Can you name the most populous world capitals?

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Most Populous Capitals Quiz

by davidr

Created Dec 8, 2008 in Geography
Featured Dec 8, 2008
Game Plays 191,666

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	Esteban:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 05:17 GMT		9 points
	Ah, missed Singapore - of course!

	raggedyanne:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 05:43 GMT		9 points
	22/25. Another well-conceived quiz.

	Librería:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 05:52 GMT		7 points
	23/25 singapore as well...and bangkok? weird

	sammyhain2364:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 05:54 GMT		9 points
	23/25 Manila and Bogota got me. Fun quiz that made you think.

	tobinw:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 06:47 GMT		10 points
	Excellent quiz.

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	EasilyConfused:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 07:18 GMT		43 points
	Jesse: You make an interesting point, but perhaps you should have phrased it less provocatively.

	Elmo:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 07:55 GMT		21 points
	35 million people in one city... that's crazy.

	Lilybert:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 08:34 GMT		17 points
	And I thought Rome was immense and chaotic!

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	jesus:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 09:18 GMT		30 points
	How come London is ahead of Tehran here whereas in most populous cities Tehran makes an entry and London doesn't. The same for Lima and Bogota. I know you'll have a go at me for not recognising metro populations etc. Its not that I don't understand but that there should be some continuity between quizes.

	jjuva13:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 09:25 GMT		23 points
	the quiz should be titled "most populous capital metro areas"

	A_is_for_Addict:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 10:06 GMT		37 points
	The capital of India isn't Delhi, it's New Delhi. New Delhi is much smaller and doesn't make the top 400 (cities, not capitals) in the world having a population less than 500 000.

	Kevin:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 10:31 GMT		8 points
	You can't have the Tokyo Greater Metropolitan Area at 35 million and only have London at 7.9 mill, in the Metropolitan Area of London there are between 12 and 14 million people. That Tokyo figures represents 4 different regions around the actual city of Tokyo itself.

	davidr:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 10:35 GMT		3 points
	@: The two quizzes take their data from different sources. The inconsistency is unfortunate but that's life.

	davidr:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 10:40 GMT		8 points
	@Jesse: Actually, I think you are being quite crude. That aside, lots of people have left Baghdad and the rest of Iraq since the war. Nonetheless, the lowest population estimate for Baghdad I've seen is still almost five million, which is still plenty big enough to make the list, even if a little lower than the given position.

	davidr:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 10:47 GMT		3 points
	@Kevin: Please give a citation for your stated population of this `Metropolitan Area of London'. All the sources I've seen give a population of about seven-and-a-half million for Greater London.

	Ribhump:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 12:32 GMT		7 points
	It's on wikipedia actually http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_population although it's not a projected total for 2008 like their urban areas one but the 2003 totals

	davidr:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 12:57 GMT		0 points
	@Ribhump: OK but that's defining the metropolitan area of a city as, essentially, anywhere from which it's feasible to commute daily to that city to work. Sure, there are lots of people who commute from Hatfield or Slough to London but those places are very much distinct from London and can't, I think, reasonably be counted towards London's population.

	weizenugb:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 15:07 GMT		16 points
	@davidr: Hey, I really appreciate you putting my name on this quiz! Thanks for the shout out, even though you did all the work getting the data. 23/25 for me--I missed Kinshasa and Manila. I think this was a really interesting quiz.

	rahv:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 15:32 GMT		13 points
	i am really quite baffled by the discrepancies between the CIA world factbook and that norway statistics site that was used for the "most populous cities" quiz. the most extreme example is probably seoul which is given with a population of 9.8mio people in the factbook (in 2006) and with 22mio on the other site (in 2005). for other cities it's not _that_ extreme, but nonetheless ... these are huuuge differences

	vamsi:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 16:06 GMT		15 points
	New Delhi is in the Delhi metropolitan region. The way Washington DC has 500K, but is in a larger metropolitan region.

	davidr:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 16:42 GMT		8 points
	@Tim Welch: You're welcome — I doubt I'd've thought of it myself. I got all 25 both times I tried this but the last two or three (including Seoul both times) took ages.

