Quote:
Originally Posted by Hot Rod
Yes, it is the world's largest city in one category; single government control over an area. The CQ municipality is roughly 35 million people - far larger than any other city or metro.
However, CQ itself defines its urban area to be quite a compact area that is roughly 10 million people. This is basically the Chongqing Metropolitan Area. Chongqing city itself is seen as the core 4 or 5 districts, all very small in area - and this adds up to about 6 million. Outside of the central city and metro, sits mostly rural and towns/small cities still within Chongqing City Government control but certainly not the contiguous urban concubation we see in Tokyo-Yokohama, Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe, or Shanghai. In reality, those rural areas could have stayed with Sichuan or gone to other provinces but it is this which gives CQ city room to grow and expand.
So it depends upon how you define things, Chongqing is the world's biggest city in population but it is based on single government control and not (YET) urbanized conglomeration. I think we all can agree that Tokyo-Yokohama (Kanto region) is the world's biggest urban area and metro but Chongqing Municipality is bigger, the world's biggest single government area.
Give it time and CQ will legitimately take over all titles in the world's biggest city/metro.
|
Indeed, Chongqing municipality is enormous. At 82000 square kilometres, it is the largest of China's 4 province level municipalities, approximately the same size as the island of Ireland, and is about 13 times bigger than the Shanghai municipality (the smallest of China's 4 province level municipalities). So to call it a 'city' of 35 million inhabitants is more than a little misleading.