Canada has less people, even with a 10% increase in the last 4 years through imigration, some of which is from Indonesea presumably including a significant number from Jakarta, where the civil infrastructure must be epic
I'm always surprised how big the population of Indonesia is yet it seems culturally underrepresented in the world compared to a lot of smaller countries
Almost 300 million people but it rarely comes up in the news or pop media
They're #4 by population, and the world's most populous Muslim country, but are also only a quarter century removed from a corrupt authoritarian regime.
They have very little in the way of exported cultural products ("The Raid" films?), are much worse in sports than would be expected based on population, spend relatively little on their military and don't do much in the way of regional power projection, and are growing economically but not remarkably, so there just aren't that many avenues for them to make international news.
Yeah and... articles like these are reminders that cultural representation as a concept in general is kind of broken. There's no website which topic distribution follows actual distribution of population of the world[1].
I always thought it was interesting that, I guess due to Arab racism, it's also not very represented in the community of Islam.
Like, Indonesia (and together with Malaysia) makes up a really significant portion of all muslims. As an outsider it still seems like there isn't much cultural overlap- which seems like, even if Indonesian culture wouldn't reach Europe or the USA, at least it would reach to the middle east / north africa because of the the religious link.
I could have drawn some parallels between Catholics and South America, but there's already two Popes that have Latin American roots.
I used to spend a lot of time in Jakarta for work, and it's an underrated city. Yes, it's hot, congested, polluted and largely poor, but so is Bangkok.
Public transport remains not great, but it's improved a lot with the airport link, the metro, LRT, Transjakarta BRT. SE Asia's only legit high speed train now connects to Bandung in minutes. Grab/Gojek (Uber equivalents) make getting around cheap and bypass the language barrier. Hotels are incredible value, you can get top tier branded five stars for $100. Shopping for locally produced clothes etc is stupidly cheap. Indonesian food is amazing, there's so much more to it than nasi goreng, and you can find great Japanese, Italian, etc too; these are comparatively expensive but lunch at the Italian place in the Ritz-Carlton was under $10. The nightlife scene is wild, although you need to make local friends to really get into it. And it's reasonably safe, violent crime is basically unknown and I never had problems with pickpockets (although they do exist) or scammers.
I think Jakarta's biggest problems are lack of marketing and top tier obvious attractions. Bangkok has royal palaces and temples galore plus a wild reputation for go-go bars etc, Jakarta does not, so nobody even considers it as a vacation destination.
> you need to make local friends to really get into it
Well, that might sound like an impossible task!! So, just sign up for Experiences from any of the leading travel portals. They’d get you into any of the local party scenes.
This could be a general issue with SE Asia, but one thing that was a breath of fresh air for me as I departed Jakarta from my Bali trip last year was a thought that I no longer need to worry about quality of water being used to wash salad veggies or clean my toothbrush with.
Clean safe water from the sink was definitely not something I experienced in Bali in 2024 and I had the similar impression in Jakart
Sounds wonderful if you're OK with Indonesia's ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of West Papua.
> Widespread atrocities committed by Indonesian forces have led human rights groups to describe the situation as a genocide against the indigenous Papuan population. Reports of mass killings, forced displacement, and sexual violence are extensive and credible. According to a 2007 estimate by scholar De R. G. Crocombe, between 100,000 and 300,000 Papuans have been killed since Indonesia's occupation began.[19][23] A 2004 report by Yale Law School argued that the scale and intent of Indonesia’s actions fall within the legal definition of genocide.[24] State violence has targeted women in particular. A 2013 and 2017 study by AJAR and the Papuan Women's Working Group found that 4 in 10 Papuan women reported suffering state abuse,[25] while a 2019 follow-up found similar results.[26][27][Note 1][Note 2]
> In 2022, the UN condemned what it described as "shocking abuses" committed by the Indonesian state, including the killing of children, disappearances, torture, and large-scale forced displacement. It called for "urgent and unrestricted humanitarian aid to the region."[28] Human Rights Watch (HRW) has noted that the Papuan region functions as a de facto police state, where peaceful political expression and independence advocacy are met with imprisonment and violence.[29] While some analysts argue that the conflict is aggravated by a lack of state presence in remote areas,[30] the overwhelming trend points to systemic state violence and neglect.
