In case you haven't been paying attention, let me be the first to tell you that big cities are getting bigger all the time.
One last post about cities and then I won't bother you any more. Well, I may still bother you, but talking about cities won't be the reason.
It took the human race until the year 1804 to reach a world population of one billion (British, one thousand million). The world's population grew to two billion by 1927. In 1950, which I remember clearly, New York City and London vere vying with each other to be called the largest city in the world. Each had around eight million in the core city and over 12 million in the larger area that included suburbs.
Today the picture has changed greatly. The world has nearly eight billion people now. According to 2018 UN estimates, tthere are at least 81 cities with a population of more than five million.
Here is one list of the very largest cities in the workd today. Note that New York and London are nowhere in sight:
1. Tokyo, Japan (39 million)
2. Jakarta, Indonesia (35 million)
3. Chongqing, China (32 million)
4. Delhi, India (31.8 million)
5. Seoul, South Korea (25.5 million)
6. Mumbai, India (24 million)
The problem is that different organizations have compiled different lists, and it depends on what you mean by "city." Various terms are used in the making of the lists, such as city proper, urban area, metropolitan area, and urban agglomeration. For example, Chongqing, China, which is third in the list above, is in 14th place on the UN's list, with the explanation: "The municipality of Chongqing, China, whose administrative area is around the size of Austria, has the largest population for a city proper. However, more than 70% of its residents live in rural areas."
Consolidated city-county areas such as Miami-Dade in Florida can't hold a candle to Chongqing. My point is that when it comes to determining the largest cities in the world, you pays your money and you takes your chances.
Here are the top ten "cities" on the UN's 2018 list:
1. Tokyo, Japan (37.4 million)
2. Delhi, India (28.5 million)
3. Shanghai, China (25.6 million)
4. São Paulo, Brazil (21.6 million)
5. Mexico City, Mexico (21.6 million)
6. Cairo, Egypt (20.1 million)
7. Mumbai, India (20 million)
8. Beijing, China 19.6 million)
9. Dhaka, Bangladesh (19.6 million)
10. Osaka, Japan (19.3 million)
On the UN's list, New York is 11th at 18.8 million and London is 37th at just over nine million.
I do not envy the people who live in the megalopolises of the world. It's all I can do to cope with Atlanta, which is 69th on the UN's 2018 list of urban areas, is the 37th-largest core city in the United States, and has America's 13th-worst traffic according to the people who keep up with such things. Atlanta has the further distinction in the U.S. of being the smallest core city (population 524,000) among its top ten metropolitan areas, ranking ninth at just over six million.
Here is a typical day in my adopted home town:
If you want to learn more about the terms core city, metropolitan area, or urban area; or find your favorite city on the UN's list of 81; or see a map of Chongqing, click here.
Don't mind me, folks, I find this stuff fascinating.
I lived in Detroit many years. I hate the way people live on top of each other. I'm so happy in my little almost ghost town. Our population is approximately 400 people.
ReplyDeleteEmma, on top of each other is a good way to describe it. The small town I grew up in had “Pop. 779” on the city limits sign when we moved there in 1948. Today the place has 75,000 people. Unbelievable! I now live 10 miles from the nearest town, and I like it that way.
DeleteThis is an interesting post comparing the size of the largest cities. I did look at the UN's list of the top 81 and Kansas City was not even on it. I do understand the "metropolitan area" of cities because I live in one. Our small town is one of many suburbs of Kansas City. When I was young and just starting out, I lived in Memphis, Tn. for a little over a year and I liked it then. I could never live in a large city now. I consider my situation of living in a small town close to a big city perfect. We have small town life but can easily visit any variety of events and places in the city.
ReplyDeleteBonnie, the little town I told Emma about above is part of the Dallas-Fort Worth “metroplex” (as it’s referred to locally, another word for millions upon millions of people). I live in exurbia now, not exactly suburban and not exactly rural either.
DeleteThankfully I've never been to any on either list. They're for people who like to rush around.
ReplyDeleteTasker, it’s hard for me to understand why people would want to live in such overcrowded conditions. Maybe it seems normal if it’s all you’ve ever known.
DeleteAs to the photo, I'm sure that you, more than I, remember when most highways were two lane once they got out of cities, although driving is safer now due to improvements in both roads and cars.
ReplyDeleteI got my license at 15, and, prohibition still being in force in Mississippi, even a kid on a bicycle could buy liquor. I drove fast and drank heavily so it's a wonder I wasn't killed driving high-powered V8 Fords with no seat belts on narrow, winding, hilly highways. When a particularly gruesome wreck happened, the cars were taken to town and left in a prominent place where large crowds gathered to see the mangled metal and look inside for the sight--and stench--of blood and gore, sometimes mixed with liquor.
