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Jakarta is now the biggest city in the world
- netsharc 11mo agoArticle is a paywalled summary of the UN press release: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2025/11/press-release-wup2025/ https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2025/11/press... And the full report as PDF: https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/undesa_pd_2025_wup2025_summary_of_results.pdf https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve...
- metalman 11mo agoCanada has less people, even with a 10% increase in the last 4 years through imigration, some of which is from Indonesea presumably including a significant number from Jakarta, where the civil infrastructure must be epic
- skx001 11mo agoThe West just refuses to build anything. Whereas in Asia its not uncommon to build entire cites from scratch.
- b112 11mo agoYes, it's easy to build entire cities from scratch in a centrally managed society, such as a dictatorship or communist nations. It's also easy to have cities grow fast, if you're primarily a rural/agrarian nation, and suddenly have a transition to become urban. This was (for example) Canada in the 1900s. Mostly rural, yet now it's mostly urban. Canada saw fast growth of cities back then. It's maintaining large cities once the fast growth is over, that is a different story. How will, for example, China look in 50+ years? 100+ years? When all its newly built mega-city projects are crumbling.
- gucci-on-fleek 11mo ago> Canada saw fast growth of cities back then. It still does—Vancouver and Calgary have both almost doubled in population over the past 30 years [0] [1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Vancouver#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Vancouver#Demographics [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Calgary#Civic_census https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Calgary#Civic_...
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- catlover76 11mo ago> Yes, it's easy to build entire cities from scratch in a centrally managed society, such as a dictatorship or communist nations. This is generally true, but Indonesia is neither
- skx001 11mo ago> Yes, it's easy to build entire cities from scratch in a centrally managed society, such as a dictatorship or communist nations. I would like to pushback on this assumption. I made that point because you mentioned Canada and its rapid immigration rise in the last 5 years. Western countries, namely Canada can do a lot to build more to ease the pressures on its housing demand. Vast amounts of land is available to build amazing cities. There are specialist architect firms that can plan the most beautiful, walkable, livable, affordable cities very close to major hubs and metros currently. In the 50s/60s/70s these very Western countries, spent a lot and built all kinds of infrastructure which led to meaningful increases in quality of life and perhaps created the most prosperous generation in these countries. Even now when any government in the West wants to really do something, they don't really care about anything and it gets done, the money magically appears, the votes are found no matter how unpopular it may be. But for some reason building infrastructure, housing, mass transit has been completely forgotten. The real bottlenecks are governance, bureaucracy, and NIMBYism. Like a few comments above pointed out, its keeping boomers happy with their high property values at the expense of the young. Some things just don't make sense to me as an outsider. A few examples I read recently. [1] It will take three decades to turn an 18-mile stretch of the A66 road in northern England into a dual carriageway. [2] It will take 20+ years just to add another runway at Heathrow London and cost $64 Billion Dollars! [3] While Dubai is building a brand new whole airport for $35 Billion, I think the worlds largest when its finished. Nearly all of the political problems in Canada, UK, Australia and much of the US (NYC,SF, etc.) will completely go away if they had the "Build, Baby Build" attitude. Just build housing like there is no tomorrow. There is no such thing as an "oversupply" of a basic human need, livable shelter. I can assure you, knowing how Asian countries like China approach governance, Chinese cities will have no major issues in 50+ years. Any outstanding issues will will resolved well before they start to become a problem with various 5-10 year plans. The same for Malaysia, Singapore etc. [1] https://archive.md/PcOZV https://archive.md/PcOZV [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-chooses-heathrow-airports-64-billion-plan-basis-expansion-2025-11-25/ https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-chooses-heathrow-airport... [3] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/29/dubais-ruler-announces-construction-of-worlds-largest-airport-terminal https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/29/dubais-ruler-ann...
- bryanlarsen 11mo agoCanada has been building housing at a much higher rate than the US in the last 2 decades. Not enough, but more.
- jeffbee 11mo agoHrmm. What data source can I see to demonstrate this? I looked at a chart I have referenced before that shows nationwide USA housing starts over the last 20 years ranging from 2 to 8 per 1000 people. Then I searched for one for Canada and found one suggesting 1-2 per 1000 since 2005. And, evidently, the situation in Canada as developed/deteriorated to the extent there's a whole subreddit for the canadian housing crisis?
