Talk:Megacity/Archive 1

Editorializing? NPOV?
The following content on the page sounds like an editorial comment, not something that belongs in a Wikipedia article---and not a particularly insightful one at that, so I removed it.

"Some features of the new urban age resemble those of the industrial urbanization of the North during the 19th and early 20th centuries, but to replicate policies that were successful for Europe and North America would not be an efficient path for the increasingly Global South and East."

If someone is going to bring it back, I suggest adding some specifics, and some citations. For example, "what features"? "what policies"? "who says this isn't efficient"? And "what does this have to do with an article on Megacities anyway?" Pconrad0 (talk) 04:49, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

207.154.109.225 (talk) 04:49, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

BoxWash???
The BosWash Megacity has a population of around 40 Million, this is far more then any of the ather 10 largest in order.


 * Someone used "85,235,658" as the population for BosWash. I don't see any number even approaching that on the BosWash wikipedia page or on the cited statistics or even elsewhere on Google. I think somewhere around 50 million is a more accurate number. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.156.213.100 (talk) 15:45, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


 * What is the BoxWash? (also please sign your Edit)--Gephart 21:47, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

BosWash, its the largest meda city in the world


 * Maybe - it depends on how one defines these things, and maybe this does need to be noted in the article. In any case, see this definition from Metropolitan area -


 * The core cities in a polycentric metropolitan area need not be physically connected by continuous built-up development, distinguishing the concept from conurbation, which requires urban contiguity. In a metropolitan area, it is sufficient that central cities together constitute a large population nucleus with which other constituent parts have a high degree of integration.


 * In practice the parameters of metropolitan areas, in both official and unofficial usage, are not consistent. Sometimes they are little different from an urban area, and in other cases they cover broad regions that have little relation to the traditional concept of a city as a single urban settlement --Alexxx1 (talk/contribs) 04:10, 19 June 2006 (UTC)


 * What actually needs to be fixed is the fact that the article is now internally inconsistent. It says the Tokyo is the biggest in the world but then lists BosWash as the biggest. Also, the list is now not consistent with the source cited for the population statistics - Th. Brinkoff. --Alexxx1 (talk/contribs) 04:15, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Odd Content
Not much of an editor, just pointing out some oddities:

"In 1950 New York was the only such area. There are nineteen as of 2004; an increase from only nine in 1985."

What are the nineteen? What were the nine? (OK, we can live without the nine, but the current nineteen would seem critical to the article!)

"as seen in Boston - New York - Philadelphia - Baltimore - Washington (BosWash), Los Angeles - San Diego (The Southland), Tokyo-Osaka, Johannesburg-Pretoria or Rio de Janeiro-São Paulo."

Weird list, a mix of hyphens and commas and unexplained brackets. Even in its entirity it doesn't seem to achieve anything.

"Many megacities have such a high population density that the cost of living is too high for those of average means to have a decent living space. Also, in such areas people are potentially more vulnerable to natural disasters and terrorism. Some consider this to be a problem of overpopulation, others merely as one of overconcentration."

This whole paragraph would need to be expanded or removed imho. Either cover the economic issues properly or not at all.

--dahamsta 17:00, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the whole section is not very clear. I see a couple of ways to organize: -- Clubmarx 02:35, September 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * It seems like we need to have a definition first. See http://www.megacities.uni-koeln.de/documentation/megacity/start.htm which states a couple of megacities definitions. It also needs to be clear that there are different sources with different population estimates.
 * History - some stats about how many megacities there were at a particular time, based on one or more definitions.
 * Current - I don't think the citied sources are definitive. Here is the best I found: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wup2003/WUP2003Report.pdf
 * Projections
 * and on with the rest of the sections


 * OK I took out the seemingly contradictory or nonsensical parts. I tried to show the variations in definitions first. I think there are still factual errors in the Largest megacities section. I didn't get to that. Clubmarx 01:00, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Odd Content

 * I'm sure it was a Canadian douche that started this mega city page....too much edjucation and time on their hands.


 * I always thought Megacity was a Canadian concoction that started when the provincial government forced amalgamation of metro toronto into one city.