> Indonesia continues to block foreign access to the Papuan region, citing so-called "safety and security concerns", though critics argue this is to suppress international scrutiny of its genocidal practices
Is there any place you can go now that isn't doing a genocide? USA is out, Europe is out, Russia is out, China is out. Obviously the middle east is out. Most of Africa. Australia? They're strongly aligned with the USA though. And they did one in the past. Tiny Pacific islands but they're basically USA colonies?
So - hot, congested, polluted, no public transit, cheap taxis, cheap luxury hotels, amazing food, fun night activities (but you'll need to know locals). Other than the no crime claim (which I find dubious) you've just described every big city in every developing country on the planet.
Jakarta doesn’t need to turn itself into a sex tourism city like Bangkok. It shouldn’t. Thailand sold its people out to make some business and government people rich in my opinion.
I spent a lot of time in Jakarta. It has some serious issues like pollution, worst traffic in SEA, unwalkable city, actually far more expensive for what you get than other SEA areas. It isn’t surprising to me that people don’t want to travel there for holiday. There are far better places for tourism.
What? Jakarta's biggest problem is the rising sea level and the sinking ground.
Jakarta is one of the fastest sinking cities globally. Venice or Miami are nothing compared to this. 40% will be gone soon.
> it's hot, congested, polluted and largely poor, but so is Bangkok.
That's a wild comparison, makes me wonder how much time you spent in Bangkok. Bangkok has a much higher standard of living compared to Jakarta, and I've yet to meet anyone who spent more than a month in both places and prefers Jakarta. Living costs are cheaper in Jakarta for sure, but that's about it.
If anyone is looking for a good movie to get a sense of what Jakarta is like, highly recommend "The Year of Living Dangerously" with Mel Gibson/Sigourney Weaver
How is "city" defined, for the purposes of this metric? Is it the administrative boundaries of Jakarta according to Indonesian law? The catchment area where a large fraction of people commute to the city center? Something else?
I always find discussion of the world biggest city a bit of a pointless exercise considering it’s entirely dependent on how administrative lines are drawn.
Highly fragmented metro areas are regarded as smaller than consolidated metro areas, whereas they might be the same size overall.
I don’t understand the point of concentrating everything in a megacity. Take New York as an example: the cost of living is through the roof, while the quality of life is often the opposite. Corporations should stop renting offices in the most expensive areas of the country and instead prioritize locations where housing is affordable and people don’t have to spend more than 10 minutes commuting to work. The state should de-prioritize NYC and encourage companies to invest in smaller cities. This would bring jobs to those areas, reduce pressure on NYC, and support broader infrastructure development. Apply that approach across the country, and suddenly the entire nation can function more efficiently instead of relying on a few overloaded hubs.
Been going there since mid 90s, not that often recently. Seen it change and yet stay the same.. Not cheap anymore but ofc not comparing to Singapore.
Issue is getting around.. For a city of that size + national capital, public transport options very limited. More like HCM or PP than Bangkok or KL.
Comparisons to Thailand inappropriate cos almost no pub culture and "entertainment". Even top end hotel bar like Raffles had near zero choice for wine etc. And lots more expensive.
Wish them well though.. Nicest people, nice memories.
Being a large city should no longer be seen as a positive attribute. It just looks like a bigger wound in the middle of a forest and natural terrain. Packing millions of people into a vast paved area does no good. It socks all life from country due to concentration of work and services.
Early human settlements had an objective of collective strength against the predators, invaders and shared help for all problem. Cities no longer have these goals or characteristics. They exist only due to a vicious cycle of jobs and worker availability which propel each other because of each other.
