Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of cities by population


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   Keep. Malinaccier (talk) 13:43, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

List of cities by population

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There seems to be absolutely no consensus on what "city proper" means. Because of this, and because it'd probably be much better to simply list the largest urban areas and metropolitan areas, which is much less controversial, I nominate this page for deletion unless some consensus on what "city proper" really means. --Criticalthinker (talk) 02:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment I don't see the reason to put this up for deletion just because theres disputes over whats considered a "city". This article should be exist on Wikipedia is some form. -- Coasttocoast (talk) 03:54, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment See also Articles for deletion/List of cities by surface area about a month ago. The obvious answer is that there are international agencies and NGOs that compile this data and use certain sanity checks to keep it all reasonably comparable. We should go by sources, not instinct, and as much as possible use comparable information from sanity-checked sources. --Dhartung | Talk 04:26, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Speedy keep this is exactly the kind of info we need and i have to stretch my mind to accept good faith. I have looked up this info myself, and will want to again, and with so much crap this is simply a terrible nomination. If its being done for WP:POINT a block would be appropriate. Thanks, SqueakBox 04:31, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong keep City proper is defined by each government. The city is usually the area governed by the mayor, whoever he is and whatever he does. But it's always defined, and if it isn't, it doesn't go on the list. Perhaps more expansion could clarify the differences in meaning of "municipality" between list entries. Article contains disclaimer to same effect as nom. Potatoswatter (talk) 05:01, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong keep. That kind of minutae is no reason to delete an article.  Especially when there's already information about the fairly minor issue proposed by the nominator in the articles.  The nom is really stretching at straws here.  Celarnor Talk to me  06:45, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * comment Potatoswatter, if that were the case then we'd have to include the whole municipalities of cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and the rest. The mayors of those cities administer HUGE swaths of the land.  To pick and choose which boroughs are used and which aren't is arbitrary.  On Chongqings page it even says that there is a dispute concerning the boundaries of the urban area.  Also, World Gazetter estimates should only be used when no other official source exists, yet World Gazetter remains the primary source for populations, and no one seems to want to do any work to find anything different. --Criticalthinker (talk) 07:02, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * China has more top-down administration than other societies. Not to overgeneralize, but that might be a factor in the countryside being seen as the extended domain of the city. I'm not so familiar. It's an ancient and universal conflict. But whatever the disputes, every country has some authority to define city limits. And if there's an exception I'm missing (which is likely), just leave it off the list! See List of country subdivisions by population. It's a totally arbitrary and relative measurement, but that's OK. Countries are subdivided along cultural boundaries. Finer political borders are drawn around cities. A city is the most unified unit of governance, where in democratic countries independence is a simple referendum away. I concede that this list cannot be maintained to particularly good quality, but it's good enough. Moreover, with a little more work, it could uniquely provide insight into the way those various cities/municipalities have figured out how to govern themselves. Potatoswatter (talk) 07:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Move to List of municipalities by population, and redirect List of cities by pop. to World's largest cities, which does a good job of defining terms and disambiguates for people who may be searching for urban areas or metropolitan areas using that term. After all, it isn't universal to associate the term "city" with "municipality". - Aucitypops (talk) 08:13, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep as an interesting list.--Berig (talk) 09:06, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment The issue with using municipalities, as traditionally defined, is that Tokyo and all the Chinese cities would be excluded. Then, one could also decide to include whole municipalities such as Shanghai, but doing so necessitates inclusion of the entirety of Chongqing, a single "municipality" covering over 82,000 sq km. These areas contain huge swaths of rural territory, however. For that reason, most demographers that tabulate lists of administrative cities use a specific grouping of districts to define the "city proper". The current list mostly conforms to such a definition. My take is, let's find a list by a reasonably reliable source and just use their definitions. One possibility is the list compiled by Statistics Finland (in the external links section of the article). --Polaron | Talk 12:51, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Question, can someone on the pages talk page please list the administrative cities that make up places like Shanghai, Beijing, and Chongqing? --Criticalthinker (talk) 06:23, 3 May 2008 (UTC)


 * keep but it does need updating. For example its missed out Los Angeles population 12,000,000 and Paris population 9,700,00 and Berlin population 3,300,00 and that's just of the top of my head. Ijanderson977 (talk) 14:35, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The Los Angeles and Paris figure are urban area populations (not administrative city propers). The Berlin figure is too small to make it on the current list (it probably will show up ranked as fifty-something). But this does point out that the name of the article needs changing per User:Aucitypops above. --Polaron | Talk 14:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Strong Keep The term city is far more likely to be used in a search than either municpalities or urban areas. So long as the proper qualifications have been observed, which in this case they appear to have been the page is of more use to users which is what the whole thing is supposed to be all about. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wildfire london (talk • contribs) 15:12, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong keep Basic information that is essential in this field, regardless of the complexity of the surrounding debate. Luwilt (talk) 00:35, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. disagreement over definition isn't a valid reason to delete article. &mdash; goethean &#2384; 02:59, 3 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.