With more efficient agricultural practices, better sanitation, and other technological improvements, cities were able to support bigger populations. However, thanks to the Industrial Revolution, the floodgates opened up. The 1 Million Markįor the first minute of animation-and up until the late 18th century-not a single city was able to eclipse the 1 million person mark. If the latter two names sound unfamiliar, that’s because they were key historical locations in the Vijayanagara and Bengal Empires respectively, but neither are the sites of modern-day cities. In China, the cities of Beijing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, and Nanjing all made the top 10 list, while India itself held two of the most populous cities at the time, Vijayanagar and Gauda. In the 16th century, which is where the animation starts, cities in China and India were dominant in terms of population. Today’s animation comes to us from John Burn-Murdoch with the Financial Times, and it visualizes cities ranked by population in a bar chart race over the course of a 500-year timeframe.īeijing starts in the lead in the year 1500, with a population of 672,000: Rank Not only are they all world-class cities that still serve as global hubs of commerce, but these cities also share a relatively rare and important historical designation.Īt specific points in history, each of these cities outranked all others on the planet in terms of population, granting them the exclusive title as the single most populated city globally. What do Beijing, Tokyo, Istanbul, London, and New York City all have in common? Animation: The Most Populous Cities, Over 500 Years

Most populous cities