Jakarta is now the world’s largest megacity, surpassing Tokyo, UN research found.
The Indonesian capital and its surrounding urban area is home to 42 million people; it was ranked 33rd globally in the last version of the UN urbanization report in 2018, showing how much it has exploded in the last several years. But such a population boom poses major challenges, including traffic, pollution, and flooding — perhaps why Indonesia is trying to move its capital to another island.
Urbanization is a “defining force of our time,” a UN official said: The number of cities with more than 10 million people has jumped since 1975 from 8 to 33, and is expected to keep growing.