A Quick Visual Comparison - Cities of North America and Cities of Africa

First Map - "North America's Top 30 Largest Cities by Population":

With a population of 340+ million for the United States (compared to 270 million for the remainder of North America, Central America, and the Caribbean combined) I'm guessing most Americans would "assume" they would have most of the cities on this map. But . . . U.S. population is more spread around in many cases, while a lot of Central American and Caribbean countries (in particular) have one major city with 40-50% of the population.

Another thing I also noticed (and will mention more in tomorrow's segment on the U.N.'s methodology) is that the U.S. has several metropolitan areas that get "split up" into separate cities in this format. So for example, Dallas and Fort Worth (in Texas) are seen as separate cities. I've also noticed before working with secondary students on geography that they "assume" cities with major league sports franchises must be larger (and more important), rather than simply the site of a rich owner, a large stadium, or just a populated area to draw from. As an example, look at the number of MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA teams in Ohio - but spread amongst Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati (only Columbus is among the 50 largest US cities).

Finally, there would be a few surprises here (Santo Domingo, Guadalajara, and Monterrey all in the Top 8, for example) BUT compare the city sizes shown on this map with the size of African cities most Americans have never heard of in the second map . . .

I'm going to keep this one simple and (for the most part) let the graphics do the talking. All credit for these two maps goes to Visual Capitalist - I am showing the maps, but you need to use the links below to visit each map on their site and see the data they present along with each map.

They got their data from the United Nations' Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and specifically their Population Division. I will get into that resource more tomorrow - one of the things they have been working on the past 5-7 years (since just before the pandemic) is creating a common definition for urban areas, small towns, and rural areas. Before that, each nation or region of the world set their own definition (based on tradition, tax structures, or colonial systems) - now the idea is to be able to compare "apples to apples".

As we will see below, though, that may mess with our pre-defined beliefs in the way thing are as we learned them in school. For example, I grew up learning that New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles were the 3 big cities of the United States - no other cities were even close in population, culture, and sheer importance (and I think the news media would still tell you that). So to see that Chicago is not only significantly smaller than LA and NYC, but actually smaller than Houston made me question their methodology at first - only to discover it is simply a different way of defining the boundaries of the Chicago metro area. Does Chicago extend into NW Indiana? How about Southern Wisconsin? In the U.N.'s definition, once you go past the suburbs you are not in Chicago anymore.

Again, I will get into more details (and downloads) on that tomorrow. For now, let's focus on two maps based on that data from the U.N. . . .

Second Map - "Africa - The 50 Most Populous Cities":

You might have noticed the overlap map I used in the intro to compare relative sizes (Africa is a little larger, but not much). Now compare populations:

• Africa (at 1.5 billion people) is 250% larger than North America as shown on the map above (a little more than 600 million people).

• 25 years ago (at the turn of the century) that difference would have been closer to 40% larger (800 million for Africa, 550 million for North America).

So a big part of what is being reflected on this map is two key geographic facts - a) how fast Africa is growing in population, creating a substantial percentage of people under the age of 15; and b) how many of those people are moving to urban centers to look for work rather than remaining in rural parts of their countries.

I'll make two other observations (and then save some for tomorrow's more general look at the U.N.'s report on population):

First, look at the 10 largest cities on the map (in bold, with the larger font). A few might be familiar to Americans - Johannesburg, South Africa (from hosting World Cup soccer), or maybe Cairo or Alexandria, Egypt (cause every elementary student still studies the pharaohs, mummies, and pyramids). But how about Lagos, Nigeria; Kinshasa, Congo; or Luanda, Angola - all cities close to the size of Los Angeles or New York City? I suspect most of the African cities Americans could name would be because of things we value - like the movie "Casablanca", or safaris based out of Nairobi, or maybe Antananarivo (cause lots of kids wanted to learn about Madagascar - and the lemurs - after the movies).

And before I get too full of myself, I need to also remember that the rate of change in Africa is very hard to keep up with. I think I did a pretty comprehensive job of covering African geography for two decades, and yet I look a at this map and see several cities I've never heard of before. Banha in Egypt; Coyah in Guinea; Onitsha, Owerri, and Kaduna in Nigeria; Beni and Kasai-Oriental in Congo. Others we studied as the capitals of small countries along the Gold Coast of West Africa - now cities like Lome (in Togo), Cotonou (in Benin), and Yaounde (in Cameroon) are all larger than my own Denver metropolitan area. And I can't forget my students' favorite spelling challenge - Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso! (now over 3 million in size).

A few basic links - more to come with the second part tomorrow . . .

Maps

"Ranked: The 30 Largest Cities in North America by Population" (infographic), Visual Capitalist, Jan 2026, https://www.visualcapitalist.com/30-largest-cities-in-north-america-by-population/

"Mapped: The 50 Largest Cities in Africa by Population" (infographic), Visual Capitalist, Jan 2026, https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-50-largest-cities-in-africa-by-population/

Other Referenced Background Material:

"2025 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects", United Nations' Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, Nov 2025,

"Countries in the world by population (2026)" (used for comparisons), Worldometer, Jan 2026, https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/

The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2026, (used for historical and land area comparisons), Skyhorse Publishing, published Nov 2025