Worldwide Demographics

[New Brisavoine]

The population of Greater London (1,572 km²) and territories of the same size (1,572 km² / 607 sq. miles) in Paris and Berlin in 1891, 1911, 1921, and 1939.

------------------------------- 1891 ------- 1911 ------- 1921 ------- 1939

Greater London (1,572 km²) -- 5,574,000 -- 7,158,000 -- 7,387,000 -- 8,592,000

Paris 1,572 km² ------------- 3,467,000 -- 4,648,000 -- 5,037,000 -- 6,018,000 

Berlin 1,572 km² ------------ 2,092,000 -- 3,926,000 -- 4,079,000 -- 4,656,000

Growth rates:

-------------------------------- 1891-1911 -------- 1911-1921 -------- 1921-1939

Greater London (1,572 km²) -- +1.26% per year -- +0.31% per year -- +0.85% per year

Paris 1,572 km² ------------- +1.48% per year -- +0.78% per year -- +1.00% per year

Berlin 1,572 km² ------------ +3.21% per year -- +0.37% per year -- +0.74% per year

We can see that WW1 stopped the rise of Berlin, whereas Paris profited the most from the war.

[Yuri]

I'm a fan of Alt History and I even take part in a forum about it.

It's interesting to see how different the world would be without WWI. European population would probably be bigger and Europe wealthier. Berlin could would definitely be a megacity by 2000.

[New Brisavoine]

At its peak in the beginning of 1914, Berlin (1,572 km²) had 86% the population of Paris (1,572 km²). If that was still the case today, that means the Berlin metro area would have 11.4 million people today. A Berlin metro area of 11.4 million people today is how big Berlin felt compared to Paris back then.

The Germans paid dearly for their sins. They should have heeded Churchill's words: "Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that any one who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The Statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."

• Video Link

(I like how they say "adieu" in that song with that cute French accent)

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

The population of Greater London (1,572 km²) and territories of the same size (1,572 km² / 607 sq. miles) in Paris and Berlin in 1891, 1911, 1921, and 1939.

+ Madrid, Rome, and Lyon.

------------------------------- 1891 ------- 1911 ------- 1921 ------- 1939

Greater London (1,572 km²) -- 5,574,000 -- 7,158,000 -- 7,387,000 -- 8,592,000

Paris 1,572 km² ------------- 3,467,000 -- 4,648,000 -- 5,037,000 -- 6,018,000 

Berlin 1,572 km² ------------ 2,092,000 -- 3,926,000 -- 4,079,000 -- 4,656,000

Lyon 1,572 km² ---------------  708,000 ---- 771,000 ---- 793,000 ---- 881,000

Madrid 1,572 km² ------------   540,000 ---- 698,000 ---- 895,000 -- 1,338,000

Rome 1,572 km² -------------    378,000  --- 564,000 ---- 707,000 -- 1,331,000

Growth rates:

-------------------------------- 1891-1911 -------- 1911-1921 -------- 1921-1939

Greater London (1,572 km²) -- +1.26% per year -- +0.31% per year -- +0.85% per year

Paris 1,572 km² ------------- +1.48% per year -- +0.78% per year -- +1.00% per year

Berlin 1,572 km² ------------ +3.21% per year -- +0.37% per year -- +0.74% per year

Lyon 1,572 km² -------------- +0.43% per year -- +0.28% per year -- +0.59% per year

Madrid 1,572 km² ------------ +1.30% per year -- +2.45% per year -- +2.27% per year

Rome 1,572 km² -------------- +2.03% per year -- +2.23% per year -- +3.60% per year

Lyon suffered tremendously from the collapse of French natality. Its fate would have been pretty different if France had kept high birth rates like Britain, Netherlands, Spain, Italy.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Lyon suffered tremendously from the collapse of French natality. Its fate would have been pretty different if France had kept high birth rates like Britain, Netherlands, Spain, Italy.

