Jakarta overtakes Tokyo, to become world's largest city

Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is the world’s largest urban centre with a population of almost 42 million, according to a report by the United Nations.

In year 2000, Japan’s Tokyo was the largest city in the world, but slower population growth in the previous over two decades it has now been surpassed by Jakarta and Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka.

The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ Population Division found Jakarta and Dhaka, with its population of nearly 37 million people, now crossed ahead Tokyo’s 33 million.

Dhaka is expected to become the world’s largest city by 2050, while Tokyo’s population is projected to decline over the next 25 years — seeing Japan’s shrinking ageing population.

Nine of the 10 most populous cities on the planet are located in Asia, the report’s authors said, with Cairo in Egypt the only non-Asian city making the top 10.

Elisa Sutanudjaja, director of the Jakarta-based Rujak Centre for Urban Studies, said the report confirmed what urbanists already knew — that Jakarta’s population had exceeded that of Tokyo for years.

The enormity of Jakarta’s population posed major challenges, she said, not least because of poor coordination between local governments

Jakarta routinely deals with extreme traffic congestion, pollution and flooding.

Indonesia’s government had announced in 2019 that it would move the capital city off the densely populated island of Java to Borneo.

But the project to build capital city of Nusantara, is behind schedule and has struggled to attract investment.

Urbanization

Cities were home to 45 per cent of the world’s 8.2 billion people in 2025, up from just one in five people in 1950, according to the UN report.

It found the number of megacities — those with a population more than 10 million — had quadrupled since 1975 from eight to 33.

Nineteen of the world’s megacities are located in Asia.

Apart of Jakarta, Dhaka and Tokyo, other seven mega cities by population included New India’s Delhi and China’s Shanghai with 30 mln population each, Guangzhou in China 28 mln, Cairo 26 mln, Manila 25 mln, Kolkata 23 mln and Seoul 22 mln people.