Population tables of world cities

World's largest cities

World's largest cities proper

World's largest municipalities

World's largest urban areas

World's largest metropolitan areas

World's largest conurbations

World's largest urban agglomerations

World megacities

World megalopolises

v t e

Tokyo is the world's largest megacity

Seoul

Mumbai City

A megacity is usually defined as a metropolitan area with a total population in excess of 10 million people.^[1] Some definitions also set a minimum level for population density (at least 2,000 persons/square km).^{[citation needed]} A megacity can be a single metropolitan area or two or more metropolitan areas that converge. The terms conurbation, metropolis and metroplex are also applied to the latter. The terms "megapolis'" and megalopolis are sometimes used synonymously with megacity, though those terms denote a semi-continuous chain of large metropolitan cities.^{[citation needed]}

As of 2011, there are 21 megacities in existence, which is the official figure despite the list below containing 26 megacities^[2] – with conurbations such as Mumbai,^[3] Tokyo, Seoul, New York City, and Mexico City having populations in excess of 20 million inhabitants each.

History[link]

In 1800, only 3% of the world's population lived in cities, a figure that has risen to 47% by the end of the twentieth century. In 1950, there were 83 cities with populations exceeding one million; by 2007, this number had risen to 468.^[4] If the trend continues, the world's urban population will double every 38 years. The UN forecasts that today's urban population of 3.2 billion will rise to nearly 5 billion by 2030, when three out of five people will live in cities.^[5]

This increase will be most dramatic on the least-urbanized continents, Asia and Africa. Surveys and projections indicate that all urban growth over the next 25 years will be in developing countries.^[6] One billion people, almost one-seventh of the world's population, now live in shanty towns.^[7] In many poor countries overpopulated slums exhibit high rates of disease due to unsanitary conditions, malnutrition, and lack of basic health care.^[8] By 2030, over 2 billion people in the world will be living in slums.^[9] Over 90% of the urban population of Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda, three of the world's most rural countries, already live in slums.

By 2025, according to the Far Eastern Economic Review, Asia alone will have at least 10 megacities, including Mumbai, India (33 million), Shanghai, China (27 million), Karachi, Pakistan (26.5 million), Dhaka, Bangladesh (26 million) and Jakarta, Indonesia (24.9 million people).^[10] Lagos, Nigeria has grown from 300,000 in 1950 to an estimated 12.5 million today, and the Nigerian government estimates that the city will have expanded to 25 million residents by 2015.^[11]

Largest cities[link]

Growth[link]

For almost a thousand years, Rome was the largest, wealthiest, and most politically important city in Europe.^[12] Its population passed a million people by the end of the 1st century BC.^[13] Rome's population started dropping in 402 AD when Flavius Honorius, Western Roman Emperor from 395 to 423, moved the government to Ravenna and Rome's population declined to a mere 20,000 during the Early Middle Ages, reducing the sprawling city to groups of inhabited buildings interspersed among large areas of ruins and vegetation.

Baghdad was likely the largest city in the world from shortly after its foundation in 762 AD until the 930s, with some estimates putting its population at over one million.^[14]

Chinese capital cities Chang'an, Kaifeng also experienced huge population booms during prosperous empires. According to the census in the year 742 recorded in the New Book of Tang, 362,921 families with 1,960,188 persons were counted in Jingzhao Fu (京兆府), the metropolitan area including small cities in the vicinity.^[15]

The medieval settlement surrounding Angkor, the one-time capital of the Khmer Empire which flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, could have supported a population of up to one million people.^[16]

In 1950, New York City was the only urban area with a population of over 10 million.^[17] Geographers had identified 25 such areas as of October 2005,^[18] as compared with 19 megacities in 2004 and only nine in 1985. This increase has happened as the world's population moves towards the high (75–85%) urbanization levels of North America and Western Europe. The 1990 census marked the first time the majority of US citizens lived in cities with over 1 million inhabitants.