- bryanlarsen 11mo agoLooks to be averaging around 250,000 per year over the last decade. That'd be over 12 per 1000. https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/housing-starts https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/housing-starts
- jeffbee 11mo agoYes so it looks like the Reddit people are committing major chart-crimes, showing quarterly data as such, rather than annualized rates, and not mentioning it. It looks like this is a source of truth: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3410013501&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.1&pickMembers%5B1%5D=4.1&cubeTimeFrame.startMonth=07&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2005&cubeTimeFrame.endMonth=07&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2025&referencePeriods=20050701%2C20250701 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=341001...
- mh- 11mo agoI have watched reddit become useless for any kind of nuanced debate over the last 5 years. It's rather sad to me, because once upon a time I learned a lot about others views - especially ones I disagree with. Even HN is much less welcoming of the "I think I agree with you, but walk me through your thinking" replies than it used to be. I presume this is reflective of a few broader societal trends, and it's.. not good.
- Sohcahtoa82 11mo agoWhy spend billions building when you can just keep raising rents on existing infrastructure?
- parpfish 11mo agoI don't even know what it would it even look like to "build a city" from scratch in the US. who does the building and puts together the central plan? does the government build a bunch of public housing and a publicly owned commercial district? i guess they kind of have experience doing this with military bases, but at some point you need to encourage a bunch of private development and ownership, right? or would the government just incentivize private developers to start building in the middle of nowhere and hope that a city arises as an emergent phenomenon? that approach seems like it would be rife with abuse and waste. seems like this would be a lot easier to do with an authoritarian regime that could just decree "we're building a city here. the following industries will move their headquarters"
- abdullahkhalids 11mo agoIt's not particularly difficult to start a new city. The government simply asks large companies to open offices/factories in the new city in exchange for tax breaks/subsidies. Or give funding to a university to open a satellite campus. All you need is a promise for like 20k people to initially move. Then the government builds roads and utility networks. Private developers will also build housing if given the right financial incentive. The 20k people will automatically lead to the same number moving in due to cheap housing, or for creating every day businesses, hospitals, schools etc. Within a couple of years you can setup up a feedback loop where the population is growing at 5-10% every year. There is no need to force anyone to do anything. Financial incentives are enough.
- mikepurvis 11mo agoThe western approach would almost certainly be a public-private partnership; we do that with all meaningful infra projects, where multiple industry consortia put together proposals and then one is selected to move forward. For example, for the ION Light Rail in Waterloo Region (~$1B), the winning consortium was composed of engineering and construction firms/consultants, a operations company that would run the system, plus a financier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrandLinq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrandLinq That said, for a project the scale of building a city, I can imagine it might actually be faster and more efficient for the government to just plan and build everything itself and then sell it off to private entities later.
- Squealer2642 11mo agoThe civil infrastructure in Jakarta is horrible, especially compared to other Asian cities.
- skx001 11mo agoAlternative Link: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/jakarta-world-s-most-populous-capital-with-42-million-people-un-report/3751868 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/jakarta-world-s-most-p... Key Facts: Number of megacities, urban areas with 10 million or more inhabitants has quadrupled from 8 in 1975 to 33 in 2025. Jakarta is now the world’s most populous city, with nearly 42 million residents. The current population of Indonesia is 286 million. In 2019, Indonesia said it will be moving its capital to Nusantara, a new city which is under construction.
- ghaff 11mo agoI also imagine a lot of people who are admiring these megacities have never been to one. Jakarta has oceans of scooters and, when I was there to visit some customers with our country manager, she had a driver. With some exceptions like Singapore, SE Asian cities are horrible to get around.
- ecshafer 11mo agoOther than Singapore. I am not sure why SE Asian cities aren't going as all in on mass transit like China. Jakarta has a single subway line for 42 million people. They have some light rail line and buses. If you compare this with Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing its really night and day.
- filloooo 11mo agoDemocratic governments are weak on deficit spending, especially poor ones, the debt from their tiny stretch of high speed rail almost became a scandal.
- ghaff 11mo agoProbably a combination of overall wealth and government policies/stability/priorities. I'd probably add Hong Kong to the list of cities with pretty good public transit but, overall, it's pretty bad in that area of the world relative to cities that you'd generally consider to be "good."
