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Dhaka, Bangladesh - 7 million with metro of 13-14 million
Chongqing, China - 'metro' of 28 million, although the city region includes a huge area
Tianjin, China - Metro of 10 million
Kinshasa, Congo - Metro of 8-9 million
Tehran, Iran - Metro of 8.5 million
Bangalore, India - metro of 8.4 million Lahore, India - metro of 8.1 million
Shenyang, China - metro of 8.1 million
Bandung, Indonesia - metro of 7.4 million
Changsha, China - metro of 7.0 million Hyderabad, India - metro of 6.8 million
Bogota, Colombia - metro of 6.8 million
Surabaya, Indonesia - metro of 6.7 million
Changchun, China - metro of 6.5 million Amedebad, India - metro of 5.6 million
Harbin, China - metro of 5.6 million - somewhat well known for it's climate
Err... Lahore is in Pakistan, not India
Hyderabad is the 6th city of India. It is capital of Andhra Pradesh, a Telugu-speaking state. It is well-known in India for a particularly spicy type of cuisine. Plus a rather-polluted place
Ahmedabad is a second-tier city in India. It is known for cotton/garment-industry, earning the sobriquet 'Manchester of the East'. Frankly, it is somewhat of a lack-lustre type of place, not that well-known in India itself.
Perhaps this will change however, with the rise of Brazil as a power? But even Rio got the World Cup. Poor SP!
Rio is not the only city in Brazil that will have World Cup games....12 cities will participate......in fact, São Paulo is supposed to have the opening ceremony, while Rio gets the closing one. The Olympics on the other hand, are going to take place in Rio alone. São Paulo might be bigger and be the country's financial center, but is far from being a touristic city, so that's why they keep this low profile....
Changsha and Changchun I've never heard of, and I am considered by all who know me to be very knowledgeable in geography (not boasting, just stating the facts).
There are many large cities in China without name recognition, as there are in Russia. I've heard of Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Ufa, Voronezh, but know absolutely nothing about them. Tolyatti (719k) I've never even heard of until I went to Wikipedia's list of towns and cities in Russia by population.
Add Guangzhou to your list. Over here in America, hardly any non Chinese have heard of it, even in Chinese dense areas! They have not heard of Guangzhou as Canton, either.
Cantonese is growing in obscurity, as well, as in many areas in th States the vast majority of Chinese speak Mandarin. Now, Cantonese is being mistaken by non Chinese (including other Asians) as Vietnamese!
08-26-2012, 10:14 AM
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There is still plenty of unknown major cities in the world with international perception. Most of them are in East/South/Southeast Asia, but also in Central Asia, and Eurasia Caucasus regions.
There is also a few of them in South America and Africa.
Europe, North America, and Australia does not appear to have even one city that would qualify for this thread topic with being some of the least known cities in the world.
The country with the most unknown major cities for international perception is located in China.
China has a phenomenal amount of big cities/major cities that a lot of people in other areas of the world don’t really know about yet.
My list with the specific cities related to this post:
Category 1: For huge cities with population of 5 million+ in city limits and metro area: *I was going to put the exact population statistics for all of them but I don’t have enough time and maybe the post would be too long with that for now:
All of these cities in China:
Nanjing
Hangzhou
Wuhan
Shenyang
Tianjin
Guangzhou
Shenzhen
Dongguan
Chongqing
Chengdu
Harbin
Kunming
Qingdao
Dalian
In Japan:
Nagoya
For India:
Bangalore
Chennai
Pune
Hyderabad
In Brazil:
Belo Horizonte
For Indonesia:
Surabaya
Bandung
Category 2: I also would add a new category with cities that have between 700,000 to 4 million people and a metro of 1 million to 4.9 million. Even if they are not as big as the cities in the other category, they still contain a large significant population size:
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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^ Very extensive list, I think there are many many 1 million+ cities all over the world most people have never even heard of. The thing with Europe is that, since it's so well known any city with over a million is going to be world famous. I think Amsterdam doesn't even have a million yet it's so famous. Chinese cities, like American cities, can suffer from 'anybigcityitis', but I still think China has more unique cities that the world doesn't know about. Some new cities like Shenzhen or Dongguan are new, generic and without character, but cities like Suzhou or Xian bristle with history. Nagoya, for it's size, does seem really unknown actually. I think I heard of Kobe (because of the earthquake) and Nagano (winter Olympics) long before I ever heard of Nagoya.
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Plus a rather-polluted place