Does DEGURBA combine too many cities into a single conurbation?
In countries where population data were only available at relatively coarse resolution and densities are generally high, these estimates may include conurbation that are too large. For example, the DEGURBA-defined city that includes Hajipur in India appears to aggregate multiple distinct cities and towns. Using finer grained population data or even better a population grid based on a geo-coded census may lead to this conurbation shrinking and turning into a multitude of individual cities and towns.
The following online portal provides you more details: https://human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/raster.php - Based on this methodology, Hajipur corresponds to the whole red urban centre combining multiple contiguous urban units. If you zoom on the interactive map you'll see the name of smaller urban places included. For the most recent periods, the initial units of analysis for the population grid were the 5,967 Sub-districts/Tehsils/Cercles of the 2011 census of India projected using the 2001-2011 censuses. Population distribution is downscaled using estimates of building volume from the GHSL, which you can see here: https://human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/visualisati...
You can see that Patna is the larger/closest urban area, but it is not physically connected to the rest of the urban area due to the river in between. SO Patna appears as distinct urban area.
I think the title should more accurately state "most populous" because Greater Tokyo is still significantly larger in the built up land area around the Tokyo Metropolis (Almost 2x Jakarta)
48 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 58.4 ms ] threadAnd the full report as PDF: https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.deve...
Key Facts: Number of megacities, urban areas with 10 million or more inhabitants has quadrupled from 8 in 1975 to 33 in 2025.
Jakarta is now the world’s most populous city, with nearly 42 million residents. The current population of Indonesia is 286 million.
In 2019, Indonesia said it will be moving its capital to Nusantara, a new city which is under construction.
Almost 300 million people but it rarely comes up in the news or pop media
They have very little in the way of exported cultural products ("The Raid" films?), are much worse in sports than would be expected based on population, spend relatively little on their military and don't do much in the way of regional power projection, and are growing economically but not remarkably, so there just aren't that many avenues for them to make international news.
1: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_per...
Like, Indonesia (and together with Malaysia) makes up a really significant portion of all muslims. As an outsider it still seems like there isn't much cultural overlap- which seems like, even if Indonesian culture wouldn't reach Europe or the USA, at least it would reach to the middle east / north africa because of the the religious link.
I could have drawn some parallels between Catholics and South America, but there's already two Popes that have Latin American roots.
Like how many of you can name a Chinese movie or pop star or TV show?
Public transport remains not great, but it's improved a lot with the airport link, the metro, LRT, Transjakarta BRT. SE Asia's only legit high speed train now connects to Bandung in minutes. Grab/Gojek (Uber equivalents) make getting around cheap and bypass the language barrier. Hotels are incredible value, you can get top tier branded five stars for $100. Shopping for locally produced clothes etc is stupidly cheap. Indonesian food is amazing, there's so much more to it than nasi goreng, and you can find great Japanese, Italian, etc too; these are comparatively expensive but lunch at the Italian place in the Ritz-Carlton was under $10. The nightlife scene is wild, although you need to make local friends to really get into it. And it's reasonably safe, violent crime is basically unknown and I never had problems with pickpockets (although they do exist) or scammers.
I think Jakarta's biggest problems are lack of marketing and top tier obvious attractions. Bangkok has royal palaces and temples galore plus a wild reputation for go-go bars etc, Jakarta does not, so nobody even considers it as a vacation destination.
Whats the food like for vegetarians/ vegans?
Well, that might sound like an impossible task!! So, just sign up for Experiences from any of the leading travel portals. They’d get you into any of the local party scenes.
