World’s most populous cities since 1500

Cairo was one of the most populous cities in the world in 1500 (it’s nowhere near the top now). Making the rounds of the internet these days is one of the better marriages of spare time, data, and graphics: This bar chart race of the world’s most populous cities since 1500. Cairo comes in third fresh out of the gate at 400k inhabitants and stays around the top until about 1600, when East Asian cities (Kyoto, Agra, Beijing) start taking the population density cake. London, Paris, and New York make a comeback in the mid-1850s but Tokyo wins the day with a greater metropolitan population of 38 mn (watch, runtime: 1:00).