Urban Almanac is a small, independently maintained reference on the world's largest urban regions. It exists mainly as a running record — a place to check how the ranking of the world's biggest cities shifts over time, rather than to argue for any particular way of measuring a city's size.
Figures here refer to metropolitan-area population, which tends to run higher than city-proper population and lower than some broader urban-agglomeration estimates. Different sources draw metropolitan boundaries differently, so treat these numbers as approximate rather than exact.
Compiled from publicly available population estimates and updated periodically as newer figures become available.