In this case the status of primate/capital city certainly played a role. Rome and Madrid relied heavily on that and not only on overall higher birth rates.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Yuri

In this case the status of primate/capital city certainly played a role. Rome and Madrid relied heavily on that and not only on overall higher birth rates.

Barcelona grew tremendously during that period, despite not being the capital city of Spain. Lyon was more populated than Barcelona in 1891, and by 1939 it wasn't anymore. In a high fertility France, there's no reason why Lyon couldn't have grown as much as Barcelona. It had more industry and a larger economy than Barcelona.

Lyon is where cinema was invented, among other things, thanks to its large chemical sector. The first movie ever recorded in the world was in Lyon in 1895, showing the workers of the factory producing the first films leaving the factory.

• Video Link

It's pitiful to see how small Lyon is today compared to Barcelona. It's a city whose metro area should compare to Barcelona and Milan if the birth rate in France hadn't been so low before 1945.

[Yuri]

City Population released their 2026 of World's Largest Urban Agglomerations: https://citypopulation.de/en/world/agglomerations/

They've counted 16 cities above 20 million people; 49 above 10 million; 118 above 5 million; 646 above 1 million (including Londrina at 627th )

Those lists are very complicated to elaborate, we'll find lots of inconsistencies, but I think overall the do a good job.

[Yuri]

Guinea just release the numbers for their 2025 Census:

1983 ---- 4,660,582
1996 ---- 7,156,406 --- +53.6%
2014 --- 10,523,261 --- +47.0%
2025 --- 17,521,167 --- +66.5%


And Conakry (metro area, including Coyah and Dubréka encompassing 679 Km²:

1983 ---- 727,042
1996 --- 1,191,010 --- +63.8%
2014 --- 2,048,466 --- +72.0%
2025 --- 3,770,613 --- +84.1%


Insane growth for both. African primate/capital cities are already reaching a big share of their overall countryies population. That's a sign their urbanization process is already quite advanced.

[Yuri]

As usual, I like to work at many metropolitan definitions, always looking inside the same country to keep consistency. Out of fun, however, I decided to cross British and German cities with similar metro area definitions:

------------------ 2021/22 ---- 2011 ---- Growth ---- Area

GERMANY ------ 82,711,282 -- 80,219,695 --- +3.1% - 357,022 Km²
BRITAIN ------ 66,940,559 -- 63,182,178 --- +5.9% - 242,500 Km²

