Is Chongqing the largest city in the world?
October 30, 2009 – 4:25 amOnce in a while I meet some educated fellow who tells me, that Chongqing is the largest city in the world with more than 30 million inhabitants. Last week my Chinese teacher asked which is the largest city in China. My answer was “Shanghai” of course, but she said that it is Chongqing. A great moment to look into this matter regarding who is the biggest, largest, longest city.
Here’s a Chongqing night picture which I haven’t published before. Although I haven’t had the chance to taste the Chongqing nightlife when I was there in 2007, I heard quite some positive remarks. However the open mindedness of Chongqing has limits.
I had been to Chongqing and I can say with absolute certainty that Shanghai is bigger or larger by population and urban area. So how did the confusion about Chongqing start? Why do so many people believe that Chongqing is the city with the most inhabitants in the world? The answer is simple. For quite a while the biggest city was not inside China. While it cannot be said with absolute certainty that Mexico City was/is the biggest, it probably is. However some corrupt official in his communist chair was probably unhappy about this, so he changed the borders of Chongqing. That was in March 1997. Then the confusion started thanks to this super-smart dude.
Taking into account the current borders of the Chongqing municipality Chongqing has the highest number of inhabitants, namely about 32 million. However the area of the municipality is about the size of Austria and the population density is about 382 people per square kilometer. That’s pretty much empty space mostly.
A look at the facts in Chongqing’s Wikipedia article show the facts. The real city, where there are real streets and not farmhouses, has only about 5 million inhabitants (numbers vary depending on the source). That’s a lot, but it’s far from the largest city in the world. And that matches my own impression of Chongqing. Moving forward, but still lot’s of opportunities for improvement.
Is Chongqing the largest city by area? If you look at the official boundaries, yes. If you look at the area where there actually streets, houses and people (other than farmers, rice paddies and water buffaloes), basically the urban area of Chongqing, then the answer is: no!
Is Chongqing the largest city by inhabitants? If you look at the official boundaries, yes. If you look at the area where there actually streets, houses and people (other than farmers, rice paddies and water buffaloes), basically the urban area of Chongqing, then the answer is: no!
So all the trouble about Chongqing is not much more than a boundary moving media stunt. By the way: You can look at Google Earth and then roughly compare the urban area of Chongqing with other huge metropolises like Tokio, Mexico city or Shanghai and you’ll easily discover the correct answer to the question: Is Chongqing the largest city in the world?
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One Response to “Is Chongqing the largest city in the world?”
The more I looked through this, the more it fell apart.
Does the official boundaries not determin what the biggest city is?
Tokyo (and yes, thats the correct spelling – Not tokio) is NOT a city, its a prefecture, made up of a total of 26 cities. (Tachikawa, Machida and Akiruno to name a few.) None of which come even close to Chongqings CBD population, never mind its official boundaries population.
There is, and never has been a city called ‘tokyo’, its always been a prefecture, in the kanto region of japan.
Hence, Chongqing IS the largest city, it terms of area and population.
By Ethan on Aug 3, 2010