Rise and Fall of the World's Largest Cities (1500-2020)

In 1900, 11 of the 12 largest cities were in Europe or the US. By 2020, only one was. The lead changed hands 5 times between 1500 and 2020 - every measurement is on the chart. What you're watching A bar chart race of the top 12 world cities by population, measured at 21 points from 1500 to 2020 (520 years). Each bar is the value for that measurement; bars re-order as the ranking changes. Between two measurements the bars move smoothly from one measured value to the next (interpolation), so a lead change seen mid-way is an estimate; the counter shows the year the bars are moving to. The first measurement starts with Beijing at 672,000. Notes from the editor In Chandler's 1900 table Moscow, #12, is only 20,000 people ahead of Beijing, so other sources give 10 of 12, not 11. Constantinople/Istanbul counts as Europe: the old city lies on the European shore. In 1950 the chart cuts from Chandler's city figures to the UN's urban areas (Tokyo 7.0 to 11.3 million in one year). Between measurements, up to 50 years apart, bars are interpolated. Who is missing Cities outside the top 12 at every measurement. The UN's 2025 revision uses a new city definition (Degree of Urbanisation) that ranks Jakarta first at 42 million in 2025 and Dhaka second; this chart follows the 2018 revision's urban agglomerations, where Tokyo stays first. Chapters 00:00 Capitals of empires 01:13 The industrial age 02:17 The megacities 03:02 Final standings Lead changes (5) 1604: Beijing to Constantinople (00:25) 1709: Constantinople to Beijing (00:51) 1826: Beijing to London (01:24) 1924: London to New York (02:04) 1953: New York to Tokyo (02:19) Data Wikipedia - "Historical urban community sizes" (estimates compiled from Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth (1987), and other cited studies): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histori... - CC BY-SA 4.0 Reba, Reitsma & Seto (2016), "Spatializing 6,000 years of global urbanization from 3700 BC to AD 2000", Scientific Data - digitised city tables of Chandler (1987) and Modelski (2003), chandlerV2.csv: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.2... - CC BY 4.0 United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision, File 12 (urban agglomerations with 300,000 inhabitants or more): https://population.un.org/wup/ - CC BY 3.0 IGO Notes on the data 1500-1875: estimates from the Wikipedia tables "Historical urban community sizes" (Chandler and other scholars, every 25 to 50 years); a range takes Chandler's own figure when it lies inside it (19 cells), else its midpoint (6); a blank cell takes Chandler's figure from the digitised tables (1777 cells). 1900, 1925 and 1950: Chandler's figures. 1950-2020: UN urban agglomerations (World Urbanization Prospects 2018, every 10 years). Between measurements the bars are interpolated, so a lead change between two measurements is placed by the chart, not by a source. In 1950 the unit changes from Chandler's city to the UN's urban agglomeration (Tokyo with Yokohama, Osaka = the Kinki Major Metropolitan Area, New York = New York-Newark). Both exist for 1950, so the chart cuts between them within that year instead of showing the change as growth. Left out: ruhr (a region, not a city); algiers 1925 (2.22 million is a digitisation error; the 1926 census has about 0.23 million); the 1575 column of the Wikipedia page (24 cities, figures that contradict Chandler's). 2020 is the UN's 2018-revision estimate, not a census. Names: Edo is shown as Tokyo; Tenochtitlan (destroyed 1521) is its own bar, Mexico City appears from 1550; Indian cities under their present names; Constantinople under its historical name (as Istanbul it is #14 in 2020). Bars: every city in the top 30 of any measurement keeps its real values; 12 are shown. Colours: blue = Europe (Constantinople included) or the United States, warm = rest of the world. Flags are today's countries. Thumbnail photos Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... User:Mcj1800, CC BY-SA 4.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Licences: CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Background removed. No voiceover, data only. Music made with ElevenLabs. #datavisualization #barchartrace #largestcities #worldhistory #urbanization #tokyo #beijing #london