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View all search resultsGreater Jakarta becomes world’s most populous megacity
Higher urban sprawl from surrounding areas may put a heavier burden on Jakarta to accommodate the public needs particularly because of the soaring cost of living and increasingly competitive job market, experts have warned.
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A woman washes dishes on Wednesday in a crowded neighborhood in the Tanah Tinggi subdistrict of Jakarta. The 2025 edition of World Urbanization Prospects issued by the United Nations on Nov. 18 names Jakarta and its surrounding areas the world's most populous city with 42 million people, followed by Dhaka, Bangladesh (37 million) and long-time title holder Tokyo, Japan (33 million). (Antara/Muhammad Rizky Febriansyah)
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reater Jakarta and its neighboring areas have dethroned Tokyo in the United Nation’s list of the world’s most populous cities thanks to increasing urban sprawl, which experts warn may put heavier burdens on the capital city in accommodating public needs.
The 2025 edition of World Urbanization Prospects, launched on Nov. 18, named Jakarta the world’s most populous city with close to 42 million inhabitants, followed by Dhaka, Bangladesh (37 million) and long-time title holder Tokyo (33 million). The report was issued by the UN think tank Department of Economic Social Affairs (UN DESA).
The figure cited by the UN DESA was more than four times the number recorded by Statistics Indonesia (BPS), which counts only around 12 million people registered as residents of Jakarta’s five municipalities and Thousand Islands regency.
The UN defines a city as any cluster of contiguous geographic areas with a density of at least 1,500 inhabitants per square kilometer (sq km) and a total population of at least 50,000.
For the 2025 report, the think tank overhauled an approach used since its first edition issued in 1991, which ranked cities based on reported national statistics. It used the definition to count densely populated communities neighboring Jakarta to define the degree of urbanization in the capital city.
The “degree of urbanization” refers to the methodology to yield estimates of the populations living in cities, towns and rural areas that are comparable across countries and over time, making the world appear more urbanized than national statistics suggest, according to the UN.
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