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A 'megacity' is usually defined as a recognized 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). A megacity can be a single metropolitan area or two or more metropolitan areas that converge upon one another. The terms conurbation and metroplex are also applied to the latter. The terms ''megapolis'' and ''megalopolis'' are sometimes used synonymously with ''megacity''. The term ''metacity'' is also sometimes used to describe cities with more than 20 million people.
In 1800 only 3% of the world's population lived in cities. By the 20th century's close, 47% did so. In 1950, there were 83 cities with populations exceeding one million; but by 2007, this had risen to 468 agglomerations of more than one million.^[2] If the trend continues, the world's urban population will double every 38 years, say researchers. 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.^[3]
The increase will be most dramatic in the poorest and least-urbanised continents, Asia and Africa. Surveys and projections indicate that all urban growth over the next 25 years will be in developing countries.^[4] One billion people, one-sixth of the world's population, now live in shanty towns,^[5] which are seen as "breeding grounds" for social problems such as crime, drug addiction, alcoholism, poverty and unemployment. In many poor countries overpopulated slums exhibit high rates of disease due to unsanitary conditions, malnutrition, and lack of basic health care.^[6] By 2030, over 2 billion people in the world will be living in slums.^[7] Already over 90% of the urban population of Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda, three of the world's most rural countries, live in slums.
In 2000, there were 18 megacities – conurbations such as Tokyo, Mexico City, Bombay, Sao Paulo and New York City – that have populations in excess of 10 million inhabitants. Greater Tokyo already has 35 million, more than the entire population of Canada.^[8]
By 2025, according to the ''Far Eastern Economic Review'', Asia alone will have at least 10 hypercities, those with 20 million or more, including Jakarta (24.9 million people), Dhaka (25 million), Karachi (26.5 million), Shanghai (27 million) and Bombay (with a staggering 33 million).^[9] Lagos has grown from 300,000 in 1950 to an estimated 15 million today, and the Nigerian government estimates that city will have expanded to 25 million residents by 2015.^[10] Chinese experts forecast that Chinese cities will contain 800 million people by 2020.^[11]

Contents

Megacities around the world

Canadian usage of ''Megacity''

Megacities in fiction

Naming scheme for megalopoleis

References

See also

External links

Megacities around the world

In 1950, New York was the only urban area with a population of over 10 million.^[12] Geographers have identified 25 such areas as of October 2005^[13], 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.
Today, 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 30 and 34 million. The 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.^[14][15]
The ten largest megacities, according to this criterion are, in decreasing order of population:
# Tokyo, Japan (32,000,000)
# Mexico City, Mexico (25,600,000)
# Seoul, South Korea (23,100,000)
# New York City, USA (21,800,000)
# Mumbai (Bombay), India (21,100,000)
# Delhi, India (20,800,000)
# São Paulo, Brazil (20,300,000)
# Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, Japan (19,900,000)
# Shanghai, China (18,600,000)
# Los Angeles, USA (17,900,000)
Source: Th. Brinkhoff: The Principal Agglomerations of the World, 2006-11-22
Other megacities include (in alphabetical order):

★ Beijing

★ Buenos Aires

★ Cairo

★ Dhaka

★ Istanbul

★ Johannesburg

★ Karachi

★ Kolkata (Calcutta)

★ Lagos

★ London

★ Manila

★ Moscow

★ Paris

★ Rio de Janeiro

★ Tehran
Another list defines megacities as urban agglomerations instead of metropolitan areas [1]. As of 2007, there are 22 megacities by this definition.
United Nations projections indicate a slow down of the emergence of new megacities after 2005. However, the expansion and merging of highly-urbanized zones may remain an important trend, as typified by the following:

★ Boston–New York–Philadelphia–Baltimore–Washington (BosWash)

★ Los Angeles–San Diego-Tijuana (San Diego-Tijuana Metropolitan Area)

★ Chicago-Milwaukee

★ Tokyo–Nagoya–Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto

★ San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland (San Francisco Bay Area)

★ Rio–Sao Paulo^[16]
Emerging megacities in China (in decreasing order of population):

★ Yangtze River Delta Metropolitan Area (Shanghai-Hangzhou-Nanjing-Ningbo-Suzhou) (87,430,000)

★ Pearl River Delta (Hong Kong-Shenzhen-Zhuhai-Macau) (40,800,000)

★ Chongqing (31,442,300)

★ Beijing-Tianjin corridor (27,350,000)
Emerging megacities in India (in decreasing order of population):

★ Lucknow-Kanpur corridor (13,678,000)

★ Bangalore-Mysore corridor (12,000,000)

★ Hyderabad-Secunderabad (6,000,000)

★ Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar corridor (5,900,000)

★ Pune-Nashik corridor (5,000,000)
==Megacities defined as agglomerations==
Another list also defines megacities as urban agglomerations (continuous urbanization). Currently (''2007''), the agglomerations of more than 10,000,000 inhabitants are as follows :

