Largest suburbs worldwide (excluding China)
The following is a table of the largest incorporated suburbs worldwide, with over 700,000 people.
Contents
A suburb here is defined as subordinate to a central city from a business or infrastructure sense, and it may or may not have more population than the central city due to arbitrary municipal definitions.
Excluded are transborder agglomerations. In the Pop date column, C stands for census, P for provisional result, E for estimate. Although the list is ordered by population for ease of reference, the figures are not comparable with each other due to differing dates and lack of updates by respective countries.
Caveats
Suburbs in the People's Republic of China
Cities in People's Republic of China and Republic of China are often defined in way as prefectures/counties. Their prefecture/county limits often are physically more extensive than entire metropolitan areas, encompassing large rural areas and outright separate cities. "Suburbs" may be located both within the municipality and/or adjacent to it, depending on how the area agglomerated. Some urban districts, as in the case of Wanzhou Urban District in Chongqing Municipality (Province Level), are separated by farmlands from the core metropolitan area and functions as a suburban city in spite of naming.
As to what constitutes a "city" in the PRC, there exist other definitions of city limits are in actual usage, such as combination of several districts where urban area of the central city is dominant, or roads, railways, natural boundaries, or a combination thereof. This is commonly designated by the central statistics bureaus as "urban districts" (区), however some counties(县) are also included, as well as some cities opt for towns (镇) rather than counties. Some counties/districts (e.g. Handan County, Handan City(Prefecture level)) are indeed suburbs of their respective central cities (e.g. Congtai,Hanshan,Fuxing districts of Handan City(Prefecture level) are a common definition of true urban area of Handan, although this definition now often also involves Handan County as the city expands).
In the case of Chaoshan Metropolitan Area, Jiēyáng (Prefecture-level city) urban districts border that of the central city of Shantou (Prefecture-level city), effectively spanning neighboring municipalities. Complicating the matter is the nesting of city structures, as Jieyang municipality itself is a suburb of Shantou, even though Puning city (County level city, and can be a suburb of Shantou) lies within Jieyang's jurisdiction. Suzhou, despite having cities within it that could be considered "suburbs", could itself be considered a suburb of Shanghai as commute patterns are indicative of it.