Clean safe water from the sink was definitely not something I experienced in Bali in 2024 and I had the similar impression in Jakart
> Widespread atrocities committed by Indonesian forces have led human rights groups to describe the situation as a genocide against the indigenous Papuan population. Reports of mass killings, forced displacement, and sexual violence are extensive and credible. According to a 2007 estimate by scholar De R. G. Crocombe, between 100,000 and 300,000 Papuans have been killed since Indonesia's occupation began.[19][23] A 2004 report by Yale Law School argued that the scale and intent of Indonesia’s actions fall within the legal definition of genocide.[24] State violence has targeted women in particular. A 2013 and 2017 study by AJAR and the Papuan Women's Working Group found that 4 in 10 Papuan women reported suffering state abuse,[25] while a 2019 follow-up found similar results.[26][27][Note 1][Note 2]
> In 2022, the UN condemned what it described as "shocking abuses" committed by the Indonesian state, including the killing of children, disappearances, torture, and large-scale forced displacement. It called for "urgent and unrestricted humanitarian aid to the region."[28] Human Rights Watch (HRW) has noted that the Papuan region functions as a de facto police state, where peaceful political expression and independence advocacy are met with imprisonment and violence.[29] While some analysts argue that the conflict is aggravated by a lack of state presence in remote areas,[30] the overwhelming trend points to systemic state violence and neglect.
> Indonesia continues to block foreign access to the Papuan region, citing so-called "safety and security concerns", though critics argue this is to suppress international scrutiny of its genocidal practices
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_conflict
I'm curious, what does a beer or a glass of wine cost?
I spent a lot of time in Jakarta. It has some serious issues like pollution, worst traffic in SEA, unwalkable city, actually far more expensive for what you get than other SEA areas. It isn’t surprising to me that people don’t want to travel there for holiday. There are far better places for tourism.
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7a9fa31104334f3db4c01d0...
That's a wild comparison, makes me wonder how much time you spent in Bangkok. Bangkok has a much higher standard of living compared to Jakarta, and I've yet to meet anyone who spent more than a month in both places and prefers Jakarta. Living costs are cheaper in Jakarta for sure, but that's about it.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086617/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-25/jakarta-overtakes-tok...
It was posted to HN recently (not by me):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46042447
Highly fragmented metro areas are regarded as smaller than consolidated metro areas, whereas they might be the same size overall.
Issue is getting around.. For a city of that size + national capital, public transport options very limited. More like HCM or PP than Bangkok or KL.
Comparisons to Thailand inappropriate cos almost no pub culture and "entertainment". Even top end hotel bar like Raffles had near zero choice for wine etc. And lots more expensive.
Wish them well though.. Nicest people, nice memories.
Early human settlements had an objective of collective strength against the predators, invaders and shared help for all problem. Cities no longer have these goals or characteristics. They exist only due to a vicious cycle of jobs and worker availability which propel each other because of each other.
> [...]
> - Hajipur, India.
Estimated population of Hajipur in 2025 is 213k people. Not sure why it's on the list. Throws the rest of the article into question for me.
I believe you are correct. They have made a mistake in the report. Hajipur is a small town near Patna, Bihar which is much bigger than it is.
>Thanks for your email. In our online FAQ for the DEGURBA methodology (https://population.un.org/wup/faqs), you'll see:
Does DEGURBA combine too many cities into a single conurbation?
In countries where population data were only available at relatively coarse resolution and densities are generally high, these estimates may include conurbation that are too large. For example, the DEGURBA-defined city that includes Hajipur in India appears to aggregate multiple distinct cities and towns. Using finer grained population data or even better a population grid based on a geo-coded census may lead to this conurbation shrinking and turning into a multitude of individual cities and towns.
The following online portal provides you more details: https://human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/raster.php - Based on this methodology, Hajipur corresponds to the whole red urban centre combining multiple contiguous urban units. If you zoom on the interactive map you'll see the name of smaller urban places included. For the most recent periods, the initial units of analysis for the population grid were the 5,967 Sub-districts/Tehsils/Cercles of the 2011 census of India projected using the 2001-2011 censuses. Population distribution is downscaled using estimates of building volume from the GHSL, which you can see here: https://human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/visualisati...
You can see that Patna is the larger/closest urban area, but it is not physically connected to the rest of the urban area due to the river in between. SO Patna appears as distinct urban area.