Indonesia’s Jakarta now the world’s largest city, Tokyo falls to third: UN

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

On the one hand Yuri, on the other hand a reputed international organization like the OECD which has worked with statisticians and urban scientists/geographers for years to develop a harmonized definition of metro areas. Which am I gonna choose?

(...)

Sure. UN is also a reputed international organization (way more than the pretentious OECD) and yet bring a 41 million people Jakarta and a 17 million people Mexico City on the same list... It speaks for itself...

My favourite hobby is screening population data over all different kinds of geography and time period everywhere in the world and I'm confident that I'm much better on this than an OECD bureaucrat that can't even place those places on a map and it's only there due political indication.

Anyway, I like to play with different kinds of definitions and I have several Paris, several London (and any city in the world as I'm not geographic biased). Here a series of Paris (all population for 2022, but I have for 2015, 2007, 1999, 1990, 1982, 1975 and before way back to 1801, you pick):

PARIS - 762 km²
6,862,396 inh.

PARIS - 2,853 km²
10,949,749 inh.

PARIS - 5,841 km²
11,388,238 inh.

PARIS - 12,011 km²
12,380,964 inh.

PARIS - 13,355 km²
12,668,129 inh.

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Here for London (2021 population). And again, I'm not arguing which should be physically larger, but those numbers give us a sense of how many people live in and around those old two metropolises.

LONDON - 966 km²
6,886,883 inh.

LONDON - 1,572 km²
8,799,728 inh.

LONDON - 1,957 km²
9,426,220 inh.

LONDON - 2,170 km²
9,775,759 inh.

LONDON - 2,938 km²
10,694,252 inh.

LONDON - 2,073 km² (grouping of UAs around London, that's why the smaller size and higher population; empty spaces excluded)
12,056,039 inh.

LONDON - 5,747 km²
12,697,101 inh.

LONDON - 7,312 km²
13,250,179 inh.

LONDON - 4,769 km² (official urban agglomeration)
14,035,011 inh.

LONDON - 9,103 km²
14,595,583 inh.

LONDON - 11,190 km²
15,670,193 inh.

LONDON - 12,162 km²
15,876,845 inh.

LONDON - 17,586 km²
17,915,145 inh.