Most popular world cities per Wikipedia article views

[New Brisavoine]

FUAs, as per OECD:

Population (2024):
- Manchester: 3,595,966
- Birmingham: 3,247,941

GDP (2023, in billions of PPP USD):
- Manchester: 179.9
- Birmingham: 133.1

Labor productivity (2021, PPP USD per worker):
- Manchester: 106,102
- Birmingham: 89,848

[Docere]

Sydney and Melbourne are practically the same size, but Sydney is more well-known. How many views did Melbourne get?

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Naples, Marseille, Munich are quite well known.

Munich isn't the third city of Germany.

Germany has a first tier of cities with fairly flat relative importance. German city limits are highly variable and largely irrelevent. Munich is in that first tier, but Germans wouldn't consider it obviously "above" or "below" others in that tier. There won't be any agreement re. whether Munich is more or less important than Frankfurt or Hamburg or Ruhr, and Berlin is only considered more important bc of external factors, not to Germans. Cologne, Düsseldorf and Stuttgart will be a half-tier behind.

Also, I'm not sure if Marseille is particularly well-known. It obviously varies by region, but I don't think most highly educated people in developed countries could say anything about Marseille. I've been there and the first things that comes to mind are pieds noirs and bouillabaisse.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Docere

How many views did Melbourne get?

It's in the 1st post on page 1...

[Docere]

And right above Sydney no less...guess I was looking "down" from Sydney.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Munich isn't the third city of Germany.

By all metrics, Munich is #3 (not counting the Ruhr which is not really a city).

Originally Posted by Crawford

Also, I'm not sure if Marseille is particularly well-known. It obviously varies by region, but I don't think most highly educated people in developed countries could say anything about Marseille. I've been there and the first things that comes to mind are pieds noirs and bouillabaisse.

Marseille is well known in Europe (for bad reasons usually). I was actually surprised Lyon is more researched on Wikipedia than Marseille, as Marseille is usually more debated in the rest of Europe. Heck, even Himmler himself was obsessed with Marseille. He personally ordered the dynamiting of the old port area, the oldest part of the city, which he saw as the cesspit of Europe. I doubt he ever obsessed about any other non-Central European city.



All the black areas were dynamited by the Nazis on the personal orders of Himmler. Only the Renaissance city hall was spared.







On the .de (Germany) websites, "Marseille" gets 8.46 million results, whereas "Montreal" gets 7.65 million results, and "Vancouver" gets 7.97 million results. Turin gets 6.43 million results and Naples gets 5.55 million results.

Marseille is usually seen as the "Chicago" of Europe, i.e. known for gangsters, shootings, etc.

There were lots of movies about 1920s and 1930s gangster life in Marseille, same as those US movies about Al Capone and Chicago in the 1930s.

Frankly, apart from Paris, I cannot think of another French city that has such a strong image in the rest of Europe (for good or bad reasons). Lyon certainly doesn't.

Even in Japan (famous movie about gansters in Marseille in the 1930s with Alain Delon, who is very popular in Asia, and Jean-Paul Belmondo):



Same movie, German movie poster:



That's the trailer, with the movies' famous theme music:

• Video Link

The US singer Jeane Manson even interpreted a song about that 1930s Marseille. So, in a nutshell, Marseille is the French city that has the strongest brand (for better or for worse) after Paris. No other city can compare (except perhaps Cannes for other reasons).

• Video Link

[SIGSEGV]

Yeah Marseilles is definitely more famous than Lyons, which is pretty anonymous. I know more about Grenoble than Lyons

[mhays]

I should've said #5 cities, not #3. A lot of people know some of these places.

My core point was that people overseas aren't going to know much about our #25-30-type cities like Austin and San Antonio, or however you might rank them.

Even so, my knowledge of some of those "third cities" isn't very deep. The UK is oddly worst in my case since I've spent collectively several months in the country, just always either in the London orbit or elsewhere in the south.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by mhays

I should've said #5 cities, not #3. A lot of people know some of these places.

