Many of the world’s most populous cities are cities that are famous for their history, other characteristics, or any number of other reasons. Tokyo in Japan, Delhi in India, Shanghai in China and São Paulo in Brazil, the four most populous cities in the world according to UN data from 2018, are not only or predominantly known for their size. But in this same list of 81 cities with populations exceeding 5 million people, there are several that you don’t hear about often, or known only for being very populous, or completely unknown to most people. .
One of the cities mentioned most often in this type of list is Chongqing, in southwest China, described for years now as the megalopolis “that no one has ever heard of”. It is the 14th most populous city in the world according to UN data, which considers only the metropolitan area and not the entire administrative subdivision that is meant in China when it comes to Chongqing. In fact, since 1997 it has been a “municipality”, large cities that have the same administrative status in China as the provinces.
Taking into account the entire municipality, Chongqing is often cited as the single most populous city in the world overall, and by far, with over 32 million people. But most of the inhabitants, despite being part of the same municipality, live in the more peripheral rural areas. It is a trend which is generally valid for various statistics on the Chinese population and which brings out, among other things, one of the main limitations of any international classification of this type: that there is no univocal definition criterion for a “city”, because the Administrative subdivisions vary from country to country and there are many nuances.
Areas that in some countries are defined as “cities”, in others they would be more properly provinces or regions. The municipality of Chongqing has an area of 82,403 square kilometers: practically the same as Austria (which has 8.9 million inhabitants). To travel from the center to the more peripheral parts, also considering the worse quality of the roads as you get further away, it takes one or two days. And therefore even rankings of the largest cities in the world made by authoritative bodies and organizations often inevitably end up “comparing apples and pears”, summed up in 2012 Richard Greene, professor of geography at Northern Illinois University.
Net of the differences in classification, Chongqing is now relatively better known in the world than it used to be, also due to the incredible urban expansion it has had in the last two decades and which it has in common with other large Chinese cities such as Tianjin. In fact, by dint of citing it as a little-known big city, it has become a city of which many things are actually known.
A man walks along a bank of the Yangtze tributary Jialing River during a dry period in Chongqing, China on Aug. 19, 2022 (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
One is the presence of large underground tunnels used by the population as bomb shelters against attacks by Japanese aviation during the Second World War. For decades after the end of the war – and partly still today – the tunnels were the permanent site of the daily activities of workers, craftsmen and other workers.
And another quite well-known feature of Chongqing is the large subway that has been in operation since 2005, which has ten lines and a total track length of 485 kilometers. The construction of new lines has more or less followed urban growth, and more lines are currently under construction. The subway is well known in the world mainly for line 2, which passes through a 19-storey building, between the sixth and eighth floors, home to the Liziba station.
A train leaving the Liziba station of the Chongqing Metro, China on May 28, 2019 (David290/Wikimedia)
Another relatively little-known city with a population of more than 5 million is Karachi in southern Pakistan along the eastern coast of the Arabian Sea in the Indian Ocean. It is the most populous city in the country, with a population of approximately 15.4 million spread over an area of 3,530 square kilometers.
Karachi was the capital until the early 1960s, before Islamabad became the capital, purposely built for this purpose, for logistics and defense reasons. But it is still today the most important industrial, financial and cultural center of the country, as well as the most cosmopolitan and relatively liberal city. It is home to Pakistan’s two largest ports, Karachi and Qasim, as well as the busiest international airport, Jinnah. Among the more eccentric constructions is a gigantic Christian cross about 50 meters high, erected in 2015 by a Pakistani businessman: quite remarkable for a country with a very large Muslim majority, in which Christians make up 1.27 per percent of the population.
The continuous demand for workforce and the urban expansion of Karachi have determined over time a progressive and constant transfer of people from rural areas to the center. Due to these flows, essentially uninterrupted for decades, and the increase in average longevity, the population has grown almost 60 times since the end of the 1940s. And it doubled in the space of 15 years between the late 1990s and the 2000s.
For some time now, population growth has also been the cause of great difficulties in waste disposal, which in turn is the cause of other exceptional phenomena including an extraordinary invasion of flies in 2019, further favored by monsoon rains and inefficiencies in the sewage and drainage systems of the waters.