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- doener 11mo agoPrevious submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46038863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46038863
- superconduct123 11mo agoI'm always surprised how big the population of Indonesia is yet it seems culturally underrepresented in the world compared to a lot of smaller countries Almost 300 million people but it rarely comes up in the news or pop media
- Froztnova 11mo agoI also did a double take when I learned that they were Muslim-majority too. It flies in the face of a lot of assumptions.
- throwaway290 11mo agoWhy? It's a big religion in the world and I heard it grows at 30% per year
- rar00 11mo agotypo? Rounding it up to 2 billion, 30% means 600 million per year
- throwaway290 11mo agoMaybe. Could be somebody was repeating some sort of misinformation. Quick check says more like 20% in 10 years.
- _DeadFred_ 11mo agoHow much of that is just because people aren't allowed to leave the religion though? My whole family would be considered Catholic if we still had those sorts of old thinking rules that Islam still has. Instead we have lots of people becoming Catholic and lots leaving balancing out.
- cdmckay 11mo agoWhich assumptions are those?
- decimalenough 11mo agoI used to spend a lot of time in Jakarta for work, and it's an underrated city. Yes, it's hot, congested, polluted and largely poor, but so is Bangkok. Public transport remains not great, but it's improved a lot with the airport link, the metro, LRT, Transjakarta BRT. SE Asia's only legit high speed train now connects to Bandung in minutes. Grab/Gojek (Uber equivalents) make getting around cheap and bypass the language barrier. Hotels are incredible value, you can get top tier branded five stars for $100. Shopping for locally produced clothes etc is stupidly cheap. Indonesian food is amazing, there's so much more to it than nasi goreng, and you can find great Japanese, Italian, etc too; these are comparatively expensive but lunch at the Italian place in the Ritz-Carlton was under $10. The nightlife scene is wild, although you need to make local friends to really get into it. And it's reasonably safe, violent crime is basically unknown and I never had problems with pickpockets (although they do exist) or scammers. I think Jakarta's biggest problems are lack of marketing and top tier obvious attractions. Bangkok has royal palaces and temples galore plus a wild reputation for go-go bars etc, Jakarta does not, so nobody even considers it as a vacation destination.
- duffyjp 11mo agoI was there ~20 years ago. I had made friends with some Indonesia students in college and joined them on a trip home. We were mostly in Surabaya, but did spend some time in Jakarta as well. We had a great time. The language is a hidden gem, you can learn enough to get around on the flight over which I can't say about any other SEA language. Phonetic spellings, Latin alphabet, no tonal sounds, dead easy grammar and a million loan words you already know. Jakarta is definitely for the adventurous though, and you had better have an iron stomach.
- pat_erichsen 11mo agoIf anyone is looking for a good movie to get a sense of what Jakarta is like, highly recommend "The Year of Living Dangerously" with Mel Gibson/Sigourney Weaver https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086617/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086617/
- mmooss 11mo agoHere's a better link, though maybe it's too late: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-25/jakarta-overtakes-tokyo-as-worlds-largest-city/106049122 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-25/jakarta-overtakes-tok... It was posted to HN recently (not by me): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46042447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46042447
- School-Cotton 11mo agoHow is "city" defined, for the purposes of this metric? Is it the administrative boundaries of Jakarta according to Indonesian law? The catchment area where a large fraction of people commute to the city center? Something else?
- asmosoinio 11mo agoI was wondering the same. I guess it comes from this "UN figure": > The UN figures include a mixture of city proper, metropolitan area, and urban area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities I haven't looked into the details of that definition. But there is a somewhat standard definition to "metropolitan area" derived from something like "area where there is at least X per square km" So it's not related a somewhat random definition of a "city" and its borders.
- asmosoinio 11mo agoIf you find a better link for the methodology please let me know. But simplified it's maybe exactly this from the UN reports glossary: > Cities: According to the Degree of Urbanization methodology, contiguous geographic areas with a high population density (at least 1,500 people per km2) and a total population of at least 50,000 inhabitants. https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/undesa_pd_2025_wup2025_summary_of_results.pdf https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve...
- refurb 11mo agoI always find discussion of the world biggest city a bit of a pointless exercise considering it’s entirely dependent on how administrative lines are drawn. Highly fragmented metro areas are regarded as smaller than consolidated metro areas, whereas they might be the same size overall.
