New Zealand, City of...

So, Statistics New Zealand recently announced the latest estimate of the population of New Zealand (these things are always estimates, what, you think we know exactly how many people there are at any given moment?). The number is: 4,414,400. Yes, that is a lot of 4s.

But, how big is that? Let's put that in perspective in terms of cities. Namely... let's note that there are 44 other cities that have populations that are larger than the entirely of New Zealand.

Some of them are obvious, London, Tokyo, New York. The one that is just bigger than NZ is Surat. Um, can't say I've ever heard of it, but it has 4,462,002 people. (That does sound precise, but I note that the number is a multiple of 3, which makes me wonder... but that's something I might talk about another day.)

Let's talk about Jakarta. Why? Because, at number 13, it has a population that is more than twice that of all of New Zealand! Yes, 13 cities could contain multiple NZs!

And the biggest city is Shanghai. It's not just one New Zealand. It's more than two New Zealand. It even breaks three New Zealands... in fact, by over 150,000 people, it has a population that breaks over four times the entire population of New Zealand!

Fortunately, our population density is a bit lower. We may be smaller than some cities, but we have room to breathe.

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