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang don't abolish the work-residence restrictions imposed by Hukou, or at least reform Hukou along the lines of the Guangdong Province, the YRD cannot be considered one metropolitan area as well.

[the spliff fairy]

yep, the Yangtze River Delta counts 120 million, of which 80 million are urbanites. These 80 million are just as closely, if not far, far more interconnected, and dense than any US style suburbia, sprawl or metro CSA catchment.

Also at the very least, and very strictest, Shanghai and Suzhou are directly, urbanly-contiguous (not suburban-contiguous that is often spread out sparsely with open land and forest) - as in crossing from an urban street in Shanghai on one side to another urban street in Suzhou on the other.

[the spliff fairy]

As for the rural farmers, they live in thousands of close knit midrises. That's the difference between the rural farmhouse dwellers in Bangladesh or India, and the 'rural' apartment dwellers in the YRD. The difference is not the population density but the built environment (or lack of).

high density rural Bangladesh - thousands of villages:

image hosted on flickr


high density 'rural' Zhejiang province (and China's richest farmers - note the fields in between the blocks) - blanketing sprawl.



These apartments were built for free by the local councils - they even have one supertall in there. To get the funding this local
council maintains you have to stay in this area despite increasing riches, business and industrialisation. In effect you get millionnaire
'farmers' (read: local collective businessmen) unable to move to the city, who end up renting out their land to tenants, and live in nearby villas.

For the case of Huaxi 'village', their collective grew so rich they built a supertall for themselves, to compliment their 'village' of factories,
McMansions and tower blocks. Check it out here:

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...=163700&page=3



You have to-have to take the train from well south of Hangzhou to Shanghai - sit on the left. You will be amazed, it looks like the world's largest city, unending, for hours even at high speed. It doesn't stop, right from mid Zhejiang until you reach Shanghai Station.

[senor boogie woogie]

I believe the winner is Tokyo, with Mexico City right up there. The Tokyo metropolitan area is something like 30 million people.

The largest city I have ever been in is Shanghai.

The largest town in the World is in Hangzhou, near Shanghai.

[Metro007]

Can be. I continue to affirm: the largest (talking about area) one-block-city in the world for me is L.A. (NY has seas and big rivers who stop urban-continuation visually talking)

And the other ones (chinese cities) have a too low density to be considered as cities or have a lot of rural areas so that visually we don't consider them as a continued sprawl anymore....otherwiese it would be the whole world who can be considered as the biggest city with 7 Mrd :-)

[Bauhaus]

Buenos Aires sprawl

[Metro007]

Originally Posted by Bauhaus

Buenos Aires sprawl

And here is L.A.

[Bauhaus]

Lol, big city

[the spliff fairy]

Originally Posted by Metro007

And the other ones (chinese cities) have a too low density to be considered as cities or have a lot of rural areas so that visually we don't consider them as a continued sprawl anymore....otherwiese it would be the whole world who can be considered as the biggest city with 7 Mrd :-)

Sure, the Chinese megapolitans may not be all contiguous but er, low density?? You do realise the Pearl River Delta/ Yangtze River Delta fit 45 million urbanites into the equivalent size of LA?

[null]

And the other ones (chinese cities) have a too low density

OMG!