Tokyo Lost Its Crown

So, I read in NBC News that Tokyo isn’t the biggest city in the world anymore, at least not by the UN’s new way of counting.

Honestly, I always figured some city would pass Tokyo one day. The world keeps growing. There are about 8.2 billion of us now, and the UN expects close to 10 billion by 2050. What I didn’t see coming was Tokyo itself not growing. With more people on the planet every year, you’d think the biggest city would just keep getting bigger.

Tokyo has been on top for a long, long time. Way back around 1720, when it was still called Edo, it was already the biggest city on Earth, with about a million people. It didn’t stay number one the whole time since then, but it’s been there for decades.

Then the United Nations put out a new report last November, and Tokyo dropped all the way to third. Here’s the new top three:

Jakarta’s jump to the top surprised a lot of people. Part of that is because the UN changed how it counts what a “city” is, so Jakarta’s huge sprawl finally got counted all together.

Being number one isn’t all good news, though. Jakarta is crowded, polluted, and flooding all the time, and parts of it are sinking. Experts warn that as much as a third of the city could be underwater by 2050. Indonesia is even building a brand-new capital somewhere else. But the people aren’t going anywhere. The UN expects Jakarta to add another 10 million by 2050. I can’t imagine trying to fix a city that big while it keeps getting bigger.

And Dhaka is still growing fast. By 2050, it’s expected to pass Jakarta and take the top spot. Tokyo, meanwhile, has pretty much stopped growing, and it’s expected to shrink by about 2.7 million people by 2050 as Japan’s population gets older.

Megacities everywhere

A megacity is any city with 10 million people or more. Back in 1975, there were only 8 in the whole world: Tokyo, Osaka, New York City, Jakarta, Mexico City, São Paulo, Kolkata, and Seoul. All eight are still megacities today.

Now there are 33 of them. And 12 of those have grown past 20 million, which earns them an even bigger name: a metacity (no, not Facebook’s Meta). By 2050, there should be 37 megacities.

So where does it end? If you’re a Star Wars fan, you know Coruscant, the planet that’s one giant city from top to bottom. There’s even a real word for that: an ecumenopolis. I doubt Earth will ever look like that, but it’s a strange thing to imagine.

As for me, I lived in Washington, DC, for 28 years, and I loved it. I wish I hadn’t had to leave, but my financial situation at the time didn’t give me a choice. DC itself has under a million people, and that was plenty of city for me. I even thought about moving to New York City once, until I visited a few times. With millions and millions of people, it was just too much. So 42 million? That’s overwhelming.

These days, I’m back home in Kentucky, and I don’t regret it. I love my quiet holler life in a small town.