London ------- 13,250,179 -- 12,330,655 --- +7.5% --- 7,312 Km²
Ruhr ---------- 5,602,975 --- 5,566,964 --- +0.6% --- 4,709 Km²
Berlin -------- 4,572,271 --- 4,150,943 -- +10.2% --- 3,370 Km²
Birmingham ---- 3,396,849 --- 3,192,126 --- +6.4% --- 1,376 Km²
Manchester ---- 3,078,739 --- 2,884,756 --- +6.7% --- 1,457 Km²
Hamburg ------- 2,702,512 --- 2,531,888 --- +6.7% --- 2,305 Km²
Munich -------- 2,165,216 --- 1,977,000 --- +9.5% --- 1,247 Km²
Leeds --------- 2,040,866 --- 1,924,333 --- +6.1% --- 1,140 Km²
Frankfurt ----- 1,916,367 --- 1,761,415 --- +8.8% --- 1,284 Km²
Stuttgart ----- 1,715,422 --- 1,629,556 --- +5.3% --- 1,208 Km²
Köln ---------- 1,681,825 --- 1,644,242 --- +2.3% --- 1,074 Km²
Glasgow ------- 1,575,563 --- 1,517,830 --- +3.8% --- 1,110 Km²
Liverpool ----- 1,551,763 --- 1,506,935 --- +3.0% ----- 724 Km²
Düsseldorf ---- 1,217,923 --- 1,177,437 --- +3.4% ----- 710 Km²
Newcastle ----- 1,127,190 --- 1,104,141 --- +2.1% ----- 540 Km²
Nürnberg ------ 1,011,058 ----- 941,876 --- +7.3% ----- 737 Km²
Southampton ----- 997,237 ----- 959,862 --- +3.9% ----- 427 Km²
Mannheim -------- 983,949 ----- 920,407 --- +6.9% ----- 713 Km²
Bremen ---------- 921,844 ----- 873,409 --- +5.5% --- 1,427 Km²
Hannover -------- 885,724 ----- 863,436 --- +2.6% ----- 988 Km²
Sheffield ------- 831,349 ----- 819,295 --- +1.5% ----- 484 Km²
Wuppertal ------- 817,382 ----- 791,162 --- +3.3% ----- 585 Km²
Dresden --------- 786,655 ----- 734,067 --- +7.2% ----- 742 Km²
Bristol --------- 754,853 ----- 680,981 -- +10.8% ----- 358 Km²
Leipzig --------- 713,412 ----- 608,774 -- +17.2% ----- 670 Km²
Bonn ------------ 690,103 ----- 660,344 --- +4.5% ----- 588 Km²
Nottingham ------ 628,746 ----- 599,536 --- +4.9% ----- 260 Km²
Brighton -------- 617,874 ----- 589,095 --- +4.9% ----- 378 Km²
Edinburgh ------- 616,584 ----- 566,853 --- +8.8% ----- 496 Km²
Cardiff --------- 608,067 ----- 588,754 --- +3.5% ----- 391 Km²
Leicester ------- 584,107 ----- 529,841 -- +10.2% ----- 231 Km²
Aachen ---------- 540,238 ----- 503,997 --- +7.2% ----- 462 Km²
Belfast --------- 521,999 ----- 501,782 --- +4.0% ----- 319 Km²

- Four cities posting double-digit growth: Bristol (+10.8%) and Leicester (+10.2%) in England and Berlin (+10.2%) and Leipzig (+17.2%) in Germany. Leipzig, in fact, Texas-style growth.

- Slowest growth for the Ruhr, with +0.6%, followed by Sheffield (+1.5%). No area into negative terrain, thanks to the strong immigration.

[Crawford]

Wuppertal and Düsseldorf are Ruhr by any definition.

And Köln and Bonn are adjacent cities, and essentially adjacent to Düsseldorf. It's all one big population center, if not a real metro. They have a unified transit system.

Also that population estimate for Berlin seems extremely generous. Much of Berlin proper is rural land, and few would argue that Berlin metro extends much beyond Berlin proper. Potsdam only.

Frankfurt is a strange one bc Frankfurt has a tiny urbanized core, and you're immediately in forest. One can walk from skyscrapers to the forest. But it's true that the villages in the hinterlands are all connected by rail, and mostly commute into Frankfurt.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Wuppertal and Düsseldorf are Ruhr by any definition.

And Köln and Bonn are adjacent cities, and essentially adjacent to Düsseldorf. It's all one big population center, if not a real metro. They have a unified transit system.

There are two ways to see it: the Rhein-Ruhr, the official metro area that includes the Ruhr, Wuppertal, Düsseldorf, Köln and Bonn or bringing them separated. The Ruhr or Ruhgebiet usually reffer to Durisburg-Essen-Dormund only.

Overall, I'd say I was slightly more generous to German areas than to the British ones.

Originally Posted by Crawford

Also that population estimate for Berlin seems extremely generous. Much of Berlin proper is rural land, and few would argue that Berlin metro extends much beyond Berlin proper. Potsdam only.

I used Stadte e Gemeinde as base. I don't think is too big. Way more granular than the county-based US. I only added the ones which are connected to Berlin and there are plenty aside Potsdam: Teltow, Kleinmachnow, Falkensee, Hennigsdorf, Hohen Neuendorf, Oranienburg, Panketau, Bernau, Neuenhagen, Schönefeld, etc.