Mexico City, Mexico

New York City, USA

São Paulo, Brazil

Shanghai, China

In the 2000s, the largest megacity is the Greater Tokyo Area. The population of this urban agglomeration includes areas such as Yokohama and Kawasaki, and is estimated to be between 35 and 36 million. This variation in estimates can be accounted for by different definitions of what the area encompasses. While the prefectures of Tokyo, Chiba, Kanagawa, and Saitama are commonly included in statistical information, the Japan Statistics Bureau only includes the area within 50 kilometers of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Offices in Shinjuku, thus arriving at a smaller population estimate.^[19][20] A characteristic issue of megacities is the difficulty in defining their outer limits and accurately estimating the populations. Based on the population criteria, the world's 27 megacities are, in rank of population:

Rank	Megacity	Country	Continent	Population	Annual Growth[citation needed]
1	Tokyo	Japan	Asia	34,300,000	0.60%
2	Guangzhou	China	Asia	25,200,000	4.00%
3	Seoul	South Korea	Asia	25,100,000	1.40%
4	Shanghai	China	Asia	24,800,000	2.20%
5	Delhi	India	Asia	23,300,000	4.60%
6	Mumbai	India	Asia	23,000,000	2.90%
7	Mexico City	Mexico	North America	22,900,000	2.00%
8	New York City	USA	North America	22,000,000	0.30%
9	São Paulo	Brazil	South America	20,900,000	1.40%
10	Manila[21]	Philippines	Asia	20,300,000	2.50%
11	Jakarta	Indonesia	Asia	18,900,000	2.00%
12	Los Angeles	USA	North America	18,100,000	1.10%
13	Karachi	Pakistan	Asia	17,000,000	4.90%
14	Osaka	Japan	Asia	16,700,000	0.15%
15	Kolkata	India	Asia	16,600,000	2.00%
16	Cairo	Egypt	Africa	15,300,000	2.60%
17	Buenos Aires	Argentina	South America	14,800,000	1.00%
18	Moscow	Russia	Europe	14,800,000	0.20%
19	Dhaka	Bangladesh	Asia	14,000,000	4.10%
20	Beijing	China	Asia	13,900,000	2.70%
21	Tehran	Iran	Asia	13,100,000	2.60%
22	Istanbul	Turkey	Europe & Asia	13,000,000	2.80%
23	London	United Kingdom	Europe	12,500,000	0.70%
24	Rio de Janeiro	Brazil	South America	12,500,000	1.00%
25	Lagos	Nigeria	Africa	12,100,000	3.20%
26	Paris	France	Europe	10,197,678	1.00%

Source: Th. Brinkhoff: The Principal Agglomerations of the World, 2011-07-01

Another list defines megacities as urban agglomerations instead of metropolitan areas.^[22] As of 2010, there are 25 megacities by this definition.

Challenges[link]

Slums[link]

According to the United Nations, the proportion of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the developing world between 1990 and 2005.^[23] However, due to rising population, the absolute number of slum dwellers is rising. The majority of these come from the fringes of urban margins, located in legal and illegal settlements with insufficient housing and sanitation. This has been caused by massive migration, both internal and transnational, into cities, which has caused growth rates of urban populations and spatial concentrations not seen before in history. These issues raise problems in the political, social, and economic arenas. Slum dwellers often have minimal or no access to education, healthcare, or the urban economy.

Homelessness[link]

Megacities often have significant numbers of homeless people. The actual legal definition of homelessness varies from country to country, or among different entities or institutions in the same country or region.^[24]

Traffic congestion[link]

Traffic congestion is a condition on road networks that occurs as use increases, and is characterized by slower speeds, longer trip times, and increased vehicular queueing.

Urban sprawl[link]

A flat land area in the greater Los Angeles area almost completely filled with houses, buildings, roads, and freeways. Areas constructed to capacity contribute to urban expansion.

Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a multifaceted concept, which includes the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs to its outskirts to low-density, auto-dependent development on rural land, with associated design features that encourage car dependency.^[25] As a result, some critics argue that sprawl has certain disadvantages, including, longer transport distances to work, high car dependence, inadequate facilities e.g.: health, cultural. etc. and higher per-person infrastructure costs. Discussions and debates about sprawl are often obfuscated by the ambiguity associated with the phrase. For example, some commentators measure sprawl only with the average number of residential units per acre in a given area. But others associate it with decentralization (spread of population without a well-defined center), discontinuity (leapfrog development), segregation of uses, etc.^{[citation needed]}

Gentrification[link]

Gentrification and urban gentrification denote the socio-cultural changes in an area resulting from wealthier people buying housing property in a less prosperous community.^[26] Consequent to gentrification, the average income increases and average family size decreases in the community, which may result in the informal economic eviction of the lower-income residents, because of increased rents, house prices, and property taxes. This type of population change reduces industrial land use when it is redeveloped for commerce and housing. In addition, new businesses, catering to a more affluent base of consumers, tend to move into formerly blighted areas, further increasing the appeal to more affluent migrants and decreasing the accessibility to less wealthy natives.

Environmental problems[link]

Air pollution[link]

Air pollution is the introduction of chemicals, particulate matter, or biological materials that cause harm or discomfort to humans or other living organisms, or damages the natural environment, into the atmosphere. Many urban areas have significant problems with smog, a type of air pollution derived from vehicular particulate emission from internal combustion engines and industrial fumes that react in the atmosphere with sunlight to form secondary pollutants that also combine with the primary emissions to form photochemical smog.

Smog is also caused by large amounts of coal burning, which creates a mixture of smoke and sulfur dioxide. World coal consumption was about 6,743,786,000 short tons in 2006^[27] and is expected to increase 48% to 9.98 billion short tons by 2030.^[28] China produced 2.38 billion tons in 2006. India produced about 447.3 million tons in 2006. 68.7% of China's electricity comes from coal. The USA consumes about 14% of the world total, using 90% of it for generation of electricity.^[29]

In fiction[link]

Many of the following fictional cities were inspired by Fritz Lang's 1927 film, Metropolis and the influential depiction of Los Angeles in Ridley Scott's 1982 film, Blade Runner.

• Megacities are a common backdrop in dystopian science fiction, with examples such as the Sprawl in William Gibson's Neuromancer,^[30] and Mega-City One, a megalopolis of over 400 million people across the east coast of the United States, in the Judge Dredd comic.^[31] In Demolition Man a megacity called "San Angeles" was formed from the joining of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego and the surrounding metropolitan regions following a massive earthquake in 2010.^[32]
• Fictional planet-wide megacities (ecumenopoleis) include Trantor in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series of books and Coruscant (population 1 trillion)^[33] in the Star Wars universe.^[34] Other examples are 'City Europe' in David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series of books, Holy Terra and the hive cities of Necromunda in Warhammer 40,000 and Ravnica in the eponymous Magic: The Gathering expansion.
• The futuristic comic seriesTransmetropolitan is based in a megacity simply referred to as The City which seems to be an amalgamation of many cities along the East coast of America.
• The Fifth Element features a parody of New York City set in 2263. Buildings are so high that people use flying cars to get around and the ground level of the Earth is obscured by smog.
• The 1973 film Soylent Green, based on Harry Harrison's novel Make Room, Make Room, depicted New York City in 2022 with a population of 40 million. It is not said how large the city is, but the main character does make the comment that a wanted criminal is "over the city line in Philadelphia" implying that it has sprawled that far.
• The sprawling metropolis featured in The Matrix series of films can be considered a megacity. It is based on Sydney, Chicago and Oakland, California. While the city is never referenced by name in the films, in the MMORPG The Matrix Online, the city itself is called the Mega City.
• In Tsutomu Nihei Blame! series, The City is an endless vertical space of artificially-constructed walls, stairways and caverns, separated into massive "floors" by nearly-impenetrable barriers known as "Megastructure". The City is inhabited by scattered human and transhuman tribes as well as hostile cyborgs known as Silicon Creatures.