Snowbrush, those two-lane roads had mostly 55 mph speed limits; 60 was considered going really fast. The roads in Texas were narrow and sometimes winding, but they were never hilly. Our part of the state was as flat as a pancake. And I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was almost 22, and then only because I thought it would look strange for the bride to drive away from the church. As you probably have guessed, I didn’t hang out with the beer-drinking crowd.
ReplyDeleteI remember the speed limit in Mississippi as being 65 until Nixon lowered the national limit to 55 in 1974.
Delete"As you probably have guessed, I didn’t hang out with the beer-drinking crowd."
I wish I could say the same. Although I drank so heavily that I often didn't remember the night before despite being the one who drove, it was my impression that most boys where I lived drank to some extent in the mid-sixties. Yet, I wasn't addicted to liquor. I was instead a lost kid who stopped drinking when my circumstances changed.
P.S. Why did you wait so long to get a license? I drove as far as El Dorado Arkansas and back at age 14, so when I turned 15, I couldn't get down to the highway patrol station fast enough. The idea of growing up in the South-- as we both did--and not being willing to kill the person ahead of you in line in order to get your license five minutes sooner is alien to me. I don't suppose you regarded it as a right of passage into manhood.
Delete"Here is a typical day in my adopted home town:"
I couldn't find you, so you are either confused about where you live, or else you are confused about where the photo was taken.
A final question, when you and you wife go somewhere, who tends to drive? With we'uns, it's usually Peggy simply because she's a power-hungry, emasculating, man-hating witch. I whine; I plead; and I shed bitter tears so she'll let me drive for even a few blocks, but she not only refuses, she says she'll put me out of the car if I don't shut up. Could you could talk to her for me?
Snowbrush, there are two reasons I did not get a drivers license at the earliest possible moment. First, our family did not own a car. Both my parents could drive but my mother had lived in the city all of her life and took public transportation. My dad couldn't afford one, I guess, when he got out of the Navy and shortly thereafter married my mother. What money they were able to save was spent on train tickets to get us from Rhode Island to Texas in 1947, and it was pretty much all downhill from there. We didn't have indoor plumbing either, which was a rarity where I lived, so I was odd on two counts. So there was not a vehicle in which he could teach me to drive, besides which he was exhausted after working all week at the factory. I suppose it was out of the question to borrow another man's car in those days. We were so poor that I never got a bike either, and cannot ride one to this day. I can just barely roller skate (we lived on a dirt road) but I can't see myself roller skating down the interstate. (Side note: The daughter of some friends of ours skated on in-line skates when they first became popular all the way from Atlanta to Athens on I-85. She considered becoming a professional in-line skater for a time and the son of another friend considered becoming a performer of ska music. This was back in the 80s and 90s in affluent North Atlanta when kids were beginning to be able to convince their suburban parents of anything and the parents were too busy climbing the corporate and social ladders to notice or care what their offspring did. I exaggerate.)
DeleteThe second reason was that, since we lacked a car, the newly instituted class in school called Driver's Education beckoned, but that there was only one session of it and it met during last period daily, which was also when the band rehearsed for those all-important football game half-time shows. We had 46 in our band and we could make two formations: a football with laces down the middle for the visitors side and an M (for Mansfield) on the home team side. If a few people were absent no one could recognize our formations, so there was no way I was going to miss those band rehearsals. Needless to say, I didn't date much, and when I did it was always a double date with me and my girlfriend sitting in the back seat of someone else's car. So I never learned how to drive in high school or college or the military until I became engaged to be married, at which time, as I may have mentioned to you earlier, I realized it sure would look strange for the bride to have to drive away from the church. So my friend Air Force Captain David Means (I was an enlisted man working in the same office at SAC Headquarters and we attended the same church), taught me how to drive in his car up and down the streets and hills of Plattsmouth, Nebraska in the spring of 1963.
Wow, this is a long reply to your long comment.
In answer to your second question, I have always done most of the driving over the years. Ellie would drive occasionally, especially when the children were small and she chauffeured them to and from school. I usually rode in a car pool to my job in those days. Then about four or five years ago, Ellie decided to give up driving altogether (she was past 80 for one thing and didn't like the people driving like idiots on the road for another because it made her nervous). So of necessity I have been the sole driver for the last few years. I don't know how long the macular degeneration's effect on my vision is going to allow me to continue, but when I can't drive any more, we are going to be up the proverbial fecal-filled fluvial estuary without an instrument of forward propulsion.
