Which are the World's Super-cities, Hyper-cities and Mega-cities today

[megacity30]

Super-city = A metropolitan area having a population greater than 40 million.

Hyper-city = A metropolitan area having a population between 20 million and 40 million.

Mega-city = A metropolitan area having a population between 10 million and 20 million.

The following list is for population estimates as of October, 2011.

Data Sources are Wikipedia, World-Gazetteer, various census data, Google map and satellite info, and extensive SSC blog reads.

The reader's input is requested.


Super-Metropolitan Areas / Super-Cities
__________________________________

1. Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Area / Zhusanjiao, China: 49 million

Components: Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Foshan, Jiangmen, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Huizhou, Qingyuan, Yangjiang and Zhaoqing



Hyper-Metropolitan Areas / Hyper-Cities
__________________________________


2. Keihinyo / Kanto Metropolitan Area, Japan: 36 million

Components: Tokyo - Yokohama - Kawasaki - Prefectures of Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, Ibaraki, Gunma and Tochigi


3. Jabotabek - Cirangkarta, Indonesia: 33.45 million

Components: Jakarta - Municipalities of Bekasi, Tangerang, Depok, South Tangerang and Bogor - Regencies of Bogor, Tangerang, Bekasi, Karawang, Purwakarta and Serang


4. New York City Metropolitan Area - Delaware Valley - Hartford, USA: 31.5 million

Components:-

(i) New York City Metropolitan Area: New York City - Long Island (Counties of Nassau and Suffolk) - northern New Jersey (Counties of Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Middlesex, Hunterdon [north of Readington Township], Morris, Passaic, Somerset [north of Watchung], Sussex, Union [north of Westfield], and Warren) - Central Jersey (Trenton, Princeton) - southwestern Connecticut (Counties of Fairfield, New Haven and Litchfield) - lower Hudson Valley [Counties of Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Bergen)

(ii) Delaware Valley: Philadelphia, Camden, Wilmington, Reading, Bridgeton, Millville, Vineland

(iii) Knowledge Corridor: Hartford - Springfield

(iv) Lehigh Valley: Allentown - Bethlehem - Easton - Phillipsburg

(v) Atlantic City - Hammonton


5. Greater Sao Paulo / Complexo Metropolitano Estendido de Sao Paulo, Brazil: 30 million

Regiao Metropolitano Sao Paulo / RMSP: Sao Paulo, Guarulhos, Sao Bernardo do Campo, Osasco, Santo Andre

Metropolitan Components: Campinas, Baixada Santista (Santos), Sao Jose dos Campos, Sorocaba, Jundiai, Braganca Paulista, Piracicaba, Limeira, Rio Clara, Araras


6. Dilli (Delhi) Metropolitan Area, India: 26.15 million

Urban Components: Delhi, NCR Ring 1 (Cities of Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Gurgaon - Manesar, Noida and Greater Noida, and Towns of Sonipat and Bahadurgarh)

Metropolitan Components: NCR Ring 2 (City of Meerut - Modinagar, and Towns of Rohtak, Rewari, Baghpat, Jhajjar, Bhiwadi - Dharuhera, Hapur, Bulandshahr - Sikandrabad, Sohna and Palwal)


7. Greater Manila, Philippines: 25.2 million

Components: Metro Manila, contiguous and commuter towns in adjoining provinces of Cavite, Bulacan, Rizal, Laguna, Batangas and Pampanga.


