According to the UN, Tokyo is the world’s most populous metropolitan area with an estimated 37.8 million people in 2014. The next closest is the Seoul National Capital Area with a population of 25.6 million people or over 10 million fewer than Tokyo!
So how does this compare to US cities?
The map does a good job of demonstrating how many US cities you’d need to equal one Tokyo. Before continuing it should be noted that the map is comparing apples to oranges. It’s comparing the Greater Tokyo Metro Area to US cities boundaries (not metro areas!).
Still, its crazy to think that the same number of people live in Greater Tokyo as live within the city boundaries of the following US cities ranked by population:
- New York – 8,491,079
- Los Angeles – 3,928,864
- Chicago – 2,695,598
- Houston – 2,099,451
- Philadelphia – 1,560,297
- Phoenix – 1,445,632
- San Antonio – 1,436,697
- San Diego – 1,381,069
- Dallas – 1,197,816
- San Jose – 1,015,785
- Austin – 912,791
- San Francisco – 852,469
- Indianapolis – 820,445
- Charlotte – 809,958
- Washington D.C. – 658,893
- Boston – 655,884
- Memphis – 646,889
- Baltimore – 620,961
- Denver – 600,158
- Las Vegas – 583,756
- Sacramento – 466,488
- Kansas City (Missouri) – 459,787
- Atlanta – 447,841
- Miami – 399,457
- Cleveland – 396,815
- Honolulu – 390,738
- New Orleans – 384,320
- Durham – 245,550
- Orlando – 238,300
- Salt Lake City – 186,440
- Providence – 178,042
- New Haven – 130,741
- Boulder – 97,385
And altogether they total only 36,436,396 people or still 1.4 million fewer than Tokyo. To put it another way, Tokyo has about the same population as California, in an area the size of LA county.
To learn more about Tokyo and urbanization in general have a look at the following books:
- Tokyo City Atlas: A Bilingual Guide
- East Asia Modern: Shaping the Contemporary City
- Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
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Andrew says
January 9, 2017 at 4:25 pmWhy do you compare the population of the Tokyo *metropolitan* area with the population of american cities, and not their metropolitan areas.
New York and Los Angeles alone have metropolitan areas that are (combined) almost as large as the tokyo metropolitan area. NY is 20 million, LA is 13 million, which is 33 million in those two metropolitan areas alone.
The says
March 9, 2017 at 3:42 amIt wouldn’t be click-bait fabulous.
대한민국 says
November 12, 2017 at 8:14 amSeoul is about 25-36 Million. What counts Seoul is technically all of Kyung-Ki-Do Province.
Jason Taraval says
December 21, 2018 at 2:24 amThe borders in the Tokyo area don’t even match the real map… What ward of Tokyo does “Los Angeles” correspond to?