- paxys 11mo agoThese rankings always consider city to be a contiguous metro area, regardless of how internal lines are drawn. Otherwise most of them wouldn't show up on the list at all. "Los Angeles" for example has close to 200 indiviudal cities.
- refurb 11mo agoThat is true for this report, based on the methodology https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/undesa_pd_2025_faq_wup25.pdf https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve... However, instead of an arbitrary administrative definition, they used an arbitrary cutoff for population density. Thus it still comes down to a subjective drawing of lines around the city.
- yieldcrv 11mo agoand Los Angeles City would still be on the list
- paxys 11mo agoLos Angeles city has 3.8 million people so no, it is nowhere close to a megacity.
- dredmorbius 11mo agoDemographics and geography approaches this through the notion of "metropolitan statistical area" (MSA) in the US, or equivalent concepts elsewhere. An MSA is defined as a "geographical region with a relatively high population density at its core and close economic ties throughout the region". <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area> Other rough equivalents are metropolitan areas (UK), census metropolitan areas (Canada), functional urban areas (FUA) (EU), urban agglomerations (India). All of these use functional and behavioural characteristics to get around simple boundary-demarkation. Urbanisations may even span national borders, as with the greater Basel region, Lake Constance, or Strasbourg-Ortenau.
- tim333 11mo agoFor Europeans wanting a megacity experience within weekend jaunt range, Cairo can be kind of a mad experience, with things like the Garbage City https://www.adventuresnsunsets.com/cairo-garbage-city/ https://www.adventuresnsunsets.com/cairo-garbage-city/ and cave church https://www.egypttoursportal.com/en-gb/blog/egypt-attractions/cairo-attractions/cave-church/ https://www.egypttoursportal.com/en-gb/blog/egypt-attraction... plus the usual pyramids etc. Very cheap Ubers like $8/hr.
- justonceokay 11mo agoTry not to be a woman
- teaearlgraycold 11mo agoOr gay
- renewiltord 11mo agoFamily went together. Mum, dad, and us two boys. ‘07 or so. Very friendly people. But armed soldiers everywhere. Perhaps have changed since then.
- fnordian_slip 11mo agoWell, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Crisis_(2011%E2%80%932014) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Crisis_(2011%E2%80%93... definitely did change some things around. I currently would not recommend visiting Egypt, when there are so many safer and more pleasant options available.
- tim333 11mo agoWe were in a group with women but solo might be hard work.
- john_minsk 11mo agoWhat's the problem?
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- nephihaha 11mo agoBehind a paywall.
- throwaway742 11mo agohttps://archive.ph/qoimk https://archive.ph/qoimk
- andreygrehov 11mo agoI don’t understand the point of concentrating everything in a megacity. Take New York as an example: the cost of living is through the roof, while the quality of life is often the opposite. Corporations should stop renting offices in the most expensive areas of the country and instead prioritize locations where housing is affordable and people don’t have to spend more than 10 minutes commuting to work. The state should de-prioritize NYC and encourage companies to invest in smaller cities. This would bring jobs to those areas, reduce pressure on NYC, and support broader infrastructure development. Apply that approach across the country, and suddenly the entire nation can function more efficiently instead of relying on a few overloaded hubs.
- elric 11mo agoDensity has some obvious advantages. It also has a bunch of disadvantages. The millions of people living there seem to think it's worth the tradeoff, at least to the point of having enough inertia not to move elsewhere.
- Neil44 11mo agoNobody's forcing anyone to live in a city, they want to because the jobs and culture and opportunities are there. And companies want to be there because that's where the workers are. It's a feedback loop, I guess cost is the main moderator. There is an argument for decentralizing a little but surely it's the governments job to incentivize that.
- returningfory2 11mo agoThere's a whole subfield of economics that studies clustering in cities ("agglomeration"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration There are lots of benefits. Also, my own take is that the high rent in NYC is sort of proof that the quality of life is high. Or at least, NYC is desirable. People are willing to pay a premium to live there, which is a strong signal of their preference.