8. Seoul Metropolitan Area, South Korea: 24.75 million

Components: Seoul, Incheon, Gyeonggi-do Province, Cheonan, Chuncheon, Asan


9. Shanghai, China: 22.3 million


10. Mumbai (Bombay) Metropolitan Area, India: 21.8 million


11. Mexico City Metropolitan Area, Mexico: 21.2 million


12. London commuter belt, UK: 21.1 million


13. Los Angeles - San Diego, USA: 21 million


14. Beijing, China: 20.6 million


15. Keihanshin (Osaka - Kobe - Kyoto), Japan: 20.2 million



Mega-Cities / Mega-Metropolitan Areas
_________________________________


16. Cairo / al Qahirah, Egypt: 18 million

17. Karachi, Pakistan: 17 million

18. Kolkata (Calcutta), India: 16 million

19. Tehran - Karaj, Iran: 15 million

20. Buenos Aires, Argentina: 14 million

21. Dhaka - Narayanganj, Bangladesh: 14 million

22. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 13.6 million

23. Istanbul, Turkey: 13.3 million

24. Bangkok, Thailand: 12.8 million

25. Tianjin, China: 12.8 million

26. Chennai (Madras), India: 12.4 million

27. Moscow, Russia: 12.2 million

28. Shantou - Jieyang - Chaozhou, China: 12.2 million

29. Paris, France: 12 million

30. Chicago - Milwaukee, USA: 11.8 million

31. Bangalore, India: 11.5 million

32. Ho Chi Minh City Metropolitan Area, Vietnam: 11.4 million

33. Quanzhou - Xiamen - Zhangzhou, China: 11.1 million

34. Rhine-Ruhr, Germany: 11 million


35. Gauteng Metropolitan Area, South Africa: 10.86 million

Components:-
Witwatersrand: Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (East Rand) - West Rand District Municipality
City of Tshwane (including Pretoria)
Vaal Triangle (including Vereeniging, Sasolburg etc)

36. Lahore, Pakistan: 10 million

[megacity30]

deleted double-post

[serhat]

Greater Istanbul 24 million and Istanbul population 13.250.000

[lafreak84]

Wiki says city 8,8mil and metro 13,2mil.

Also, Paris is not 13mil, it's 11,9mil. London is not 11mil, it's 13,9mil. Moscow is not 15mil, it's 11,5mil and nobody knows how much in the metro, only known number is 8mil for Moscow Oblast. Shanghai is not 22mil, it's 23mil. You didn't even list Yangtze River Delta with 80mil, Pearl River Delta 40mil...your list is terrible.

[the spliff fairy]

this is the Pearl River Delta centred on Guangzhou, and made up mostly of highrises - it takes up less urban space than Atlanta, and unlike
some on your list (eg NYC-Philly), it's contiguous, and not physically separated by miles of countryside or commuter counting. Its population
is 56 million at the lowest estimate, including if you took out Hong Kong because of the border. At its highest estimate it's 120 million.
It is however, not the world's biggest city as the Yangtze River Delta, centred on Shanghai may hold more.


Thanx to Spotila for the amazing map

[Messi]

Originally Posted by serhat

Greater Istanbul 24 million and Istanbul population 13.250.000

where you got this number from? The whole marmara region doesn't have this population. I wonder if you can show any source.

[serhat]

Originally Posted by Messi

where you got this number from? The whole marmara region doesn't have this population. I wonder if you can show any source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Istanbul

[Yuri S Andrade]

São Paulo area would be around 30 million, on a par with New York-Philadelphia:

[DiggerD21]

I always thought that the order of the words are Super - Mega - Hyper, with Super being the smallest and Hyper the highest in the order.

Anyway, I miss the Randstad and the Ruhr Area in this list.

And apart of that there is the ever appearing question: Where does a city end?

[Messi]

Originally Posted by serhat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Istanbul

Don't believe everything you read on wiki. You can check official statistics of Marmara region. Marmara's population is 23 million with Bursa, Gebze, Sakarya etc... So logically there is no way Istanbul itself has more than the Marmara region.

[Yörch]

Actually hyper is more than super and mega y more than hyper... At least etymologically.

[Restless]

I think some of the large conurbations need looking at.

New York - Philadelphia are 130km apart.
So are Chicago - Milwaukee.

Whereas Beijing-Tianjin are only 100km apart, and have way better road, rail and subway links with each other. So you'd end up with:

Beijing - 20M
Tianjin - 13M
Langfang City - 4M

===
Ditto for a lot of the others on the list

[megacity30]

To the Spliff Fairy:

(1) The PRD metropolitan area

Your posted image makes it obvious that the Pearl River Delta has presently grown into one massive contiguous urban area; thank you for the insight.

The City of Guangzhou - Foshan, on its eastern edge, is contiguous with Dongguan, which in turn is contiguous with Shenzhen to its south and Huizhou to its east. On its south-western and southern edges, the City is contiguous with Jiangmen and Zhongshan, which in turn are connected to Zhuhai. I agree Xianggang (Hong Kong) and Macau shouldn't be included because of their controlled borders.

Last year, the Hukou system was abolished in Guangdong province, making inter-city work and residence possible.

