Indonesia’s Jakarta now the world’s largest city, Tokyo falls to third: UN

Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, is the world’s largest city, according to a new UN report, which includes 36.6 million people living there, followed by Dhaka, Bangladesh, which has 36.6 million residents.

Jakarta, a coastal city on the west of Java, replaced Tokyo in the UN’s most recent assessment, which had previously been named the world’s largest city.

The Japanese capital, which has a 33.4 million population, dropped to third place, trailing only Dhaka, Bangladesh’s densely populated capital, from ninth place, and is now projected to be the largest city in the world by 2050.

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ report, “World Urbanization Prospects 2025,” also found that there are now 33 megacities, or urban areas with more than 10 million inhabitants, out of the eight megacities that were present in the world in 1975.

19 of the 33 megacities in the world are located in Asia, and nine are among the top 10. The top 10 Asian cities include New Delhi, India (30.2%), Shanghai, China (29.6%), Guangzhou, China (27.6%), Manila, Philippines (24.7%), Kolkata, India (22.5%), and Seoul, South Korea (22.5%).

Cairo, Egypt’s top 10 city, has a population of 32 million people, according to the UN.

The largest city in sub-Saharan Africa is Lagos, which has grown rapidly while Sao Paulo in Brazil, which has 18.9 million residents.

Continuing to grow

Due to issues like flooding and rising sea levels, which are made worse by climate change, people from rural areas are relocating to the capital, looking for employment, or fleeing their hometowns.

The rising sea levels also cause problems for Jakarta. By 2050, it is thought that up to a quarter of the city will be submerged.

Indonesia’s government is constructing a brand-new, purpose-built capital city in East Kalimantan, Nusantara, in Borneo island, because the issue is so serious. The UN projects that Jakarta will have a new home for its officials and parliamentary buildings, but it is estimated that by 2050 there will be 10 million more residents.

Concerns over inequality and affordability will also have to be addressed by the city’s growing population, which included app-based motorcycle ride-share and delivery riders, who took to the streets of the Indonesian city earlier this year.

Tehran, Iran’s capital, has a population of nine million people right now, according to the UN report, which is facing water rations because it is about to run out of water.

As a result of the UN’s new measures, which attempted to resolve differences in how different nations defined urbanization, the new assessment also underwent changes.

Additionally, according to the UN, the majority of cases in its report were based on the size of individual cities, rather than on the size of separate cities, with a few exceptions.