Which city was considered the first mega city?
The first CITY in the world to exceed one million in population was London, which according to the census of 1811 was inhabited by a total of 1,009,546 people. Seventy years later there were still only seven cities in the world with a population of a million, namely: London-3,452,350; Paris-2,269,023; Peking–1,648,814; Canton-1,500,000 (estimated); New York-1,206,299; Vienna-1,103,857; Nanking-1,000,000 (estimated). London remained the largest city in the world until 1957, when it was overtaken by Tokyo. The Japanese capital became the first city with a recorded population of 10 million in January 1962, a staggering rise since its wartime decline from 6,779,100 in 1940 to only 2,777,000 in 1945.