 * I dont know much, but as far as I can remember in the 70's the term that was used was "Supercity" and referred to continuous major urbanization of areas such as New York - Jersey City- Newark


 * Including - New York - Philadelphia as a "megacity" is just incredulous. You might as well just include the entire eastern seaboard while you're at it.... all the way down to Washington and Virginia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.212.10.139 (talk) 16:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Contradiction
I have doubts whether the Randstad should be included in this article. According to its article it has a population of 7.1 million. This does not seem to meet the definition of a Megacity provided in the article, i.e. a population greater than 10 million.

-Alexxx1

8 or ten million?
What is the source for saying that a megacity is composed of ten million people? My environmental science book says it's 8 million to a megacity. Citizen Premier 05:47, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I think that the UN also defines a megacity as having an urban area with a population of more than 8 million . I will edit the article accordingly.  --AMorris  (talk)  &#x25CF;  (contribs)  06:05, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * The distinction is important as two of the cities mentioned (Bogotá and Shenzhen) are in the discussed range.132.192.14.232 18:06, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The article in New Scientist Magazine which is used as citation in Ecopolis (city) defines the megacity at 8 million:


 * Pearce, Fred. "Ecopolis Now". New Scientist Magazine. 17 June 2006.


 * Robinoke 13:01, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that there are different definitions. Maybe the introduction to the article could do with a revamping to indicate that there are a range of population figures that are considered to be the threshold for a megacity by different sources. If in fact, 8 million is the most commonly used figure, then the article should obviously reflect that. Are there more sources that use 10 million as a figure? --Alexxx1 (talk/contribs) 01:09, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The Matrix Comment
"The City" in the Matrix is likely Chicago, Illinois. I know of no other city in the world with a "State" Street that intersects with a "Balbo" Drive.

Well, "The City" in the Matrix is not a city that exists in the reality we live at the moment. It is more like a "mixture" of lots of big cities that was "created" by the "machines" that controlled the humankind via the use of the "Matrix". Just to enlighten those who read this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.249.208.186 (talk) 14:08, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Removing Chicago
Chicago is listed as a megacity, but as far as I know, the metropolitan area only has about 9 million people. Therefore, I am removing it from the list. --172.133.109.142 20:35, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Chicago Shall Remain
Maybe this is the slight difference between Megacity and Megalopolis. A Megalopolis it is a city with tangent cities that make up a larger entity (more than 10 million, perhaps?). Because of proximity, economic ties and social dependencies, Milwaukee, with it's 1.7 million, would definately be included in the Chicago Megalopolis (let alone Gary), thus tipping the scales.

Metroplex
Can someone please find some reputable newspaper article that refers to an area besides Dallas as Metroplex? --Filthy swine 06:58, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Megacities in fiction
I have restored the following sentence: ''Many of these fictional depictions were inspired by Fritz Lang's 1927 film, Metropolis. Ridley Scott's 1982 film, Blade Runner, features an influential depiction of Los Angeles in 2019.''

I don't see why it should be removed from the article, as this section on fiction is addressing the development fictional representations of the concept of the megacity. If these films were part of how that fictional representation has developed over time and have influenced other portrayals of megacities, then they are a perfectly legitimate part of this discussion and should remain. Besides which, I would argue that the films do actually depict megacities. Although this may not be made explicitly clear, it may be implied by certain shots of the cities themselves. --Alexxx1 (talk/contribs) 00:35, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Hyper city
According to this article Tokyo is technically a hyper city because it has more than 20 million people.

This population shift will lead to a new kind of city -- "mega cities" with more than 10 million people will soon be eclipsed by "hyper cities" with more than 20 million.

So far, only Tokyo qualifies as a "hyper city" but the greater city areas of Mumbai, Lagos, Dhaka and Sao Paulo will also surpass 20 million by 2015, according to U.N. projections. Richard Cane 01:11, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Conflicting information in article
this article lists different populations for the worlds largest "megacity's" can this be cleaned up? On one list New York is the second largest megacity, on the other Seoul is, why the contradictions? Alexcount 16:52, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Cities that don't qualify
According to Wikipedia, at least, some of the cities listed here as megacities don't qualify even if we set the lower limit at a population of 8 million. Hong Kong (6.86 million) doesn't qualify; nor do Shenzhen (6 million), Sydney (4.25 million), Rome (metro 5.3 million), and Toronto (metro 5.9 million). I'm removing all of them. --Benhourigan 12:20, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

