Bar chart race: the most populous cities in the world

EB66 · on March 25, 2019

Fun video, but at least towards the end the population numbers don't seem terribly accurate. The video counts the population for the greater metro area of a given city (e.g., 38 mil for Tokyo), but there's no mention of Seoul. The population for the Seoul metro is 25+ million, NYC metro is 20+ million, Moscow metro is 20+ million, etc.

guelo · on March 25, 2019

Looking at the data source[1] it only has Seoul data until 1991 and it is 10.463 million.

[1] https://gist.githubusercontent.com/johnburnmurdoch/4199dbe55...

tzs · on March 25, 2019

Where's Tenochtitlan? Low estimates are around 200k population before the Spanish came, which is above several other cities listed at the start of the chart race.

_0nac · on March 25, 2019

Cute visualization, but the data is sketchy and handling of modern megalopolises is really inconsistent. If greater Tokyo is currently in the top spot at 38M, then greater Shanghai and greater Jakarta (Jabodetabek) should be #2 and #3.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_...

samstave · on March 25, 2019

Calling a slight BS:

Tokyo was and other cities were firebombed to HELL in 1945. And ~~MILLIONS~~ (war-winners-numbers state 330,000 - but I suspect that number is not accurate, see: MacNamera's comments) were killed in the razing of tokyo and other japanese cities during WWII and not a single frame in that video shows a drop-back in population during WWII years.

24gttghh · on March 25, 2019

Indeed:

http://www.metro.tokyo.jp/ENGLISH/ABOUT/HISTORY/history03.ht...

population was halved between 1940-45. But one cannot discount that perhaps most fled to the countryside rather than suffer further bombing...

trynumber9 · on March 25, 2019

it is spelt McNamara

Jun8 · on March 25, 2019

Interesting to compare with large cities in ancient history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_through...), e.g. if we did the graphics for 3500BC - 2800BC, Uruk would be have been continually number 1.

Sad thing is that, except for a few, many of these cities are gone: "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

RcouF1uZ4gsC · on March 25, 2019

Looking at the population of London, the effects of the Industrial Revolution become immediately apparent.

jashkenas · on March 25, 2019

This is a Guardian repost of a Financial Times video of a graphic by John Burn-Murdoch.

You can watch (and tinker with, or fork) the original here: https://observablehq.com/@johnburnmurdoch/bar-chart-race-the...

Since last week, folks have forked and published a whole bunch of fun versions, applying the form to different data sets: https://observablehq.com/search?query=Bar%20chart%20race

Some of my favorites are the baseball home run leaders (1), NFL receiving yards leaders (2), and global CO2 emissions leaders (3)...

1. https://observablehq.com/@darenwillman/bar-chart-race

2. https://observablehq.com/@stu/bar-chart-race-nfl-receiving-y...

3. https://observablehq.com/@drsimevans/bar-chart-race-the-coun...

sctb · on March 25, 2019

Thanks, we've updated the link from https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/21/500-years-in-....

ghouse · on March 25, 2019

And here is where it came from: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/b2fybb/ani...

shereadsthenews · on March 25, 2019

No, this is were it came from: https://observablehq.com/@johnburnmurdoch/bar-chart-race-the...