I don't see the city of Zhaoqing in the image; based on its considerable distance from Foshan and miles of countryside in between, it would seem we cannot include Zhaoqing in this metropolitan area.

Please let me know how you arrived at a metropolitan population of 120 million or even 56 million not counting Hong Kong, Zhaoqing and Macau?


(2) New York City - Philadelphia - New Jersey - southwestern Connecticut - Long Island - Lower Hudson Valley - Wilmington

This metropolitan region is completely inter-connected by continuous suburban sprawl and high commuting. Towns like Trenton and Princeton are the mid-point between New York City and Philadelphia, and both towns are linked by contiguous urban sprawl along the I-95 and beyond with Philadelphia and New York City respectively. The same commuter trains of NJ Transit connect both cities with daily commuters.
Yes, there is a lot of countryside as well in this metropolitan region, but that's how all American cities have grown. American sprawl is designed to be less dense, than its counterparts in Asia, for example.

I have included Atlantic City, NJ, and Allentown - Bethlehem, PA, in this region.
They are both, however, not contiguous - there's around 15 km of countryside along the I-78, I-476, Atlantic City Expwy and the Garden State Expwy.

Without them, the population is around 28 million.


(3) The YRD Megalopolis:
There is a controlled Hukou system in all cities of the Yangtze River Delta region. Last year, Jiaxing and Cixi relaxed the criteria for qualified migrants. However, rural or less qualified migrants still lead a marginalized life without social benefits. Inter-city commutes, i.e. living in one city and working in another, is an exception. Each city is still a metropolitan area only in itself, even though satellite images show their urban peripheries are merging.
Until the Shanghai Municipality and the provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu amend the Hukou system along the lines of the Dongguan province, this region will remain a megalopolis at best, and definitely not one metropolitan area.

[megacity30]

Originally Posted by lafreak84

Wiki says city 8,8mil and metro 13,2mil.

Also, Paris is not 13mil, it's 11,9mil. London is not 11mil, it's 13,9mil. Moscow is not 15mil, it's 11,5mil and nobody knows how much in the metro, only known number is 8mil for Moscow Oblast. Shanghai is not 22mil, it's 23mil. You didn't even list Yangtze River Delta with 80mil, Pearl River Delta 40mil...your list is terrible.

(1) London and Paris:

You're correct about the London commuter belt having population estimates nearing 14 million. In the case of Paris, by excluding its multiple exurban hamlets, and restricting our numbers to its suburbs, we reach 12 million people.

Thank you for pointing it out.
I have made the necessary changes to the list.

(2) Moscow:

The whole Oblast is definitely not one urban area. However, I have included the population of the towns adjoining the city, such as Podolsk, Lobnya, Shchyolkova, Pushkino and numerous other towns.

[megacity30]

Originally Posted by lafreak84

Wiki says city 8,8mil and metro 13,2mil.

Also, Paris is not 13mil, it's 11,9mil. London is not 11mil, it's 13,9mil. Moscow is not 15mil, it's 11,5mil and nobody knows how much in the metro, only known number is 8mil for Moscow Oblast. Shanghai is not 22mil, it's 23mil. You didn't even list Yangtze River Delta with 80mil, Pearl River Delta 40mil...your list is terrible.

(1) The YRD Megalopolis:

There is a controlled Hukou system in all cities of the Yangtze River Delta region. Last year, Jiaxing and Cixi relaxed the criteria for qualified migrants. However, rural or less qualified migrants still lead a marginalized life without social benefits. Inter-city commutes, i.e. living in one city and working in another, is an exception. Each city is still a metropolitan area only in itself, even though satellite images show their urban peripheries are merging.
Until the Shanghai Municipality and the provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu amend the Hukou system along the lines of the Dongguan province, this region will remain a megalopolis at best, and definitely not one metropolitan area.

(2) I am working on obtaining the metropolitan population of the Pearl River Delta metropolitan area centred on Guangzhou. I wouldn't include Xianggang (Hong Kong) and Macau because of their controlled borders with the mainland, and probably exclude Zhaoqing.

[megacity30]

Originally Posted by DiggerD21

I always thought that the order of the words are Super - Mega - Hyper, with Super being the smallest and Hyper the highest in the order.

Anyway, I miss the Randstad and the Ruhr Area in this list.

And apart of that there is the ever appearing question: Where does a city end?

