Overview
- Greater Jakarta is now the largest urban area with about 42 million residents, according to World Urbanisation Prospects 2025.
- Dhaka is placed second at roughly 36.5 million, while Tokyo falls to third with about 33 million.
- Delhi ranks fourth at just over 30 million and Kolkata ninth at around 22.6 million despite both adding population since 2000.
- The UN applied a new geospatial method across more than 12,000 settlements, defining cities as 1 km grid cells of at least 1,500 people per km² aggregating to 50,000 or more.
- Asia now hosts nine of the world’s ten largest cities, with 33 megacities globally today and UN projections showing India adding 416 million urban residents by 2050.