This is an interesting webpage: The Principal Agglomerations of the World. It lists the largest cities in the world, but looks at whole urban areas rather than just counting within arbitrarily defined city limits. So, in UK terms, Birmingham (pop. 2.6m) is not just the city of Birmingham, which according to the World Gazetteer has a population of 984k, but the whole West Midlands conurbation. Similarly for Manchester and Glasgow. Leeds leaps from 455k to 2.15m by including Bradford and (presumably) most of West Yorkshire.
Agglomeration is defined as “a central city and neighboring communities linked to it (e.g.) by continuous built-up areas or commuters”. I don’t know if that’s a common usage, or just a usage decided on by the site owner (one Thomas Brinkhoff from Germany), but it makes sense. The Ruhr, for instance, moves to its rightful place as Germany’s largest urban area with a population of 5.8m, ahead of Berlin on 4.2m. Strange, though, to include Malmo within Copenhagen (yes I know there’s a bridge now). And it would be good to know how the London figure (11.95m compared to a World Gazetteer figure of 7.4m) was arrived at. Does that include all the Home Counties? It puts London as the second largest European city behind Moscow (13.75m) but ahead of Paris (9.9m).
Overall, Tokyo is a world-beater with a massive 34.1m, and New York (21.85m) is fourth behind Mexico City (22.65m) and Seoul (22.25m).
As I say, interesting…..if you like this sort of thing. The site also has other related stats: for instance, population and area of every country.
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