(1) Magnitude-denoting prefixes:

Unlike data representation in computer science or metrology, a metropolitan area having 5 million people is not called "kilo"-city; instead it's called a metro-city. Similarly, a metropolitan area with 20 million people and 40 million people are not called a "giga"-city and a "peta"-city respectively. A hyper-city is relatively a new term because the world didn't have metropolitan areas with over 20 million people until a few decades ago. However, urban demographers have coined this term for this relatively new phenomenon.
Similarly, the word "super" denotes superlative, as in the highest category for something.

Maybe someday in the near future, we'll have metropolitan areas having over 80 million people. Then a new term will have to be coined.


(2) The Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Region:

Yes, this thread will be built upon reader input. Rhine Ruhr should be considered as one metropolitan area having over 10 million people- a contiguous urban area stretching from Bonn to Hamm with daily commuter flow. I'll include it now.

Randstad, of course, has about 7.2 million people even if it were considered as one metropolitan area, and so does not meet the minimum requirement for a mega-city (10 million).

[megacity30]

Originally Posted by Restless

I think some of the large conurbations need looking at.

New York - Philadelphia are 130km apart.
So are Chicago - Milwaukee.

Whereas Beijing-Tianjin are only 100km apart, and have way better road, rail and subway links with each other. So you'd end up with:

Beijing - 20M
Tianjin - 13M
Langfang City - 4M

===
Ditto for a lot of the others on the list

There is a controlled Hukou system in Beijing and Tianjin. Rural or less qualified migrants still lead a marginalized life without social benefits. Inter-city commutes, i.e. living in one city and working in another, are an exception. Each city is still a metropolitan area only in itself, even though satellite images show their urban peripheries are merging.

Until Beijing and Tianjin amend the Hukou system along the lines of the Dongguan province, this region will remain a megalopolis at best, and definitely not one metropolitan area.

[poshbakerloo]

The list is a little strange...

Some cities seem to be urban areas...New York-Philly (do they even join? no.)

Whilst some are city only e.g. Kolkata, India

Its not much of a fair test if you include the metro area of some but not with other...

[megacity30]

Originally Posted by Yuri S Andrade

São Paulo area would be around 30 million, on a par with New York-Philadelphia:

That's true- the Extended Metropolitan Area of Sao Paulo today has around 30 million.

I have excluded the population of Allentown - Bethlehem and Atlantic City from the New York City - Philadelphia metropolitan area, bringing its population to 28 million.

[megacity30]

Originally Posted by poshbakerloo

The list is a little strange...

Some cities seem to be urban areas...New York-Philly (do they even join? no.)

Whilst some are city only e.g. Kolkata, India

Its not much of a fair test if you include the metro area of some but not with other...

(1) As mentioned in an earlier post, the "New York City - Philadelphia - New Jersey - southwestern Connecticut - Long Island - Lower Hudson Valley - Wilmington" metropolitan region is completely inter-connected by continuous suburban sprawl and high commuting.

Towns like Trenton and Princeton are the mid-point between New York City and Philadelphia, and both towns are linked by contiguous urban sprawl along the I-95 and beyond with Philadelphia and New York City respectively. The same commuter trains of NJ Transit connect both cities with daily commuters.

Yes, there is a lot of countryside as well in this metropolitan region, but that's how all American cities have grown. American sprawl is designed to be less dense, than its counterparts in Asia, for example.

I had earlier included Atlantic City, NJ, and Allentown - Bethlehem, PA, in this region.
They are both, however, not contiguous - there's around 15 km of countryside along the I-78, I-476, Atlantic City Expwy and the Garden State Expwy.

Without them, the population is around 28 million.


(2) Kolkata metropolitan area:

Although the urban area numbers for 2011 Census of India haven't yet been released, the population for the officially designated urban area is expected to be around 16 million.

People in the neighboring towns of Chakdaha, Pandua, Ranaghat, and Duttapukur and Baruipur commute daily to Kolkata for socio-economic reasons, but none of these towns are contiguous with the urban area.
If they were included, the metropolitan area will be close to 17 million people.

(3) None of the population figures used in this list are for the city only. By the time an urban area exceeds a population of 10 million, it has always grown beyond the city's official administrative boundary.

The City of Kolkata has only 4.5 million people. Its city limits haven't changed in over 200 years while its urban area has grown manifold.