List of cities proper by population

This article lists the most populous cities in the world defined according to a concept of city proper. A city proper is a locality defined according to legal or political boundaries and an administratively recognised urban status that is usually characterised by some form of local government. Cities proper and their boundaries and population data may not include suburbs.

World Urbanization Prospects, a UN publication, defines population of a city proper as "the population living within the administrative boundaries of a city or controlled directly from the city by a single authority." The book continues to say that "city proper as defined by administrative boundaries may not include suburban areas where an important proportion of the population working or studying in the city lives." This definition does not give an accurate picture of the urban area or metropolitan area of cities. Using this strictly administrative definition, many cities will be included on this list that are smaller than their urban area. However, many Chinese cities included govern territories that extend well beyond the traditional "city proper" into suburban and rural areas.

List

A list is any enumeration of a set of items. List or lists may also refer to:

People

Places

Enumerations

Computing

Organizations

Other uses

City

A city is a large and permanent human settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town in general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.

Cities generally have complex systems for sanitation, utilities, land usage, housing, and transportation. The concentration of development greatly facilitates interaction between people and businesses, benefiting both parties in the process, but it also presents challenges to managing urban growth.

A big city or metropolis usually has associated suburbs and exurbs. Such cities are usually associated with metropolitan areas and urban areas, creating numerous business commuters traveling to urban centers for employment. Once a city expands far enough to reach another city, this region can be deemed a conurbation or megalopolis. In terms of population, the largest city proper is Shanghai, while the fastest-growing is Dubai.

Origins

There is not enough evidence to assert what conditions gave rise to the first cities. Some theorists have speculated on what they consider suitable pre-conditions and basic mechanisms that might have been important driving forces.

Proper

Proper may refer to:

Mathematics

Other uses

Population

A population is a summation of all the organisms of the same group or species, which live in a particular geographical area, and have the capability of interbreeding.

In ecology, the population of a certain species in a certain area is estimated using the Lincoln Index. The area that is used to define a sexual population is defined as the area where inter-breeding is potentially possible between any pair within the area. The probability of interbreeding is greater than the probability of cross-breeding with individuals from other areas. Under normal conditions, breeding is substantially more common within the area than across the border.

In sociology, population refers to a collection of humans. Demography is a social science which entails the statistical study of human populations. This article refers mainly to human population.

Population genetics (ecology)

In population genetics a sexual population is a set of organisms in which any pair of members can breed together. This means that they can regularly exchange gametes to produce normally-fertile offspring, and such a breeding group is also known therefore as a gamodeme. This also implies that all members belong to the same of species, such as humans. If the gamodeme is very large (theoretically, approaching infinity), and all gene alleles are uniformly distributed by the gametes within it, the gamodeme is said to be panmictic. Under this state, allele (gamete) frequencies can be converted to genotype (zygote) frequencies by expanding an appropriate quadratic equation, as shown by Sir Ronald Fisher in his establishment of quantitative genetics.