See also[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division
• e-Geopolis project Research Group, University Paris-Diderot
• Lagos la Vida Loca by Mariana van Zeller on Current TV Nov. 2007
• Megacities Task Force
• Maps of US Megacities from radicalcartography.net
• IEEE Spectrum report on "Engineering the Megacity"
• URBAN PLANET: Collective Identities, Governance and Empowerment in Megacities
• See Ronald Daus's bibliography, researcher at the Free University of Berlin

The Edge
Background information
Birth name	David Howell Evans
Born	(1961-08-08) 8 August 1961 (age 50) Barking, Essex, England, United Kingdom
Origin	County Dublin, Ireland
Genres	Rock, post-punk, alternative rock
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, activist
Instruments	Guitar, vocals, keyboards, piano, bass guitar
Years active	1976–present
Labels	Island, Mercury
Associated acts	U2, Passengers
Website	www.u2.com
Notable instruments
Gibson Explorer Fender Stratocaster Gibson Les Paul Fender Telecaster Gretsch Country Gentleman Gretsch White Falcon Rickenbacker 330/12

David Howell Evans (born 8 August 1961), more widely known by his stage name The Edge (or just Edge),^[1] is a musician best known as the guitarist, backing vocalist, and keyboardist of the Irish rock band U2. A member of the group since its inception, he has recorded 12 studio albums with the band and has released one solo record. As a guitarist, The Edge has crafted a minimalistic and textural style of playing. His use of a rhythmic delay effect yields a distinctive ambient, chiming sound that has become a signature of U2's music.

The Edge was born in England to a Welsh family, but was raised in Ireland after moving there as an infant. In 1976, at Mount Temple Comprehensive School, he formed U2 with his fellow students and his older brother Dik. Inspired by the ethos of punk rock and its basic arrangements, the group began to write its own material. They eventually became one of the most popular acts in popular music, with successful albums such as 1987's The Joshua Tree and 1991's Achtung Baby. Over the years, The Edge has experimented with various guitar effects and introduced influences from several genres of music into his own style, including American roots music, industrial music, and alternative rock. With U2, The Edge has also played keyboards, co-produced their 1993 record Zooropa, and occasionally contributed lyrics. The Edge met his second and current wife, Morleigh Steinberg, through her collaborations with the band.

As a member of U2 and as an individual, The Edge has campaigned for human rights and philanthropic causes. He co-founded Music Rising, a charity to support musicians affected by Hurricane Katrina. He has collaborated with U2 bandmate Bono on several projects, including songs for Roy Orbison and Tina Turner, and the soundtracks to the musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and the Royal Shakespeare Company's London stage adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine placed him at number 38 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

Personal life[link]

The Edge at a U2 concert in Anaheim (2005)

David Howell Evans was born at the Barking Maternity Hospital,^[2] Essex, England to Welsh parents Garvin and Gwenda Evans.^[1] When he was one, his family moved to County Dublin, Ireland where he attended St Andrew's National School. He received piano and guitar lessons and often performed with his brother Dik Evans before they both answered an advertisement posted by Larry Mullen, Jr. at their school, Mount Temple Comprehensive School, seeking musicians to form a band.^[3] The band accepted both of them. This band went through several incarnations before emerging as U2 in March 1978 (Dik Evans left the band just before the name change).^[3] U2 began performing in various venues in Ireland and eventually began developing a following. Their debut album, Boy, was released in 1980.