For comparison, Boston MSA (5 million people) covers 9,029 Km² or Detroit MSA (4.4 million, 10,081 km²), 3x the area I assigned to Berlin.

Originally Posted by Crawford

Frankfurt is a strange one bc Frankfurt has a tiny urbanized core, and you're immediately in forest. One can walk from skyscrapers to the forest. But it's true that the villages in the hinterlands are all connected by rail, and mostly commute into Frankfurt.

Yes, Frankfurt is very peculiar: from the city centre to the southern edge, across the river, is like 2 km². The urban core, comprising Frankfurt and Offenbach has only 873k people. The city feels big though, specially due its massive public transit. One would guess it would have 5 million people based on it.

[New Brisavoine]

The 6th edition (2023-2026) of the report of the Francophonie International Organization was published on Monday in Québec City. French is now spoken by 396 million people, and has become the 4th most spoken language in the world, behind English (more than 1.5 billion), Mandarin Chinese (more than 1 billion), and Spanish (more than 600 million), but now ahead of standard Arabic.

Most of the French speakers live in Africa, where the growth of the French language is very high.

The report also shows that French is the 2nd most taught language in the world, with more than 170 million students spread across 36 countries learning it in 2024.

It ranks also as the 3rd language in the world for business and economy.

French is the 4th language on the internet, with 3.5% of internet content in French (20% in English, which is considerably less than in 2000 when it was more than 80% English).

The team of demographers and linguists in charge of compiling the data estimate that there will be 590 million French speakers in 2050. French will probably pass Spanish in total number of speakers in the 2050s or 2060s and establish itself as the 3rd most spoken language in the world, and will probably stay there in the future (unless it passes Chinese at some point due to the declining population in China, but that will probably not happen during our lifetime, but perhaps around 2100).

Le français devient la quatrième langue la plus parlée au monde

France Info
17 mars 2026

La langue de Voltaire occupe la deuxième place au niveau de l'apprentissage, avec plus de 170 millions de francophiles répartis sur les cinq continents.

Le monde compte 396 millions francophones, dont "près de 65%" sur le continent africain, souligne le dernier rapport sur la langue française(Nouvelle fenêtre) dévoilé lundi 16 mars à Québec par l'Organisation internationale de la francophonie (OIF), à quelques jours de la Journée internationale de la francophonie célébrée le 20 mars. Le français est désormais la quatrième langue la plus parlée au monde. Il gagne une place dans le classement mondial en arrivant derrière l'anglais (qui réunit plus d'1,5 milliard de personnes), le mandarin (plus d'un milliard de locuteurs) ou encore l'espagnol (plus de 600 millions d'hispanophones) mais devance l'arabe standard.

Au nombre des atouts de cette langue mondiale, "une forte légitimité dans la diplomatie, le droit international, les relations culturelles et dans certains espaces scientifiques et académiques". Elle puise également sa force "dans la littérature, la philosophie, les arts, la gastronomie, la mode et le cinéma d’auteur". Le français peut également se targuer d'être "la deuxième langue la plus apprise sur les cinq continents". En 2024, plus de 170 millions d’élèves dans 36 pays "ont reçu un enseignement en français ou ont appris le français en milieu institutionnel". Elle est également "la troisième langue de l’économie et des affaires".

[...]

https://www.franceinfo.fr/culture/patrim...gue-la-plus-parlee-au-monde_7874840.html

[Yuri]

Those numbers include everybody who knows to speak the language right?

[New Brisavoine]

No. The approach is more complex:
- in countries where French is the native language, they take the entire population whose native language is French (so, say, a native Syrian Arabic speaker in France, child of recently arrived refugees, is not counted)
- in Francophone countries where French is the 2nd language (official, administrative, business language, etc), they take only the population 10 y/o and older which has been educated in French, + the children from age 6 to 9 who have learned to read in French. Children under 5 y/o are not included.
- in non-Francophone countries, based on censuses and other available resources, they take the population 10 y/o and older which can use French to communicate (in writing, reading, or speaking)

That's how they get to 396 million in 2025. If we restrict strictly to Francophone countries (i.e. for example a Francophone in Alberta or California or Germany or Spain won't be counted), then they get 323.4 million people.

