My head is spinning,...

...not because of any physical ailment (I'm fine) but because it has taken me two weeks to put this post together. That is a lifetime in Blogland. I hope that all of my too few readers have not found greener pastures in the interim. Also, there was (were?) a lot of data to be sorted through and it was easy to get bogged down in the minutiae.

Nevertheless, I have forged bravely ahead and the post is now more or less complete. Be prepared to be deluged with a lot of absolutely trivial information, unless you are interested in that sort of thing. I guess I will find out in the comments.

I know there are a lot of big countries with a lot of people (Indonesia, Russia, and Brazil come to mind) but I have confined my ramblings in this post to four. Oh, by the way, the general subject of this post is people, populations, and big cities in particular. I hope you will read all the way through to the end.

If you just can't do it, come back again later and try again with my next post. I am nothing if not flexible.

In round figures (which I have chosen to use for the sake of keeping things simple even though the numbers are only approximate and not precise) the UK has around (translation: not quite) 70 million (70M) people, the US has around (translation: somewhat less than) 350 million (350M) people, and India and China each have around (translation for India: a little less than; translation for China: a little more than) 1.4 billion (1.4B a.k.a. 1,400M) people. Put another way, the US has about five times the population of the UK, and India and China each have about four times the population of the US. If you multiply the five and the four together, you duscover that India and China each have about 20 times the population of the UK. If you prefer mathematics over verbiage, the equations 70 x 5 =350, 350 x 4 = 1,400 and 70 x 20 = 1,400 provide proof.

That being the case, I wondered whether, when it comes to the category Cities With More Than A Million People, it might follow as the night the day that similar relationships also exist. That is, whatever number of such urban enclaves might exist in the UK, I wondered whether five times the UK number exist in the US and whether 20 times the UK number exist in India and in China.

In a word, no.

In the UK, if you consider what one site calls Urban Agglomerations (comparable to Metropolitan Areas in the US), there are five such places: Greater London (9.3M), Greater Manchester (2.7M), Greater Birmngham (2.6M), Greater Leeds (1.9M), and Greater Glasgow (1.7M). However, if you consider core cities only and ignore all the surrounding suburbs and urban agglomeration (removing the "Greater" aspect, so to speak), then the UK has only one such place, London. Seven other core cities exceed 500,000: Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham, Sheffield, Bristol, Glasgow, and Leicester.

In the US as of 2021 there are 11 core cities with over 1M population: New York City (NY), Los Angeles (CA), Chicago (IL), Houston (TX), Phoenix (AZ), Philadelphia (PA), San Antonio (TX), San Diego (CA), Dallas (TX), Austin (TX), and San Jose (CA). Notice the preponderance of cities in California and Texas. Fort Worth (TX) just missed being on the list. There are 56 Metropolitan Statistical Areas with more than a million people and 38 core cities that exceed 500,000 (I live near Atlanta, which is number 37).

India and China, needless to say, are in a class by themselves.

India has 48 core cities (not urban agglomerations) with more than a million people--including mega-cities like Mumbai (24M) and Delhi (20M) and Calcutta (15M) and Bangalore (14M)--and 98 cities that exceed 500,000.

By my count of a list I found online of the estimated population of cities in China, there are 66 with more than a million people (ten have more than 10M each) and 129 cities that exceed 500,000. At the top of the heap are Shanghai (27M) and Beijing (20M).

It is absolutely mind-boggling to me to realize (British, realise) that one-third of the population of the entire world live in two countries, India and China. It's true. One point four billion (1.4B) people plus one point four billion (1.4B) people is two point eight billion (2.8B) people--correct me if I'm wrong--and the current estimate of the world population is around (there's that word again) eight billion (8B) people. As I said, mind-boggling.

I consider myself to be fairly well-informed, but I have never heard of most of the very large cities in India and China (I won't bore you with their names). And every person in every place all over the world has a name and a face and is living an individual life, sometimes in the most unimaginable and appalling of circumstances. Adrian Ward, take note: we are all very small cogs in a very big machine. I will try to remember that in the future.

In my opinion, we should all be made aware of our inaccurate self-assessments more often. A little humility and a little gratitude go a long way.