London?
the population of the urban area of paris is bigger than london, and with the french fertility of this last years, it will be the biggest urban area in all the europe continent in some years, even bigger than moscow

Delete map
Please delete this "map" it is obviously (completely) wrong,for instance: there are just three citys over 1 million in Germany, whats about dubai and Abu Dhabi in Vae?? the citys in iran are at the wrong place - there are so many mistakes, we have to delete the map right now --Englishazadipedia (talk) 12:43, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The discussion under the image talk page would appear that there is a consensus to delete the image for incorrect data. I would like to get some more opinions here before deleting.  When I recently tried to remove another of this user's misleading maps, it was restored with an accusation of vandalism.  Anyone else want to weigh in?  --Bridgecross (talk) 16:40, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I would like to, because that map is erroneous to the grandest extent...Germany DOES NOT have that many cities over 1 million, and for a country whose population is SHRINKING, that makes it even more unlikely...so that disturbs me further... --Paganpoetry005  —Preceding undated comment was added at 06:07, 8 November 2008 (UTC).

Correction
I condemn the idiot who listed Istanbul as a city of Brazil. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.249.208.186 (talk) 14:05, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Percentages of What?
What are the percentages listed after the names of some megacities?

example:


 * 1) Tokyo, Japan (36,197,000) 13%
 * 2) New York City, (20,700,000) 25%

I can find no explanation anywhere in the article!
 * Infoporfin (talk) 00:21, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Agglomerations and metropolitan areas
Why on the section titled "megacities defined as agglomerations" do we find multiple cities with their metropolitan area population ? By memory I can see that this is the case of London, New York City and Los Angeles. The former list from Demographia could have some inaccuracies (as any list of the kind), but it was at least not mixing up concepts. Metropolitan 13:16 (UTC), April 19 2008.

Birkmannsweiler?
Excuse me, but what is Birkmannsweiler₳ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.253.45.173 (talk) 19:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Birkmannsweiler is a very small town in Germany that doesn't even have a wiki page. It's vandalism, it should refer to Tokyo. Supersheep (talk) 22:16, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Contradiction...
"A megacity is usually defined as a metropolitan area with a total population in excess of 10 million people."

"Asia alone will have at least 10 megacities (cities with a population greater than 20 million)"

Obvious contradiction in the opening section, I will simply remove the comment in brackets as megacities have already been explained and the rest of the article agrees with 10 million. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.237.96.124 (talk) 01:47, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

The name
Who first coined the term "megacity", and who defines what it means ? -- Beardo (talk) 22:23, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Merger proposal
This section is basically a smaller duplicated list of the article Megalopolis (city type). The megalopolis article is already a separate article dedicated on focusing on megalopolises. This section is nothing more than a collective list of emerging megalopolises rather than emerging megacities. Megacities, as defined by the article, are a metropolitan area with an excess if 10 million people. Many of the cities listed such as BosWash or Blue Banana are not even considered a metropolitan area but a chain of metropolitan areas (which a megalopolis is defined). The cities listed in the section are not even considered a metropolitan area or a single agglomeration by any government or by the UN. Check this article: List of urban agglomerations by population (United Nations). Even this article, List of metropolitan areas by population, the primary source does not recognize New York with Philadelphia with Washington, etc. (BosWash) to be a metropolitan area. To make things short, megacities and megalopolises are not the same thing. Elockid (talk) 19:48, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * This is sort of a different discussion, but I find it somewhat spurious to include the "blue banana" on any list of megacities or even megalopolises. Just because you can draw a shape around these urban areas doesn't make it a continuous metropolitan region.  Really, the same goes for "BosWash" too, since everybody forgets that there is a lot of empty hills and farmlands between Boston and New Haven, Philly and Baltimore, etc.  These are urbanized regions, yes, and worth discussion in that context, but they are hardly megacities unto themselves.  128.223.163.109 (talk) 20:35, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Megacity and megapolis could be the same thing since polis means city, however the use of the term is somewhat different by author and/or organisation, so some research in that would be useful to help differentiate and clarify the subject of the articles. Elekhh (talk) 07:52, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