	A_is_for_Addict:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 16:49 GMT		16 points
	That's a good point Vamsi. My friend from Delhi doesn't see New Delhi and Delhi as two different places since they are in the same metropolis and New Delhi is still quite central to that. I think she sees it as much different as I see Westminster is from London. I'm guessing that since the capital of the UK is considered to be London over Westminster that it can include that population (and many other parts of London) whereas the capital of India is considered to be New Delhi and so cannot include the population of the rest of Delhi. Can anyone clear this up? The city of Washington on the other hand was officially joined with the rest of it's metropolitan area (territory of Columbia) in 1871 making it essentially one - err - thing, the District of Columbia (AKA Washington DC).

	cmkeller:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 17:03 GMT		7 points
	Fun quiz, but it just reminds me that we're still waiting on the most populous of Oceania quiz, we have all the other continents. Idea for new sports quizzes - single-season or career leaders in statistical categories by teams. For example, name each major league baseball team's single-season home run leader.

	montecarlo:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 17:09 GMT		10 points
	population new quiz idea: top 3 most populous cities per state (sorry for being us-centric). perhaps a largest seaports quiz, to be more world-friendly?

	davidr:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 17:38 GMT		6 points
	@vamsi: I think the difference is that the capital of the USA is a city that's had a metro area grow around it, while the capital of India is explicitly a certain district (namely, New Delhi) of the metropolitan area of Delhi. (BTW, DC has more like 590k but that doesn't make any difference to this discussion.)

	davidr:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 17:54 GMT		3 points
	@Sam: Thanks — that's what I was trying to say about Delhi and New Delhi but I think you put it rather more cogently. The only point I'd add is that the Washington metro area extends well beyond the District of Columbia, into Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, while your argument seems to be based on the assumption that the metro area is just the District of Columbia.

	davidr:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 18:04 GMT		3 points
	@montecarlo: Top three per state would be a big quiz! Biggest per state would be good, but it would be hard to define. For example, the New York metro area extends into New Jersey which means that New York is the biggest city in both New York state and New Jersey. I actually enjoy quizzes about US geography and I'm sure many other furriners do. The ones that rile are the ones with titles that sound generic — say, `Biggest Widget Makers' — that turn out to be quizzes about the US widget industry rather than the world widget industry. The same quiz would be fine if it was just called `Biggest American Widget Makers'; I'd probably just skip it unless I knew something about the American widget industry.

	davidr:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 18:07 GMT		2 points
	@montecarlo: Biggest sea ports would be good but I think it would have to be sea ports with the greatest cargo volume, rather than biggest cities that happen to have a sea port, which is the same thing as `biggest cities that are on the coast'. For example, London used to be a major world port but now it's just a huge city that still has a few small docks. Los Angeles, on the other hand, is both a huge city and a huge port.

	cls121389:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 18:18 GMT		3 points
	i like the idea of naming each team's all-time single-season (or career) HR leader, or TD pass leader or yards gained rushing leader etc etc. Also like the idea of top 3 populous cities in each state - this would have to be city limits, as other poster said, metro areas overlap states... Go sporcle!

	A_is_for_Addict:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 18:21 GMT		7 points
	Yes, I was under that misconception. Cheers davidr!

	vamsi:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 18:53 GMT		6 points
	David, I see your point, but I think it's a bit semantical. By that measure, London isn't officially the capital of UK, it's just the location of the government, so maybe it doesn't belong here. The capital of India was moved from Calcutta to Delhi in 1911, and New Delhi was the planned city (like DC) within that region to become the capital.

	ElDavo:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 19:03 GMT		12 points
	How in God's name did I miss Tokyo?

	davidr:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 19:43 GMT		0 points
	@vamsi: but London is officially the capital of the UK. And the capital of India is New Delhi, not Delhi. Obviously, the population of London as a whole should count towards the population of London; the question is whether the population of Delhi as a whole should count towards the specific district of Delhi that is nominated as the Indian capital. I don't think it would be wrong to include India in this quiz but the situation there is different from all the others.

	davidr:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 19:48 GMT		-1 points
	OK, so what do people think about including New Delhi? If you think that New Delhi should be included as part of the Delhi urban area (population 16.00M) please vote this comment up. If you think New Delhi should continue to be excluded, please vote it down. If there's a significant positive score after a day or so, I'll ask the admins to insert (New) Delhi in third place and boot the current #25.

	vamsi:	Dec 8th, 2008 at 20:05 GMT		13 points
	@David, London's technically not official. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London#Status Bizarre but true. Just de facto capital. [I'm not arguing it doesn't belong, just pointing out a quirky factoid] I think the analogue I was trying to make earlier was this: In 1911, the Indians decided "Hey, let's move the capital from Calcutta to [the region of] Delhi", and they built a planned city within that city to become the capital (New Delhi). In 1790, the Americans decided "Hey, let's move the capital from Philadelphia to an area further south," and they built a planned city in the woods between Virginia and Maryland (Washington). I just think the pre-existence of people, before it becoming the site of the capital, shouldn't disqualify it - several cities (such as Beijing, preceded by Nanjing) have not always been their country's capital. Oh, and finally, the terms Delhi and New Delhi are used interchangeably in India, since New Delhi exists entirely within the borders of Delhi (like the City of London within London, or Manhattan within New York City).

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