My core point was that people overseas aren't going to know much about our #25-30-type cities like Austin and San Antonio, or however you might rank them.

Even so, my knowledge of some of those "third cities" isn't very deep. The UK is oddly worst in my case since I've spent collectively several months in the country, just always either in the London orbit or elsewhere in the south.

Pretty much everyone everywhere has a deeper depth of knowledge about American cities than anywhere else.

And size is only one causal factor here. (Without referring the list) A place like New Orleans is probably way above much larger cities like Charlotte, Sacramento, Minneapolis, and others.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

By all metrics, Munich is #3 (not counting the Ruhr which is not really a city).

No, your subjective consideration puts Munich at #3. There is no such thing in Germany.

Munich is officially the sixth largest metro region in Germany. There is an unofficial "Big Five", including Munich, but there is no hierarchy within the Big Five. There is no obvious reason why someone would definitively put Munich ahead of, say, Frankfurt.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There is no obvious reason why someone would definitively put Munich ahead of, say, Frankfurt.

More people live in the Munich metro area than in the Frankfurt metro area.

FUAs from the OECD stats:

Population (2025):
Munich: 3,002,043
Frankfurt: 2,668,350

GDP (2022, in billions of PPP USD):
Munich: 308.7
Frankfurt: 221.5

Labor productivity (2022, PPP USD per worker):
Munich: 151,118
Frankfurt: 132,741

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

More people live in the Munich metro area than in the Frankfurt metro area.

Not true. The Frankfurt Metro is larger and wealthier than the Munich Metro.

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

FUAs from the OECD stats:

This is not a thing. Germany has its own metro areas.

Germany obviously determines its metro areas, not some international forum.

[montréaliste]

Originally Posted by Crawford

No, your subjective consideration puts Munich at #3. There is no such thing in Germany.

Munich is officially the sixth largest metro region in Germany. There is an unofficial "Big Five", including Munich, but there is no hierarchy within the Big Five. There is no obvious reason why someone would definitively put Munich ahead of, say, Frankfurt.

That, my friend, is a very strange and hollow claim about the lack of hierarchy.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Not true. The Frankfurt Metro is larger and wealthier than the Munich Metro.

Refusing to budge from one's opinions formed when one was in his 20s is in general a clear sign of aging...

Originally Posted by Crawford

Germany obviously determines its metro areas, not some international forum.

Germany is part of Eurostat and Eurostat uses the FUA. That settles the matter. We're not in 2000 anymore.

[New Brisavoine]

+ Kyoto, Pompeii (!), Sparta (!), and Las Vegas. It's crazy that 2,500 years later Sparta gets almost as many views as Athens. Are there that many people interested in Sparta really?

I'm not including Mont-Saint-Michel (2,053,758 views) and Machu Picchu (3,211,630 views) because these are/were not cities. One is a small town attached to an abbey, while the other was a royal compound.

