When talking about the size of a city, there are really just two measurements that matter. The geographic size of the city and the population of the city. Both of these factors are important and tell you a lot about the city in question.

For example, perhaps the most famous city in the world is New York City, and it is unquestionably a big city. In fact, when people are asked to name the biggest city in the world, it is not at all uncommon to answer New York City (though it is wrong). NYC has a population of over 8,300,000 people, and has an area of 1.21K km2 (468.48 square miles). While this is not the largest city in the USA geographically, it is the most populated city. Geographically, the largest city in the USA is Sitka, Alaska, which boasts an incredible 7434.04 km2 (2,870.3 square miles), which absolutely dwarfs the size of NYC. With just 10,000 residents, however, things are a lot less crowded.

If you want to know the largest city in the world by both population and geographic size, you’ll need to go to Chongqing, China.

This city is located toward the center of China, and has a long and storied history dating back at least 3,000 years. It has been one of the major cities of China for centuries, but it only became a true megalopolis in the last 100 years or so. The city is a mind boggling 82,4000 square kilometers (31,815 square miles) in size, and is home to more than 32 million people.

This unique city is located near the Jialing River and the Yangtze river, and is home to mountainous cliffs and other natural features that might not sound like they would be conducive to such a large city. Oliver Wainwright is an architecture and design critic for the Guardian and a regular visitor to Chongqing.

In the Guardian, he wrote:

“It is a place where neighborhoods cling to cliffs, connected by elevated roads 20 stories up in the air. Metro lines emerge from tunnels through the mountains, only to plunge straight through the middle of residential skyscrapers, which themselves sprout improbably from the sheer slopes. To get to places that looked like a couple of blocks away, I found myself taking steep staircases that led to underground escalators, then across walkways to lifts that ferried me up the side of a cliff. Cable cars swooshed past outdoor plazas, where what I thought was the ground level turned out to be the roof terrace of an office block, which plunged 30 stories down into the valley below.”

The cities massive size does include the surrounding rural areas, which are 14 times larger than the city center itself. About 70% of those 32 million people, however, live in that city center, making it perhaps the busiest place in the world.

This city is relatively unknown by most people outside of China, though that is starting to change. It is gaining awareness largely through TikTok videos where locals or tourists travel through the city showing how roads, stores, apartments, trains, and everything else in the city is literally built on top of each other.

With 20+ stories of infrastructure levels (plus buildings that go much higher than that) it is a surreal place to see. Residents can easily live their entire lives in this city without ever leaving since it was designed to have everything they need.

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