How many cities are there in the world?
There is no count of cities because "city" is an administrative label handed out inconsistently — England has cities of 13,000 people while China has districts of two million that are not called cities. The UN sidesteps this by counting urban agglomerations by population threshold instead: roughly 1,950 have more than 300,000 residents, and 33 are megacities of over 10 million, projected to be 43 by 2030. About 10,000 places worldwide exceed 50,000 people. More than half of humanity has lived in urban areas since around 2008.
How the figure is arrived at
Take a population threshold and a definition of the built-up area, then count. The agglomeration boundary matters enormously: Tokyo is 9 million people, 14 million or 37 million depending on whether you mean the ward area, the prefecture or the metropolitan region, and all three figures are correct.
How confident it is
- Low estimate
- 9,000
- High estimate
- 12,000
- Spread
- 1.3× between the bounds
Other things people built counts
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many languages are there in the world? about 7,150 living languages
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many phones are there in the world? about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many books have ever been published? about 130 million as of 2010 — probably over 200 million now
- How many airports are there in the world? about 45,000 with runways — but only around 4,000 with scheduled airline service
- How many ATMs are there in the world? about 3 million
- How many buildings are there in the world? somewhere between 1.5 and 4 billion
- How many computers are there in the world? roughly 2 billion personal computers in use
- How many miles of road are there in the world? about 64 million km — roughly 40 million miles
Common questions
- How many cities are there in the world?
- about 10,000 with over 50,000 people; 33 megacities over 10 million
- How is that estimated?
- Take a population threshold and a definition of the built-up area, then count. The agglomeration boundary matters enormously: Tokyo is 9 million people, 14 million or 37 million depending on whether you mean the ward area, the prefecture or the metropolitan region, and all three figures are correct.
Related pages
- How many countries are there in the world? 195 — or 193, or 206, or 249, depending on who is counting
- How many cars are there in the world? about 1.5 billion motor vehicles
- How many planes are in the air right now? roughly 10,000 to 20,000 at any moment
- How many languages are there in the world? about 7,150 living languages
- How many McDonald's are there? about 43,000 in over 100 countries
- How many phones are there in the world? about 8.9 billion mobile connections — more than there are people
- How many nuclear weapons are there? about 12,200 warheads
- How many websites are there? about 1.1 billion hostnames — but only around 200 million active
- How many people are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many stars are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many bones are in the human body? The human body
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? Living things and the natural world
- How many ants are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
- How many trees are there in the world? Living things and the natural world
Sources
- World Population Prospects — United Nations