It's not always as straightforward as it may seem to measure the size of a city or urban region.

There's the problem of which urban boundary to use. And then once you've landed on that, there's the additional problem of estimating how many people live within it. This can be particularly challenging when it comes to informal settlements, where there isn't reliable population data.

The most common approach is to use the continuous built-up area as the urban agglomeration, as opposed to any sort of "city proper" boundaries. And this is exactly what the United Nations has done in its latest World Urbanization Prospects report.

Here, they have fundamentally revised their measurement methodology by using a new, so-called harmonized geospatial approach. If you'd like to nerd out on the specifics, you can do that here.

But one of the key takeaways is that this new methodology has resulted in a reordering of the world's largest urban agglomerations. At the top is now Jakarta, followed by Dhaka:

Previously, Tokyo was thought to be the world's most populous megacity, but it has dropped down to 3rd in this new report. And by 2050, it is forecasted to drop even further to 7th place:

As we spoke about yesterday, the world's economic center of gravity is rapidly shifting toward Asia. And that shows up in these charts.

I have a strong desire to visit the largest cities in the world. It's fascinating to see how such large urban clusters manage to organize themselves. There are always systems that naturally emerge to make things work, even if it feels chaotic on the surface.

I've only been to 3 cities from the 2025 chart, so I have my work cut out for me.

Cover photo by Rifki Kurniawan on Unsplash

Canadian geographer Mario Polèse's book, The Wealth and Poverty of Regions: Why Cities Matter, is not new. It was originally published in 2010. But it's perhaps a good follow-up to yesterday's post about the untethering of wealth. Here's an excerpt from a review of the book by Jeb Brugmann:

All cities, Polèse explains, share the same basic economic causes and effects. These are economies of localization (i.e., locating activities close together) and of urbanization (i.e., clustering lots of diverse activities together at scale). Polèse shows how these urban economies—usefully distinguished and defined in detail as economies of scale, proximity, diversity and concentration—combine with unique natural features and resource endowments, technology and infrastructure investments, national boundaries and market controls, and historical events to create quintessentially local and unique places. Every time he explains the status of another place—New York, London, Chicago, Paris, Montreal, the northern Mexico border, the North American west coast—he demonstrates again how the source code of geography combines with specific local and historical conditions to create a momentum of wealth or poverty.

The rich may have the means to tax-optimize through physical mobility, but the draw to established urban clusters remains strong, which is why it can be a challenge to stay away from them for more than 183 days. There is a "stickiness" to established cities that is the result of momentum and compounding over centuries.

Still, nothing is guaranteed, and there's only so much that can be done if you're swimming against a global landscape that is shifting away from you. Geography does matter. And today, the world's economic center of gravity is rapidly shifting toward Asia. This is good for some cities and bad for others.

Cover photo by Zhu Hongzhi on Unsplash

It's not always as straightforward as it may seem to measure the size of a city or urban region.

There's the problem of which urban boundary to use. And then once you've landed on that, there's the additional problem of estimating how many people live within it. This can be particularly challenging when it comes to informal settlements, where there isn't reliable population data.

The most common approach is to use the continuous built-up area as the urban agglomeration, as opposed to any sort of "city proper" boundaries. And this is exactly what the United Nations has done in its latest World Urbanization Prospects report.

Here, they have fundamentally revised their measurement methodology by using a new, so-called harmonized geospatial approach. If you'd like to nerd out on the specifics, you can do that here.

But one of the key takeaways is that this new methodology has resulted in a reordering of the world's largest urban agglomerations. At the top is now Jakarta, followed by Dhaka:

Previously, Tokyo was thought to be the world's most populous megacity, but it has dropped down to 3rd in this new report. And by 2050, it is forecasted to drop even further to 7th place:

As we spoke about yesterday, the world's economic center of gravity is rapidly shifting toward Asia. And that shows up in these charts.

I have a strong desire to visit the largest cities in the world. It's fascinating to see how such large urban clusters manage to organize themselves. There are always systems that naturally emerge to make things work, even if it feels chaotic on the surface.

I've only been to 3 cities from the 2025 chart, so I have my work cut out for me.

Cover photo by Rifki Kurniawan on Unsplash

Canadian geographer Mario Polèse's book, The Wealth and Poverty of Regions: Why Cities Matter, is not new. It was originally published in 2010. But it's perhaps a good follow-up to yesterday's post about the untethering of wealth. Here's an excerpt from a review of the book by Jeb Brugmann:

All cities, Polèse explains, share the same basic economic causes and effects. These are economies of localization (i.e., locating activities close together) and of urbanization (i.e., clustering lots of diverse activities together at scale). Polèse shows how these urban economies—usefully distinguished and defined in detail as economies of scale, proximity, diversity and concentration—combine with unique natural features and resource endowments, technology and infrastructure investments, national boundaries and market controls, and historical events to create quintessentially local and unique places. Every time he explains the status of another place—New York, London, Chicago, Paris, Montreal, the northern Mexico border, the North American west coast—he demonstrates again how the source code of geography combines with specific local and historical conditions to create a momentum of wealth or poverty.

The rich may have the means to tax-optimize through physical mobility, but the draw to established urban clusters remains strong, which is why it can be a challenge to stay away from them for more than 183 days. There is a "stickiness" to established cities that is the result of momentum and compounding over centuries.

Still, nothing is guaranteed, and there's only so much that can be done if you're swimming against a global landscape that is shifting away from you. Geography does matter. And today, the world's economic center of gravity is rapidly shifting toward Asia. This is good for some cities and bad for others.

Cover photo by Zhu Hongzhi on Unsplash