Number of views in the past 12 months:
New York City: 9,705,800
London: 5,998,530
Paris: 5,608,985
Washington, D.C.: 5,115,370
Los Angeles: 5,032,370
Tokyo: 5,010,648
Dubai: 4,893,391
Jerusalem: 4,789,523
Rome: 4,688,811
Istanbul: 4,671,155
Berlin: 4,497,370
Chicago: 4,362,535
Moscow: 4,337,937
Saint Petersburg: 4,248,889
Barcelona: 3,705,897
Prague: 3,595,695
Vienna: 3,577,585
Mexico City: 3,553,223
Milan: 3,519,730
Budapest: 3,412,227
Babylon: 3,410,742
Constantinople: 3,252,522
Madrid: 3,182,478
Beijing: 3,177,313
Venice: 3,166,338
Shanghai: 3,106,673
Munich: 3,055,617
Boston: 2,959,125
Seattle: 2,944,343
Mumbai: 2,900,310
Toronto: 2,880,569
Hamburg: 2,877,690
Amsterdam: 2,840,103
Philadelphia: 2,793,795
Naples: 2,788,712
Tehran: 2,786,677
San Francisco: 2,780,212
Warsaw: 2,733,460
Pompeii: 2,673,853
Bangkok: 2,607,698
Gaza City: 2,591,819
Mecca: 2,553,550
Athens: 2,543,822
Florence: 2,511,952
Jakarta: 2,488,352
Atlanta: 2,485,743
Kyiv: 2,483,266
Edinburgh: 2,461,218
Dublin: 2,447,946
Strasbourg: 2,430,490
Rio de Janeiro: 2,420,761
Seoul: 2,417,368
Ho Chi Minh City: 2,409,287
Copenhagen: 2,397,236
Valencia: 2,365,781
Buenos Aires: 2,351,319
Vancouver: 2,350,758
Montreal: 2,337,606
Birmingham: 2,330,840
Lisbon: 2,277,064
Cologne: 2,270,900
Frankfurt: 2,270,751
São Paulo: 2,265,556
Belgrade: 2,260,635
Melbourne: 2,257,325
Sydney: 2,250,446
Lyon: 2,237,986
Oslo: 2,233,386
Seville: 2,229,005
Miami: 2,223,745
Sparta: 2,221,745
Las Vegas: 2,214,527
Minneapolis: 2,211,056
Carthage: 2,192,029
Malaga: 2,181,063
Krakow: 2,144,310
Stockholm: 2,131,955
Guangzhou: 2,094,014
Marseille: 2,068,392
Osaka: 2,051,535
Kyoto: 2,047,882
Abu Dhabi: 2,017,096
Cairo: 2,007,258
Detroit: 2,004,116
Tel Aviv: 1,999,655
New Orleans: 1,998,776
Turin: 1,997,016
Houston: 1,933,622
Casablanca: 1,907,218
Alexandria: 1,893,753
Riyadh: 1,889,975
Dallas: 1,887,698
Liverpool: 1,886,194
Hanoi: 1,883,304
Delhi: 1,880,475
Geneva: 1,879,864
Manchester: 1,871,019
Beirut: 1,834,577
Nice: 1,830,818

[Notonfoodstamps]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

The average European also likely knows about Austin. San Antonio probably not.

Probably not. San Antonio is the larger metro and has probably has as much cultural association/impact in the US as Austin does. That's not to discredit Austin rapid growth, but while they're both principal cities in Texas, they don't play much of role in American soft power globally.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by montréaliste

That, my friend, is a very strange and hollow claim about the lack of hierarchy.

Germany has a flat hierarchy of primate cities. This isn't strange nor hollow.

Identifying a specific German city as #3 is quite strange and hollow.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Refusing to budge from one's opinions formed when one was in his 20s is in general a clear sign of aging...

Germany has had a flat hierarchy of cities long before there was a Germany.

Originally Posted by New Brisavoine

Germany is part of Eurostat and Eurostat uses the FUA. That settles the matter. We're not in 2000 anymore.

Germany as part of Eurostat does not settle anything. Eurostat does not establish hierarchies of relative city importance and Eurostat does not negate national definitions of metropolitan areas.

[montréaliste]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Germany has a flat hierarchy of primate cities. This isn't strange nor hollow.

Identifying a specific German city as #3 is quite strange and hollow.

I’ve hung around here long enough to notice your participation in hierarchical categories for all American cities. Whatever makes Germany different from the rest of the planet in relative terms when determining size of population, productivity, etc, to keep it "hands off"?

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by montréaliste

I’ve hung around here long enough to notice your participation in hierarchical categories for all American cities. Whatever makes Germany different from the rest of the planet in relative terms when determining size of population, productivity, etc, to keep it "hands off"?

Nations aren't all alike. German cities were compared to cities in France and the UK.

Anyone with more than a passing knowledge of the three nations knows that France and the UK are highly centralized, longstanding nations, with overwhelming power centers, while Germany is a highly decentralized, relatively young nation with no traditional economic or cultural power center.

If you asked a German to identify the third most important German city, you'd easily get a half dozen answers. And they'd all be "right".