Rank	Agglomeration name	Country	Population
1	Tokyo	Japan	34,450,000
2	New York	USA	20,420,000
3	Seoul	Korea	20,090,000
4	Mumbai	India	19,380,000
5	Jakarta (Jabotabek)	Indonesia	19,300,000
6	Delhi	India	18,560,000
7	Mexico City	Mexico	18,410,000
8	São Paulo	Brazil	18,130,000
9	Manila	Philippines	17,320,000
10	Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto	Japan	17,280,000
11	Cairo	Egypt	16,000,000
12	Los Angeles	USA	15,350,000
13	Kolkata	India	14,580,000
14	Shanghai	China	14,530,000
15	Moscow	Russia	14,100,000
16	Buenos Aires	Argentina	13,460,000
17	Beijing	China	12,160,000
18	Shenzhen	China	11,820,000
19	Rio de Janeiro	Brazil	11,080,000
20	Istanbul	Turkey	11,000,000
21	Paris	France	10,570,000

''(The above information is modeled for 2007 from population growth rates and is from [2] and [3]. The Manila figure is considerably higher than most lists, which limit their data to the administrative boundaries of Metro Manila. However, the continuous urbanization extends into Cavite, Laguna, Rizal and Bulacan provinces and is reflected in the higher figure in this list.)''

Canadian usage of ''Megacity''

In Canada, the 1990s saw the forced amalgamation of several municipal entities in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec into a larger new municipalities. The process created what was labelled a ''megacity'' by the media.
Examples of megacities in Canada include:

★ Toronto - the municipalities that constituted the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto were merged into a new City of Toronto in 1998.

★ Kawartha Lakes, Ontario - the primarily rural Victoria County had its townships, towns and villages merged into a "megacity" in 2000. The area has a population of only 70,000 (several thousand less than nearby city Peterborough) yet takes up an area of 3,059.22 km² giving it a density of only a mere 22.6 persons per km².

★ Ottawa - the municipalities that constituted the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton were merged into a new City of Ottawa in 2001.

★ Gatineau - five municipalities in southwestern Quebec (Gatineau, Hull, Aylmer, Buckingham, and Masson-Angers) were merged into a new City of Gatineau in 2002.

★ Montreal - all of the municipalities on the island of Montreal were merged into a new City of Montreal for a short period of time until January 1st, 2006, when a partial demerger occurred.
For more information on Ontario "megacities," see the article on the Common Sense Revolution.

Megacities in fiction

Fictional megacities feature in much dystopian science fiction, with examples such as the Sprawl, featured in William Gibson's ''Neuromancer'', and Mega-City One, a megalopolis of over 400 million people across the east coast of the United States, features in the Judge Dredd comic, serialised in ''2000 AD''.
''Demolition Man'' (1993) features a megacity called "San Angeles", formed from the joining of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, and the surrounding metropolitan regions following a massive earthquake.
Planet-wide megacities (ecumenopoleis) have been depicted, including Trantor in Isaac Asimov's ''Foundation'' series of books, Coruscant in the ''Star Wars'' universe, '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 expansion.
Many of these fictional depictions were inspired by Fritz Lang's 1927 film, ''Metropolis''. Ridley Scott's 1982 film, ''Blade Runner'', features an influential depiction of Los Angeles in 2019.
The MMORPG game ''City of Heroes'' is set in the fictional megacity known as Paragon City, which contains two other cities: Galaxy City and Skyway City. In the two novels based on the game as well as the official timeline for the game, Paragon City has existed at least as far back as the early to mid-1800s. Paragon is depicted as being one of if not the single largest city on Earth in its world setting.
The sprawling metropolis featured in ''The Matrix'' series of films can be considered a megacity. While the city is never referenced by name in the films, in the MMORPG ''The Matrix Online'', the city itself is simply called the Mega City.

Naming scheme for megalopoleis

A number of megalopoleis use portmanteau words as their names (e.g. ChiPitts, BosWash, and SanSan).

References

1. "How Big Can Cities Get?" ''New Scientist Magazine'', 17 June 2006, page 41.
2. Principal Agglomerations of the World
3. Megacities Of The Future
4. Nigeria: Lagos, the mega-city of slums
5. Half of humanity set to go urban
6. Planet of Slums - The Third World’s Megacities
7. State of World Population 2007
8. The world goes to town
9. Planet of Slums by Mike Davis
10. Lagos, Nigeria facts - National Geographic
11. China's urban population to reach 800 to 900 million by 2020: expert
12. Top 10 Cities of the Year 1950 Tertius Chandler, 1987, St. David's University Press
13. Population statistics
14. Greater Tokyo population statistics
15. Tokyo metropolitan area population statistics
16. Hamilton Tolosa, “The Rio/São Paulo Extended Metropolitan Region; A Quest for Global Integration”, ''The Annals of Regional Science'' 37:2 (September 2003), pp. 480, 485.

See also

★ Amalgamation (politics)

★ Arcology

★ Conurbation

★ Consolidated city-county

★ Ekistics

★ Metropolis

★ Global city

★ Megalopolis (city type)

★ Metroplex

★ Metropolitan area

★ Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid

★ Urban sprawl

★ World largest cities

★ List of metropolitan areas by population

★ Overpopulation

External links

★ United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division

★ Megacities Task Force

★ Maps of US Megacities from radicalcartography.net

★ ''IEEE Spectrum'' report on "Engineering the Megacity"