[Yuri]

600 million for Spanish speakers must include people that uses it as a second language.

[wwmiv]

I highly doubt that French ever outgrows Spanish in an apples-to-apples comparison.

Also: an apples to apples comparison would still have French behind Hindi, no, whether you include the mutually intelligible Urdu or not?

[Yuri]

Neither French or English have the same grip in Africa as Portuguese. In Angola, 50% of population has Portuguese as mother tongue; in the highly urbanized and industrialized South Africa, only 2% of Blacks have Afrikaans or English as mother languages.

In Brazil, Portugal and Angola, 238 million speak Portuguese as mother language.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

I highly doubt that French ever outgrows Spanish in an apples-to-apples comparison.

Also: an apples to apples comparison would still have French behind Hindi, no, whether you include the mutually intelligible Urdu or not?

That's an apples-to-apples comparison. Native speakers + 2nd language speakers (and NOT including foreign speakers, i.e. people who learned it as a foreign language).

Native speakers alone is a meaningless stat. By restricting to "native speakers", Henry Kissinger wasn't an Anglophone, and Mao Zedong wasn't a Mandarin Chinese speaker. You can see the absurdity of that.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Neither French or English have the same grip in Africa as Portuguese. In Angola, 50% of population has Portuguese as mother tongue; in the highly urbanized and industrialized South Africa, only 2% of Blacks have Afrikaans or English as mother languages.

In Brazil, Portugal and Angola, 238 million speak Portuguese as mother language.

You have the typical reasoning of someone who comes from a unilingual country. Most human beings, however, live in multilingual territories (almost all of Africa, the Indian subcontinent, China, etc). In multilingual territories, the mother tongue of an individual doesn't tell much about the languages used by that person. Someone like Mao Zedong had Hunan dialect as his mother tongue (note that the word "dialect" here is not a scientific term, you can as well call it "language", because what's spoken in rural Hunan where Mao grew up is as different from Mandarin Chinese as Romanian is different from Portuguese), but Mao learned Mandarin Chinese later in life, and that's what he used most of the time in his adult life.

It's the same in Africa. Mother language is often a very small language or dialect from the village where the ancestors come from, and people on top of that speak 1 or 2 larger regional or national languages of communication. Oftentimes the "mother tongue" is the least used of the languages known by the individual (mostly to discuss things with close relatives hailing from the same village).

In law school I had a classmate from Conakry in Guinea for instance, and he explained to me how he would talk the language of his family's village (200 km from Conakry) only with relatives from one side of his family (like his grandfather), but he would use Susu (the regional language of the Conakry area) in the street, and French everyday in other contexts. Life in Conakry is essentially mixing Susu and French everyday, depending on context and people talked to, and using the mother tongue (for those coming from outside of Conakry) only with close relatives or for family reunions. But then it's even more complex than that, because in some families, the daughter for some reason will prefer to talk in French with her father, but in Susu with her mother (or vice versa), and in the village dialect (200 km from the capital) with the grandfather, and her brother will prefer to use languages in a different order, etc.

People from monolingual societies cannot comprehend this.

[Yuri]

Angola is not a monolingual society and yet half of them have Portuguese as the mother tongue; the other half probably use it as L2.

I checked Senegal and apparently only 26% is able to speak French and less than 1% use it as the main language of communication. Wolof is growing as the lingua franca. This week I saw a clip of Senegalese parliament criminalizing homosexuality. Zero votes against it. This (overweight) congresswoman was speaking in English. Many African countries are favouring English over French. French had pretty much disappeared from Rwanda.

Regarding monolingual societies, it’s still very common in many cities in southern Brazil people switching from Italian/German local dialects and Portuguese.