Not what I had expected

I was glancing at city and metro populations for the world. Why? I'll get to that in a minute. The U.S. has 2 of the world's 50 largest cities, New York and L.A. China has 8. India has 7, including #1 and #3 (Mumbai and Dehli, with Karachi Pakistan being #2).

When you look at metro areas, however, the U.S. has 6 of the top 50, with New York as #4 (L.A., Chicago, Philly, Dallas(/Fort Worth, loyal reader FGS), and Miami, being the others), and China has 7. Expanded for the top 100 metro areas, China has 15 cities with a combined 96 million people and the U.S. has 14 cities with a combined 94 million people. (Top five metro areas are Tokyo, Seoul, Mexico City, New York City, and Sao Paulo).

I would have thought that China has quite a few more cities on this list (and that India would have had more than the U.S. - it has 9 cities for 80 million people). I had read somewhere (I think the NY Times), that China had dozens of cities of at least a few million.

Anyway... the reason this comes up? Today in the NY Times, there was an article about Shenzhen. If you are curious as to what the article is about, look it up. The thing that struck me about this city was its age and population. The city has 6 million people living there (good for the 30th largest metro area; Chicago is #25. It's also the 4th largest Chinese metro area). What's strange about this? THE CITY WAS FOUNDED IN 1980! It's 26 years old and it's the 30th largest metro area in the world (and growing fast). Crazy.

On a related note, loyal reader FGS (Fort Worth, TX) and I were discussing a t-shirt he owns. It's a plain organge t-shirt that says Cleveland (in Brown letters, I think, which happen to be the Cleveland football teams colors...). He noted how people in the Netherlands knew of the city. I remarked that I thought it was strange that people in Europe would know about Cleveland. It's not exactly an international hotspot (though I do love the city). I compared the U.S. to Europe. Stating that they are roughly the same size (give or take 50 million people), if a European can name 25 American cities (my guess on the population rank of Cleveland - it's actually 23, so good guess), then I should be able to name 25 European cities. At first I thought that was a lot, but then I tried listing them and easily hit 25. So I guess Cleveland could be a known entity in Europe. Sadly, Buffalo is 47...

My list, in order, of European cities: London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Rome, Prague, Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Zurich, Barcelona, Hamburg, Venice, Naples, Athens, Belgrade, Warsaw, Lisbon, Liverpool, Utrecht, Rotterdam, Dublin, Belfast....I could have kept going, so maybe Europeans know about Buffalo.