A mosque in Karachi, Pakistan on Friday, March 24, 2023 (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)
Of the many Indian cities on the list of the most populous in the world, apart from Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and Bangalore, several are little or not known at all. Among these is Chennai, whose administrative borders were extended in 2011 from 174 to 426 square kilometers, and which before 1996 was known as Madras, the name of the colony where the first British fortress was built in India, in 1639. It is located in the southern federated state of Tamil Nadu, of which it is the capital, and has over 10 million inhabitants, considering the entire metropolitan area which falls under the same administrative body (Greater Chennai Corporation, the oldest in the country).
Chennai overlooks the Bay of Bengal, is one of the major ports in the south of the country and one of the largest economies. But despite this, it has a growing population that lives below the poverty line, and is often affected by periods of drought and lack of water. Apart from being one of the most visited cities in India by people from other countries, it also attracts huge numbers of them from the rest of the country due to the better medical and healthcare it provides compared to other cities.
Chennai also has a long musical tradition, also appreciated internationally and recognized by UNESCO. And it is one of the main film production centers of the country in terms of turnover, number of films made and circulation, especially films of the “Kollywood” genre. Formed from the union of the words Hollywood and Kodambakkam, the Chennai district where the studios are located, “Kollywood” is the name used to indicate cinema in the Tamil language, which is also very popular in other countries including Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka.
Three people stand in front of a poster of popular Indian actor Rajinikanth outside a cinema in Chennai, India on July 22, 2016 (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)
Another city that you usually don’t hear much about when it comes to the world’s largest cities is the capital of Angola, Luanda, which according to UN data is among those cities the sixth most densely overall: about 8.3 million inhabitants on an area of 116 square kilometers. Angola has a relatively recent and painful history, marked by 26 years of civil war which began immediately after independence from Portugal, obtained in 1975, and ended only in 2002. Portuguese is still the official language, as well as the first language learned by a large part of the population.
The population of Luanda, which is located on the northern Atlantic coast and is the largest port in the country, as well as the main industrial and cultural center, has increased a lot in the last twenty years thanks to relative political stability but above all to mineral resources and oil companies of the country. Resources that have favored investments in new activities and urban projects, but also the growth of corruption and inequalities. As with many other large cities in the world, a substantial part of the population growth has been favored by migratory flows formed by people who have moved from other areas of the country or from neighboring countries to escape war zones or for greater economic opportunities.
A residential area in downtown Luanda, Angola on January 30, 2020 (Luke Dray/Getty Images)
According to the forecasts of several international research groups including the Global Cities Institute of the University of Toronto and the scientific journal Environment & Urbanization, collected in 2021 in a long article in the Washington Post, many other African cities and metropolitan areas affected by growing urbanization they could end up occupying the top twenty positions in the ranking of the most populous cities in the world by 2100, in addition to the already large Cairo in Egypt and Lagos in Nigeria.
By the end of 2100, according to this research, Africa will be the only continent with population growth and will be home to over a third of the world’s population. Among the cities with the greatest growth prospects and which have already been undergoing considerable expansion for years, one of those we hear less about is Abidjan, the former capital of the Ivory Coast, which according to 2021 data has a population of 6.3 million inhabitants. In 2014 they were 4.7 million and by 2100 they could become 19 million.
Abidjan, which is built around a lagoon on the Atlantic Ocean, has experienced rapid demographic and economic growth over the past decade, after a civil war that began in the late 1990s and early 2000s and continued on and off until to 2012. It has not been the capital since 1983, when administrative functions were transferred to Yamoussoukro, an autonomous district in the most central part of the country. However, Abidjan remained the economic and governmental capital, as well as the most populous city of all the former French colony, also known for its cocoa industry (it is the main producer in the world).
For some years in particular but in part since before the civil war, Abidjan has been considered one of the most cosmopolitan cities in all of Africa and a model of integration and tolerance, capable of attracting most of the internal migratory flows (enormously higher compared to intercontinental ones). Abidjan’s Ivorian population has been growing for years, the Washington Post reported in 2021, but the resident population born in other countries is growing even faster, accounting for about 20 percent of the country’s economy, more than anywhere else. part of Africa.
Neighborhoods such as Treichville, Abobo and Vridi host communities from all over West Africa who have come to Abidjan for the best living and working conditions, favored by continuous infrastructural investment plans in various cities of the country (France is still the main partner political and economic).
Le Plateau neighborhood in Abidjan, Ivory Coast (Citizen59/Wikimedia)
