What are the least known BIG cities in the world? (neighbourhoods, living in)

[paull805]

Good list , but I think the following are fairly well known.

In Morocco:
Casablanca

In Brazil:
Salvador

[britinparis]

Originally Posted by SophieLL

So, is it Buenos Aires (13 millon metro area) fairly unknown too? Im interested in this. I know this place is full of international tourists but maybe on a global scale and considering how big it is it isnt as known as it should be?
Montevideo is more understandable since its way way smaller than BA in a way way less populated and known country.
I thought BA was the 2nd more known of the southern cone cities, just after Rio, but maybe im wrong?

I think Buenos Aires is very well known. Everyone knows Evita, Maradona, Tango... most people know it's the Paris of South America, very European, and it's a very popular tourist destination.

Sao Paolo - which is much bigger - is much more of an enigma I think.

[asubram3]

Considering it's population and historic importance, Philadelphia.

Outside the US, it's much less well-known than cities like Atlanta, Houston, Miami or Seattle.

Another relatively unknown city internationally is Phoenix.

[Trimac20]

Originally Posted by asubram3

Considering it's population and historic importance, Philadelphia.

Outside the US, it's much less well-known than cities like Atlanta, Houston, Miami or Seattle.

Another relatively unknown city internationally is Phoenix.

I disagree. I think it's as well known as those four cities, or at least almost as well known.

Originally Posted by Trimac20

^ 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.

I enjoy that there is still plenty of relatively unknown major cities that have a lot of mystery about them, such as a lot of the cities I said in the earlier post mostly in East/South/Southeast Asia, and Central Asia.

However, some places (such as countries. nature scenery areas, cities/towns) still deserve more attention from more people if they have enough good qualities about them, so I also don’t mind if some of those places get discovered more.

Most of Europe is relatively well known, but that is not true for all of it.

Some major cities in Europe still don’t seem that known with international perception (Gothenburg, Lyon, Toulouse, Lille, Ljubljana, Sofia, Hamburg, Leipzig, Cologne, Stuttgart, Skopje, Minsk, Tirana, Chisinau, Podgorica etc.) but most of them have below 1 million people, and don’t quite make the most unknown cities in the world category, even if some might come close.

Also, Asia might just have more major cities with a population of 1 million+, especially 5 million+ than Europe, North America, and Australia so that makes it more likely to have more unknown major cities because more of them exist.

What are your opinions for some other Chinese cities such as Nanjing, Hangzhou, Kunming, Wuhan, Harbin, Guangzhou, Qingdao, and Dalian?

A lot of people probably confuse Nagoya with Nagano because they have such similar names, so they mix it up and might not realize Nagano is a much smaller Japanese Alps town while Nagoya is a metropolis with 2 to 5 million people.

Fukuoka is another unknown major Japanese city.

What are your thoughts for some other cities on that list in Category 1 such as Bangalore, Chennai, Belo Horizonte, and for Category 2 Zhengzhou, Fuzhou, Jinan, Busan, Gwangju, Kaohsiung, Taichung, Almaty, Tbilisi, Baku, Dushanbe, and Bishkek?

Originally Posted by paull805

Good list , but I think the following are fairly well known.

In Morocco:
Casablanca

In Brazil:
Salvador

For Morocco, most people I knew seem to just know about Marrakesh, but not Casablanca. For a long time, that is how I also viewed those cities in Morocco.

For Brazil, a lot of people would confuse the Brazilian city of Salvador with San Salvador in the country of El Salvador because of the name being so similar.

Belo Horizonte, Recife, and Fortaleza are certainly very unknown major Brazilian cities to the world.

I wrote a total of 57 cities in the list, so 2 out of 57 is not bad.

Originally Posted by

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:

In China:
Hefei
Zhengzhou
Fuzhou
Xiamen
Jinan
Suzhou
Xi’an
Changsha
Wuxi
Zibo
Urumqi

In South Korea:
Busan
Daegu
Incheon
Gwangju
Daejeon

In Taiwan:
Kaohsiung
Taichung

In Japan:
Fukuoka

For India:
Jaipur
Surat

For Indonesia:
Meden
Bekasi
Semarang

In Kazakhstan:
Almaty
Astana

In Georgia:
Tbilisi

In Azerbaijan:
Baku

In Kyrgyzstan:
Bishkek

In Armenia:
Yerevan

In Uzbekistan:
Tashkent

In Tajikistan:
Dushanbe

In Morocco:
Casablanca

In Gabon:
Libreville

In Brazil:
Salvador
Fortaleza
Recife

[paull805]

Originally Posted by

For Morocco, most people I knew seem to just know about Marrakesh, but not Casablanca. For a long time, that is how I also viewed those cities in Morocco.

For Brazil, a lot of people would confuse the Brazilian city of Salvador with San Salvador in the country of El Salvador because of the name being so similar.

Belo Horizonte, Recife, and Fortaleza are certainly very unknown major Brazilian cities to the world.

Do you think people are stupid?

People can know more than one city in a country.

How would people confuse a Brazilian city with a capital city of a central American country?

I have heard of all those Brazilian cities and I am no expert.

Originally Posted by paull805

Do you think people are stupid?

People can know more than one city in a country.

How would people confuse a Brazilian city with a capital city of a central American country?

I have heard of all those Brazilian cities and I am no expert.

What in particular about my recent post caused you to make such a false, absurd statement with that question in the first sentence?

There was nothing about my recent post that would warrant such a response for that.

A lot of people are smart/intelligent, especially in the World forum on this website.

Of course I already know people can know more than one city in a county.

Are you saying someone is “stupid” if someone would confuse a Brazilian city with the capital city of El Salvador that has such a similar name as that country and the city there: The city of Salvador in Brazil vs. San Salvador in El Salvador? Also, if some people do not know a few Brazilian and Moroccan cities? That seems frivolous.

You should not be so judgmental of people just because of something such as that.

People's intellectual abilities has a wide variation for how it can be shown, quantified, and measured, so I guess you just forgot that when you wrote that post.

A bit ironic just one post before you said what I wrote was a great list for this thread topic.

[paull805]

Maybe you should have more faith in peoples intelligence.

Salvador is a fairly well known city in Brazil, it is also the city of Bahia football club whereas San Salvador is renowned world wide for being probably the most violent city in the world and El Salvador as a country had a war where over 100,000 people died in their cival war not to far from the American border, people have heard of San Salvador.

[Trimac20]

Originally Posted by

For Morocco, most people I knew seem to just know about Marrakesh, but not Casablanca. For a long time, that is how I also viewed those cities in Morocco.

For Brazil, a lot of people would confuse the Brazilian city of Salvador with San Salvador in the country of El Salvador because of the name being so similar.

Belo Horizonte, Recife, and Fortaleza are certainly very unknown major Brazilian cities to the world.

I wrote a total of 57 cities in the list, so 2 out of 57 is not bad.

I'd say Casablanca is actually the better known of the two, largely because of the famous 1941 film.