In 1981, leading up to the October tour, Evans came very close to leaving U2 for religious reasons, but he decided to stay.^[3] During this period, he became involved with a group called Shalom Tigers, in which bandmates Bono and Larry Mullen Jr. were also involved.^[4] Shortly after deciding to remain with the band, he wrote a piece of music that later became "Sunday Bloody Sunday".^[3] The Edge married his high school girlfriend Aislinn O'Sullivan on 12 July 1983.^[5] The couple had three daughters together: Hollie in 1984, Arran in 1985 and Blue Angel in 1989.^[4] The couple separated in 1990, but were unable to get officially divorced because of Irish laws regarding marriage annulment; divorce was legalised in 1995 and the couple were legally divorced in 1996.^[4]

In 1993, The Edge began dating Morleigh Steinberg, a professional dancer and choreographer employed by the band as a belly dancer during the Zoo TV Tour. They had a daughter, Sian (born 1997), and a son, Levi (born 25 October 1999),^[4] before marrying on 22 June 2002.^[4] He appeared in the 2009 music documentary film It Might Get Loud.^[6] The Edge has been criticized for his efforts to build five luxury mansions on a 156 acre plot of land in Malibu, California.^[7] The California Coastal Commission voted 8-4 against the plans, with the project described by the commission's executive director, Peter Douglas, as "In 38 years...one of the three worst projects that I've seen in terms of environmental devastation...It's a contradiction in terms – you can't be serious about being an environmentalist and pick this location."^[7] The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy agreed to remain neutral on the issue following a $1 million donation from The Edge and a commitment from The Edge to designate 100 acres of the land as open space for public footpaths.^[7]

Music style[link]

Guitar playing[link]

As a guitar player, The Edge has a sound typified by a low-key playing style, a chiming, shimmering sound (thanks in part to the sound of VOX AC-30s) that he achieves with extensive use of delay effects and reverb. The feedback delay is often set to a dotted eighth note (3/16 of a measure), and the feedback gain is adjusted until a note played repeats two or three times.^{[citation needed]}

On 1987's The Joshua Tree, The Edge often contributes just a few simple lead lines given depth and richness by an ever-present delay. For example, the introduction to "Where the Streets Have No Name" is simply a repeated six-note arpeggio, broadened by a modulated delay effect. The Edge has said that he views musical notes as "expensive", in that he prefers to play as few notes as possible. He said in 1982 of his style,

"I like a nice ringing sound on guitar, and most of my chords I find two strings and make them ring the same note, so it's almost like a 12-string sound. So for E I might play a B, E, E and B and make it ring. It works very well with the Gibson Explorer. It's funny because the bass end of the Explorer was so awful that I used to stay away from the low strings, and a lot of the chords I played were very trebly, on the first four, or even three strings. I discovered that through using this one area of the fretboard I was developing a very stylized way of doing something that someone else would play in a normal way."^[9]

Many different influences have shaped The Edge's guitar technique.^{[citation needed]} His first guitar was an old acoustic guitar that his mother bought him at a local flea market for only a few pounds; he was nine at the time. He and his brother Dik Evans both experimented with this instrument.^[9] He said in 1982 of this early experimentation, "I suppose the first link in the chain was a visit to the local jumble sale where I purchased a guitar for a pound. That was my first instrument. It was an acoustic guitar and me and my elder brother Dik both played it, plonking away, all very rudimentary stuff, open chords and all that."^[9] The Edge has stated that many of his guitar parts are based around guitar effects. This is especially true from the Achtung Baby era onwards, although much of the band's 1980s material made heavy use of echos.

Vocals[link]

The Edge in June 2005

The Edge also supplies the backing vocals for U2. U2's 1983 live album and video release, Under a Blood Red Sky and Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky are good reference points for his singing (as are the live DVDs from the Elevation Tour, U2 Go Home: Live from Slane Castle and Elevation 2001: Live from Boston). For example, he sings the chorus to "Sunday Bloody Sunday" (Bono harmonizes on the final 'Sunday'). U2 used this tradeoff technique later in "Bullet the Blue Sky" as well. His backing vocals are sometimes in the form of a repeated cry; examples of songs that use this approach include "Beautiful Day", "New Year's Day" and "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)". Another technique he uses in his backing vocals is the falsetto, in songs such as "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of", "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own", "A Man and a Woman", "The Wanderer", live versions of "The Fly", and "Window in the Skies".