xD —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.143.99.196 (talk) 07:16, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Merged. The list is a repeat. Thomas Paine1776 (talk) 00:13, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Inaccurate Data
When did 广州 ever exceed 20 million? I checked the site and it states that 东莞，佛山，将门，and 中山. That definition is not good at all. Mathpianist93 (talk) 00:09, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I was equally as surprised to see Guangzhou with that amount people. Perhaps we need a new source. Elockid ( Talk·Contribs ) 01:54, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I think remove Guangzhou would be a good idea, until we use another source. Though it is listed on the source, its inclusion is a bit illogical.  The source listed that for Guangzhou, it included data from cities such as Foshan, Jiangmen, Zhongshan, etc., which are major cities in their own right and is not part of Guangzhou's administration.--Sevilledade (talk) 05:59, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * If we're going to use as our source for the table, we need to follow the source. We can't decide to omit Guangzhou just because we feel it shouldn't be there—if we do we are violating the verifiability and no original research policies. I'm putting Guangzhou back in the table, and removing Paris. If you don't agree with this, find a reliable source to support your opinion and argue your point here. —Bkell (talk) 02:58, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Only megacities have crime and other problems? Removing this paragraph.

 * Megacities can be distinguished from global cities by their rapid growth, new forms of spatial population density, and both formal and informal economy, as well as poverty, crime, and high levels of social fragmentation.

All cities have rapid growth at times. Forms of spatial population density, I assume is a fancy way of saying skyscrapers are built, instead of smaller houses, thus you able to cram more people into one area. You have that in all cities. A formal economy would be tax paying, while informal perhaps those not paying taxes? Is that it? All cities have poverty and crime, to different degrees, based on a variety of factors. High levels of social fragmentation is what? Rich and poor, or people not acting all the same, but branching off into many different groups?  D r e a m Focus  09:23, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Jakarta
I live in Jakarta, I'm not Indonesian and I am objective. 2010 census figure for Greater Jakarta (Jabodetabek or Jabotabek) is 26.6 million, larger than any other candidate except for Tokyo. A recent National Geographic Megacities episode described Jakarta as the 3rd largest megacity in the world. I am of the considered opinion that it is actually the second and larger than Seoul. Maybe it's time to acknowledge Jakarta. Its 100km long and 80km wide. Built up all the way.GCaisle (talk) 17:57, 24 December 2010 (UTC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabotabek

Growth section
The growth section is rather weak and somewhat unscientific.

Unable to provide a full historical analysis of urban centres, it would be better to provide none than to provide a partial set of data (not sorted in any particular way). For instance, even the first sentence is extremely sweeping yet the linked reference is at best a page of guesses which it itself acknowledges as most likely fictitious. I am therefore removing the historical section of 'growth' — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xsterx (talk • contribs) 21:21, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Chaotic opening
The introduction is surprisingly poor for being so short. It does point out there's conflicting definitions ("usually defined as..."), it doesn't point to any reason for the term/concept (why not "big cities"? I.e., what's so different about 10--40million from 4--7million?).

Nitpicking, the intro says there's 21 megacities but the article itself lists 26. The intro also starts by saying there's 10million people in a megacity by definition, and then after (pointlessly) listing some random megacities (not the biggest, not oldest big cities, not alphabetical, not one per continent) it then redundantly states there's 10million people in these.

But even removing these last two obvious errors, the intro doesn't seem to do it's work. 77.99.246.115 (talk) 09:30, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Removing KOLKATA
As per Indian census population of kolkata is 4681087 therefore removing it from the list http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011-prov-results/prov_data_products_tamilnadu.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gobade.abhay1 (talk • contribs) 13:10, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

China - Guangzhou?
Does Guangzhou, China really have 	32,200,000 citizens? According to http://www.asiarooms.com/en/travel-guide/china/guangzhou/guangzhou/guangzhou-overview/guangzhou-population.html it's 12 milion, and therefore nowhere close. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.216.96.176 (talk) 20:13, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

No kidding - I think they have the population wrong. 70.72.30.150 (talk) 00:48, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

In Fiction
Why is there no reference to the African Mega City New Mombasa from Halo 2 and Halo 3: ODST? Space Commander Plasma (talk) 00:57, 6 September 2011 (UTC)