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What I find astonishing is the difference by metric.
Largest urban areas by population:
1. Tokyo
2. Jakarta
3. Dehli
4. Guangzhou
5. Mumbai
Largest urban areas by land size:
1. New York
2. Boston
3. Tokyo
4. Atlanta
5. Los Angeles
Here one can see how gigantic urban areas become due to low density development.
What I don't understand however is why they separate the Rhine-Ruhr urban area into two parts, Cologne and Dusseldorf. The Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan area is considered one connected urban area in most other publications. According to this statistic it would have a combined population of 8,987,000 inhabitants, which would put it ahead of Chicago.
Metro Jakarta has 25 million people, and only 5 km (3 miles) of subway transit. The whole metropolis is slowly sinking into the ground. There are plans to built a new Indonesian national capital in a remote location far away on the island of Borneo, but even if that happens, it will relocate only 5% of Jakarta's population, and won't solve the problem.
Delhi is considered as having the world's worst measured air pollution, it's several times the recommended World Health Organization standards. Great numbers of people have asthma as a result.
In terms of urban sprawl it's something that many parts of the world deliberately try to avoid and it's ugly, tedious, monotonous and depressing, hence the need for green belts, garden suburbs, parks and good commuter rail links, all of which are common place in Europe and some other parts of the world.
Last edited by Brave New World; 10-04-2023 at 07:50 AM..
In terms of urban sprawl it's something that many parts of the world deliberately try to avoid and it's ugly, tedious, monotonous and depressing, hence the need for green belts, garden suburbs, parks and good commuter rail links, all of which are common place in Europe and some other parts of the world.
I see some rankings that simply don't make sense among the US cities (for example Salt Lake City is double its MSA population, but San Antonio is 80% of its MSA population). But then the Greater Aukland critique is pretty stupid.
Parks are relevant to how dense the city is. If you decide to make half the city parks, you have decreased the density in a given area.
I see some rankings that simply don't make sense among the US cities (for example Salt Lake City is double its MSA population, but San Antonio is 80% of its MSA population). But then the Greater Aukland critique is pretty stupid.
Parks are relevant to how dense the city is. If you decide to make half the city parks, you have decreased the density in a given area.
I totally agree with you, a lot of it doesn't make any sense.
Sadly I can't Rep you at the moment, but will as soon as it will let me.
I totally agree with you, a lot of it doesn't make any sense.
Sadly I can't Rep you at the moment, but will as soon as it will let me.
It's the other way around, MSAs don't make sense. Demografia uses coverage of the built environment. They explicitly describe why urban areas as they define it vary from the metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) and city proper. The latter two are either political divisions or statistical areas while urban areas are mostly defined by what defines an urban area, namely a more or less densely built up environment.
It's the other way around, MSAs don't make sense. Demografia uses coverage of the built environment. They explicitly describe why urban areas as they define it vary from the metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) and city proper. The latter two are either political divisions or statistical areas while urban areas are mostly defined by what defines an urban area, namely a more or less densely built up environment.
Whilst I agree that MSA's are often inaccurate that does not mean that I don't also agree with the criticism of demographia, and the reasons for the criticism is cited in the articles I posted.
Whilst I agree that MSA's are often inaccurate that does not mean that I don't also agree with the criticism of demographia, and the reasons for the criticism is cited in the articles I posted.
The cited criticism of Demographia is a non-critique. They are basically complaining, that Demographia uses average population density instead of population weighted density. But that is the standard and not unique to Demographia. Your local/state/federal government does publish statistics about simple average population density as well. You can find average population density almost everywhere in literature. That doesn't mean this method is the only one that should be considered and it does not negate the validity of population weighted density. And more importantly you can take Demographia's definition of urban areas and calculate the population weighted density for that area. The reason why Demographia didn't use that data was probably, because it is very difficult to find data on every major city worldwide about the distribution of their population. The critique is a non-critique. None of this negates the validity of how Demographia defines urban areas vs metropolitan areas or city proper. And I don't know a better definition of urban areas than Demographia's one that isn't based on arbitrary political/statistical boundaries such as MSAs (Metropolitan Statistical Areas).
The critique by Planetizen is about Demographia's Housing Affordability Survey, which has nothing to do with their definition of urban areas and the numbers presented above. It's a critique of a completely another topic, which I may even agree with, but again, none of this has anything to do with the correctness of the numbers about the largest and most dense urban areas.
The critique is a non-critique. None of this negates the validity of how Demographia defines urban areas vs metropolitan areas or city proper. And I don't know a better definition of urban areas than Demographia's one that isn't based on arbitrary political/statistical boundaries such as MSAs (Metropolitan Statistical Areas).
I totally agree. There are a few flaws but it is still the most accurate to measure the size of urban areas and compare city sizes around the world.
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