The Edge sings the lead vocal on "Van Diemen's Land" and "Numb", the first half of the song "Seconds", dual vocals with Bono in "Discotheque", and the bridge in the song "Miracle Drug".^[4] He also sings the occasional lead vocal in live renditions of other songs (such as "Sunday Bloody Sunday" during the PopMart Tour and "Party Girl" during the Rotterdam Zoo TV show when it was Bono's birthday).^[10] He also plays a solo acoustic version of the song "Love is Blindness" that is featured in the documentary film From the Sky Down.

Other instruments[link]

He has played piano and keyboards on many of the band's songs, including "I Fall Down", "October", "So Cruel", "New Year's Day", "Running to Stand Still", "Miss Sarajevo", "The Hands that Built America", and "Original of the Species" and others. He plays the organ on "Please". In live versions of "New Year's Day", "The Unforgettable Fire", "Your Blue Room", and "Moment of Surrender", he plays both the piano and guitar parts alternately. In most live versions of "Original of the Species," piano is the only instrument played during the song. Although The Edge is the band's lead guitarist, he occasionally plays bass guitar, including the live performances of the song "40" where The Edge and bassist Adam Clayton switch instruments.

Solo recordings[link]

In addition to his regular role within U2, The Edge has also recorded with such artists as Johnny Cash, B. B. King, Tina Turner, Ronnie Wood, Jay-Z, and Rihanna. The Edge connected with Brian Eno and Lanois collaborator Michael Brook (the creator of the infinite guitar, which he regularly uses), working with him on the score to the film Captive (1986). From this soundtrack the song "Heroine", the vocal of which was sung by a young Sinéad O'Connor was released as a single.

He also created the theme song for season one and two of The Batman. He and fellow U2 member, Bono, wrote the lyrics to the theme of the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. The Edge, along with bandmate Bono, recently composed a musical adaptation of Spider-Man. On May 25, 2011, a single titled Rise Above 1: Reeve Carney Featuring Bono and The Edge was released digitally.^[11] The music video was released on July 28, 2011.^[12]

Musical equipment[link]

Edge's 1964 Vox AC30 on stage in Foxborough for the U2 360° Tour.

The Edge plays electric guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards, piano, bass guitar (on "40" and "Race Against Time") and lap steel guitar. Compared to many lead guitarists, The Edge is known for using many more guitars during a show. According to his guitar tech Dallas Schoo, a typical lead guitarist uses four or five different guitars in one night, whereas The Edge takes 45 on the road, and uses 17 to 19 in one 2.5-hour concert. He is estimated to have more than 200 guitars in the studio.^{[citation needed]}

Philanthropy[link]

In 2005, The Edge along with Bob Ezrin and Henry Juszkiewicz co-founded Music Rising, a charity that helped provide replacement instruments for those that were lost in Hurricane Katrina. The instruments were originally only replaced for professional musicians but they soon realized the community churches and schools needed instruments as well. The charity's slogan is "Rebuilding the Gulf Region note by note" and has so far helped over a hundred musicians who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. The Edge also serves on the board of the Angiogenesis Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to improving global health by advancing angiogenesis-based medicine, diets, and lifestyle.^[13]

See also[link]

• Timeline of U2
• List of people on stamps of Ireland

References[link]

Footnotes

Bibliography

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (October 2011)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The Edge

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Edge

• U2.com, official U2 site
• Music Rising
• The Edge at the Internet Movie Database
• The Edge – Album Credits
• A Study of The Edge's Guitar Delay
• The Edge: 'It's all about the vision'
• Food Bank For New York City public service announcement
• Comment on the mathematical analysis of The Edge's guitar sound