Continuity and change in the world’s 20 largest cities

David Satterthwaite looks at changes in the rankings for the world's largest cities, revealing which cities have surged up the top 20, and which have fallen.  

Having already looked at how the list of the world’s 100 largest cities changed from 1800 to today, including projections to 2035, in this second blog of the series, I want to look at the changes in rank of the 20 largest cities over the last 70 years.

As with the 100 largest cities list discussed in the previous blog, there are aspects of both continuity and rapid change. We see little change between the cities listed in 2000 and 2020, but we do see a notable change in the ranking.