I do not like baring all my faults and foibles online for all the world (or even just a few blog readers) to see, but you seem to have that effect on me. It could be worse, I suppose. I could get myself good and blotto before I attempted to respond to your comments, but that probably is not a wise choice.
Your comment is long! Ha! My comment to your comment is so long that it won't go through in one frame, so will have to send it in installments.
Delete"it was always a double date with me and my girlfriend sitting in the back seat"
"me and my girlfriend"? Are you, like, spending too much time with, like, young people who, like, talk that way? You and I just missed the era when high school Latin was compulsory, and well-educated people typically studied two or three other languages. Now, language study is mostly optional, and few people seem to care about good grammar or even know what it is. I'm starting to worry about my own grammar, but may I never adopt the belief that as long as people know what I'm saying, it doesn't matter how I say it.
Like you, my family had no indoor plumbing, but we also lacked electricity. In fact, I don't think the
Rural Electrification Administration had made it available in my area when I was born. However, this changed when I was six or seven, although many people still couldn't afford electricity. I also remember black people who rode to town in wagons, and, even when I was in my teens, I had friends who didn't have electricity.
Unlike you, I always had bikes and later cars, but I never gave thought to how hard my family had to work to provide them. My father put in a 55-hour week performing hard manual labor, and my mother often ran a country store, the last one being in my family's garage. Yet, they never expected help from me, and I seldom gave it. From age fifteen, I worked for money, but the money I made was my own. Even when my father built his family a 2,000 square foot house--the work being done before he went to his regular job at 7:00 a.m., after he got off from his job at 5:30, after his half day of paid work on Saturday, and all day on Sunday.
"So my friend Air Force Captain David Means (I was an enlisted man...)
I don't think you know that I also served in the Air Force, but I wrote about it in my last post--prepare to be profoundly unimpressed.
"I do not like baring all my faults and foibles online for all the world (or even just a few blog readers) to see, but you seem to have that effect on me."
DeleteThe title and music--though not the words--at least, of the old song "Crazy on You" comes to mind. Regarding online openness... I don't encourage--or engage in--such openness with because I get off on it, or am trying to embarrass anyone, and I'm not prone to sharing deeply in face-to-face conversation. Online is different because I'm more comfortable writing than talking, and then there's the element of anonymity. Even if someone were able to track me down, they couldn't use my words against me as they could if I slandered people, were looking for a job, had professional standing, or shared things that someone I care about didn't already know. Indeed, the only concern I have is that someone might unleash the Internet's rabid dogs on me because they disliked my political or religious views (the only time Peggy ever asked that I not put a post online was when I attacked Islam). As I see it, all that I am at risk of losing is the approval of one or more readers, and I don't see that as reason to write in half-truths or to avoid subjects.
You and I go back seventeen years, which is quite a long time in blogland. Yet, I often find myself reading between the lines of your posts in order to understand you better. Perhaps, you think I write too personally, but I know that I would like it if, on occasion, you would write more personally because I'm much more interested in you than in the subjects you write about, subjects that, although they do interest me more or less, are primarily a gateway to knowing you and interacting with you. We both rankle one another at times (though nowhere near as much as Marion and I rankle one another), but we've both hung in there, and it's not because we see one another at church, or at the meetings of the Macon Beautification Committee, or because our children married one another. Either of us could walk away at any moment, and all we would lose is our friendship, there being no other connection between us. Long ago, you wrote something about never leaving my blog because of how much it meant to you. During the years of the Trump presidency, I often hoped that you still feel that way.
"regarding my saying “me and my girlfriend,” at least I don’t say “we’uns.'”
DeleteI humbly beg your treacherous forgiveness, but will point out that my minor sin in no way excuses your infinitely greater sin (in the words of Jesus: "take the eighty-foot creosote power pole out of your own eye before demanding that your brother remove the teensy-tiny cat hair from his eye"). In closing, I'll leave the following thoughts for you to ponder in my absence:
(1) When asked if he felt guilty for raping and murdering 60 women, Ted Bundy said, "At least I didn't act like a truly bad man by engaging in the willy-nilly violation of human rights that I might justifiably be accused of had I raped and murdered sixty-one women."
(2) Your criticism of me for having employed the endearing--and in every way commendable--term "we'uns" proves that you're an egregious promoter of ethnic intolerance and insensitivity because, as you're no doubt fully and completely aware, the term is a product of southern Appalachian culture.