- zamadatix 11mo agoI think it's a situation akin to HOAs where there are absolutely people who prefer being in an HOA but it has this feedback loop which results in significantly more people being in an HOA than would prefer to be just because there are limited options and undoing an HOA is higher friction than new construction including one. On one hand this is still preference. They pick to be in a city over the other options available. On the other hand the other options aren't available because enough people are already interested in centralizing life choice options into a city and so it just drives that feedback loop over and over as more people choose where the option of the day is rather than what they'd like. The only thing holding this loop back from runaway is large cities eventually seem to have population growth fall behind cost of living growth and that stops the runaway for the particular city. Perhaps more simply: the immediate and big picture preference often don't align and this misalignment further drives a larger gap in those two preferences over time until the cost to scale the city finally becomes too high.
- kopirgan 11mo agoBeen going there since mid 90s, not that often recently. Seen it change and yet stay the same.. Not cheap anymore but ofc not comparing to Singapore. Issue is getting around.. For a city of that size + national capital, public transport options very limited. More like HCM or PP than Bangkok or KL. Comparisons to Thailand inappropriate cos almost no pub culture and "entertainment". Even top end hotel bar like Raffles had near zero choice for wine etc. And lots more expensive. Wish them well though.. Nicest people, nice memories.
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- zkmon 11mo agoBeing a large city should no longer be seen as a positive attribute. It just looks like a bigger wound in the middle of a forest and natural terrain. Packing millions of people into a vast paved area does no good. It socks all life from country due to concentration of work and services. Early human settlements had an objective of collective strength against the predators, invaders and shared help for all problem. Cities no longer have these goals or characteristics. They exist only due to a vicious cycle of jobs and worker availability which propel each other because of each other.
- School-Cotton 11mo agoDense cities use up a lot less resources and land than the same number of people spread out in smaller cities or suburbs.
- yourusername 11mo agoThere's probably a point where that stops scaling. Is there any proof a city of 40 million uses less resources per capita than a city of 1 million? 40 cities of 1 million seems preferable because then you can actually get outside the city once in a while without it being 2+ hours of travel.
- chengiz 11mo agoIt is unclear what leaving the city quickly has to do scaling or resources per capita. You seem to value this; most big city dwellers do not.
- rothos 11mo ago> The U.N.'s report highlighted what areas are expected to be the next megacities and surpass the 10 million mark, including: > [...] > - Hajipur, India. Estimated population of Hajipur in 2025 is 213k people. Not sure why it's on the list. Throws the rest of the article into question for me.
- silentguy 11mo agoI have sent an email to the contacts listed in the press release regarding this. Let's see what they say. I believe you are correct. They have made a mistake in the report. Hajipur is a small town near Patna, Bihar which is much bigger than it is.
- silentguy 11mo agoThis is the response I received. >Thanks for your email. In our online FAQ for the DEGURBA methodology (https://population.un.org/wup/faqs https://population.un.org/wup/faqs), you'll see: Does DEGURBA combine too many cities into a single conurbation? In countries where population data were only available at relatively coarse resolution and densities are generally high, these estimates may include conurbation that are too large. For example, the DEGURBA-defined city that includes Hajipur in India appears to aggregate multiple distinct cities and towns. Using finer grained population data or even better a population grid based on a geo-coded census may lead to this conurbation shrinking and turning into a multitude of individual cities and towns. The following online portal provides you more details: https://human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/raster.php https://human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/raster.php - Based on this methodology, Hajipur corresponds to the whole red urban centre combining multiple contiguous urban units. If you zoom on the interactive map you'll see the name of smaller urban places included. For the most recent periods, the initial units of analysis for the population grid were the 5,967 Sub-districts/Tehsils/Cercles of the 2011 census of India projected using the 2001-2011 censuses. Population distribution is downscaled using estimates of building volume from the GHSL, which you can see here: https://human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/visualisation.php#lnlt=@25.72058,85.25556,10z&v=301&ln=0&gr=ds&lv=00000000000000000000000010000000000000011111&lo=aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa&pg=V https://human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/visualisati... You can see that Patna is the larger/closest urban area, but it is not physically connected to the rest of the urban area due to the river in between. SO Patna appears as distinct urban area.
- simonebrunozzi 11mo agoWere they going to "move" Jakarta to a new location, because of climate change?
- N_Lens 11mo agoI think the title should more accurately state "most populous" because Greater Tokyo is still significantly larger in the built up land area around the Tokyo Metropolis (Almost 2x Jakarta)
- fleroviumna 11mo ago[dead]