Evolving Urban Form: Development Profiles of World Urban Areas

China represents the cutting edge of 21st century urbanism. Its successes and failures will shape global perceptions of city life, not only in that country but around the world.  read more »

Like many of the world’s largest cities (Note 1), public policy seeks to densify Toronto, which is already the densest urban area (the international term) or population centre (the Canadian term) in North America (as used here, north of Mexico). An urban area is continuously built up urbanization and is routinely at the core of a metropolitan area (in Canada, a Census Metropolitan Area, or CMA).  read more »

Nashville’s has long been known as “Music City,” a title that dates nearly a century to 1925 when the first “Grand Ole Opry” performance was held in the Ryman Auditorium (above). For even longer, Nashville has been the capital of Tennessee, with the 10th oldest state capitol building in the nation (below). But the big story increasingly has been the area’s rapid growth  read more »

The Mexico City metropolitan area (Zona Metropolitana del Valle de México) continues to grow, though has slowed somewhat from the previous decade. The metropolitan area is the functional or economic city.  read more »

In 2021, the Manila built up urban area is estimated to have a population of 24.0 million, making it the fourth largest urban area in the world, according to Demographia World Urban Areas, covering 873 square kilometers and with a population density of 12,801 per square kilometer (33,135 per square mile). Only Tokyo, Jakarta and Delhi have larger populations. By comparison, the 2021 population of the New York urban area is 20.9 million.  read more »

The 2021 edition of Demographia World Urban Areas includes current population estimates for the 985 identified built-up urban areas (Note 1 describes the background and methodology) with at least 500,000 population.This is a smaller number than last year, due to a methodology that rendered somewhat lower populations for some urban areas.  read more »

Katowice-Gliwice-Tychy (hyperlinks are audio pronunciations) is fast-developing Poland’s second largest continuously developed urban area (urban agglomeration), with 1.7 million residents.  read more »

Hangzhou is the capital of Zhejiang Province in China. Hangzhou’s historic core is located approximately 160 kilometers (100 miles) southwest of Shanghai and approximately 1,100 kilometers (675 miles) from Beijing .It is the largest municipality in Zhejiang, having passed Wenzhou within the last decade.  read more »

China, which many see as the exemplar of rapid urban growth, is accelerating its own shift towards greater dispersion.

During the 2000s, the largest municipalities (formerly called prefectures) of China grew very quickly. Much of this was a result of an increasing “floating population,” people who moved to the cities from rural areas for employment, especially in factories producing goods for export and in construction. Between 2000 and 2010, according to the China Statistical Yearbook: 2019, the floating  read more »

More than a quarter century ago, Joel Garreau’s classic Edge City; Life on the New Frontier described the rise of commercial centers outside the historic downtowns (central business districts or CBDs).  read more »