Snowbrush,. I can’t respond to each and every thought in your comments because they are too numerous and too varied, but I will do my best.
DeleteI may have said “me and my girlfriend” but I have never once in my entire life ever said “we’uns.”
It is true that you and I were both in the Air Force, but you were in it for only three weeks as I recall and I was in it for four years and nine months, a big chunk of my life.
We both also went to Methodist institutions of higher learning. My school was Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas (north of Austin). It advertised itself as being in the top 2% of liberal arts colleges.
W
(Continued) We have not been friends for 17 years. I started this blog in 2007 and the first comment I can find from you is in 2008, so we have been friends for 13 years.
DeleteI had one year of Latin and one year of French but both occurred in college. Our high school did not offer any foreign languages, not even Spanish. Today the same school system offers Russian and Chinese if I am not mistaken. The times, they are a-changin’ (as somebody said way back when).
Our conversation seems to have hijacked a comment thread that was intended to be about big cities. We would do well to restrain ourselves.
"you and I were both in the Air Force, but you were in it for only three weeks"
ReplyDeleteBut it was a long three weeks, a third of it being spent walking around Lackland after my Air Force insignia had been ripped from my uniform, which was something that inspired a lot of mistreatment. I received a general discharge by the way.
Our conversation seems to have hijacked a comment thread that was intended to be about big cities.
I rather thought the thread was like an performance of jazz music in which the each of us developed themes created by the other. In any event, I'll finish my part of out and then let it go, that is unless you continue it.
We'uns really is a mountain term that surely you have heard. My father's father used it, and on visits to the Chattanooga area, I heard other people use it. Yet, you appear to look down on it, which is something that I don't understand given your concern with not offending people based upon race and ethnicity. How do you feel about other regionalisms, ya'll for example? Would you like to see all such terms abandoned in the interest of uniformity? I had imagined that you would be embarrassed by writing "me and my girlfriend," but it now seems that you regard it as acceptable speech. Is this the case, and would you like to see a reversal of pronouns become the norm?
Snowbrush, I don't have a problem with "we'uns" or other regionalisms, but the absolute truth is that I have never heard anyone say "we'uns" before. I have heard quite a few people say "you'uns" and I do not look down on them as I am certainly not "an egregious promoter of ethnic intolerance and insensitivity" as you suggest.
DeleteI have lived in north Georgia for 46 years now but north Georgia is not south Mississippi, although it is a lot like east Tennessee in many ways. We are both southerners, yes, but our experiences have been quite different. You cannot fault me for that. You jumped to conclusions, you cited facts not in evidence (as lawyers say in courtrooms), you exhibited a bit of intolerance of your own.
It is hard not to like you, Snow, but it also is hard to like you because you often fly off the handle without provocation (at least that's how I see it) and launch into a tirade worthy of Brother Theodore on the old Merv Griffin Show. I always liked Brother Theodore in spite of his rages, but they could be a little startling and even off-putting if they caught one unawares.
This is just a question, don't read anything into it. Is a general discharge considered a type of honorable discharge or is it an "other than honorable" discharge? I know that medical discharges, for example, are considered honorable.
Saying "me and my girlfriend" (although "my girl friend and me" would have been better) is perfectly fine when the objective case is called for, as after the preposition "with." The only time it gets confusing is if the object is a clause instead of a phrase. You have often misused "who" and "whom" but have I brought it to your attention? No, I have not, because in spite of what you probably think I am not a grammar nerd, not a grammar nerd at all. We go back to the old Methodist dictum that no one seems able to prove that John Wesley actually said or wrote, "think and let think". You ought to try it more often rather than trying to destroy what you view as your opposition. Let me be clear; I am not your opposition.
Someday in the far distant future some industrious anthropologist may happen upon our long years of exchanges in blogging comments and decide to publish The Collected Letters Of Snowbrush And Rhymeswithplague," but I seriously doubt it. I just hope we are not chasing my other readers away. I need all the readers I can get.
If any other readers are still with us, I will tell you that I know Snowbrush's real name. I am not going to divulge it but I will tell you that his name is the same name as a noted newscaster from several decades back, and I don't mean Roger Mudd, Walter Cronkite, or H.V. Kaltenborn.
P.S. - I also don't mean Eric Sevareid or Howard K. Smith or Walter Winchell and definitely not Louella Parsons.
DeleteIncredibly entertaining comment thread! I mean this in the best possible way. *beams*. I have answered your question rhymes, where you asked it. You both write so very well, we'uns here all think so, even me and my dog.
ReplyDeleteStay well m'dear X