The 20 most populated cities in the world

Current population: 16,840,000 people

One-fifth of Pakistan’s urban population resides in Pakistan’s once-capital ‘megacity,’ according to a report by the World Bank. While the number of its residents has soared – up 2.3 per cent since 2021 – its quality of life has been plummeting, with violent crime, inequality and financial instability all contributing to developmental challenges. Karachi is also one of the world’s densest cities; it has 24,000 people living per square kilometre.

Current population: 19,060,000 people

The number of people living in Japan’s food-centric and third-largest metropolitan area is actually decreasing – it’s dropped by 0.27 per cent since 2021. But nearly 20,000 humans squeezed into the broader Kansai region (which includes the city of Osaka) of 27,000 kilometres makes for some tight living quarters. And in fact, 7 per cent of Japan’s total population lives within an even smaller space in this region, in the city of Osaka proper and its 42 municipalities.

Read on for the reasons why Japanese children are the healthiest in the world.

Current population: 20,961,000 people

India’s second-largest metropolitan area has its largest in-city population, with over 13 million at last official census count in 2011. Its trains alone carry 6 million people a day, a figure that puts almost every other busy city to shame. Mumbai’s population has surged in the past 20 years – and has in fact doubled since 1991 – as migrants from rural areas move to town looking for work. The practical realities of this flux are grim: reports World Population Review, 41 per cent of residents in Mumbai and its surrounding regions live in slums. If you’re looking for a silver lining, Mumbai may still be growing, but the rate is slowing.

Current population: 21,333,000 people

China’s second-largest municipality has almost as many residents as the entire country of Australia. And the population has not only been rising at a steady clip since 1975; it’s projected to keep on rising all the way through 2035, according to the UN World Urbanisation Prospects report. One of the serious downsides to such a large population in an urban area: Beijing has some of the worst air for breathing, thanks to nearby polluting coal plants and to car traffic – measuring 52 microns per cubic meter, as reported by Reuters.

Current population: 21,750,00 people

Egypt’s capital city has been settled at least since the 4th century due to its important location on the Nile River. After plagues in the Middle Ages and city-destroying riots in the 1950s, it’s since been growing at a rapid pace. Even its core city population is staggeringly high – 12 million as tallied by World Population Review. Alexandria, the second-largest city in Egypt, is a mere 30 per cent of Cairo’s size.

Current population: 22,478,000 people

Business Insider called Dhaka the most crowded city in the world in 2018, and it’s only grown since then. With over 47,000 people per square kilometre and an incredible 2000 people per day moving into Bangladesh’s capital city. The reason for the influx: pure and simple desperation, as climate change-exasperated natural disasters wreak havoc on their home towns and villages. Not surprisingly then, one-quarter of Bangladeshis live below the poverty line, with an estimated 3 million people living in the slums of Dhaka alone.

Current population: 22,085,000 people

An economic powerhouse, Mexico City is also one of the most populous and densest in the world. In fact, 20 per cent of the entire population of Mexico lives in Mexico City. Surges in growth have meant that the city has had a hard time keeping up with necessary services for its residents, like housing, but there is hope on that front. The population only grew by 0.76 per cent from 2021 to 2022.

Don’t miss these under-the-radar places to visit in 2022.

Current population: 22,430,000 people

The most populous city in the Americas, with over 12 million people living in the city itself, is a sophisticated, ethnically diverse world cultural centre that is also, oddly, according to Forbes, home to 26 billionaires. It’s also a city of immigrants – “81 per cent of students said they were descendants of foreign immigrants,” writes World Population Review of a recent survey by the University of Sao Paulo. This metropolitan area is projected to reach 23 million by 2030.

Current population: 28,517,000 people

Shanghai is the largest city proper in the world, and one of the fastest developing for 20 years, seeing “double-digit growth nearly every year since 1992, with the exception of the global recession of 2008-2009,” says World Population Review. And it’s still growing, even though the pace of that growth is slowing. Experts predict its greater metropolitan regions will hit 50 million residents by 2050, which is sure to exacerbate all the problems that come with dense cities, like insufficient infrastructure and pollution.

Current population: 32,066,000 people

Delhi, India’s capital and the centre of its government, is second in population and takes the lead in the most polluted cities in the world. It packs over 11,000 people into each of its 1484 square kilometres. And it’s growing faster than almost any place else on Earth. “In 2001 alone,” reports World Population Review, “its population increased by 215,000 due to natural growth and 285,000 through migration.” Its numbers increased this year by 2.84 per cent over 2021 but it’s still on track to hit a population of over 43 million by 2035.