U.S. States Compared in Population with World Urban Areas

I thought it might be interesting to compare 2012 populations (estimated, as listed at Wikipedia) of the largest U.S. States with the populations of the largest urban areas in the world, and I've thrown in a few random countries and the largest Canadian province just for good measure.

Region	Population	Region	Population
California	38,041,430	Mexico City (Valley of Mex.)	19,463,000
Tokyo–Yokohama (Keihin)	37,126,000	Florida	19,317,568
Canada	35,002,447	Cairo	17,816,000
Jakarta (Jabodetabek)	26,063,000	Beijing	17,311,000
Texas	26,059,203	Osaka/Kobe/Kyoto	17,011,000
North Korea	24,589,122	Mumbai (Bombay)	16,910,000
Australia	22,864,478	Guangzhou/Foshan	16,827,000
Seoul–Incheon (Sudogwon)	22,547,000	Netherlands	16,775,273
Delhi	22,242,000	Moscow	15,512,000
Shanghai	20,860,000	Los Angeles	14,900,000
Manila (metro Manila)	20,767,000	Kolkata (Calcutta)	14,374,000
Karachi	20,711,000	Dhaka	14,000,000
New York City (metro)	20,464,000	Buenos Aires	13,639,000
São Paulo	20,186,000	Istanbul	13,576,000
New York	19,570,261	Ontario	13,506,000

You'll note that the New York State population is smaller than the New York City metro area; that's due to the inclusion of Newark, New Jersey, and southern Connecticut area in the metro area. More below the break.

Region	Population	Region	Population
Illinois	12,875,255	London	8,586,000
Pennsylvania	12,763,536	Taipei	8,338,000
Rio de Janeiro	12,043,000	Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)	8,314,000
Shenzhen	11,885,000	Dongguan	8,278,000
Lagos	11,547,000	Virginia	8,185,867
Ohio	11,544,225	Quebec	8,054,800
Cuba	11,163,934	Switzerland	8,014,000
Paris	10,755,000	Israel	7,981,000
Nagoya (Chūkyō)	10,027,000	Hyderabad	7,903,000
Georgia	9,919,945	Chengdu	7,895,000
Michigan	9,883,360	Lahore	7,743,000
North Carolina	9,752,073	Johannesburg–East Rand	7,618,000
Lima	9,121,000	Tehran	7,419,000
Chicago	9,121,000	Essen (Ruhr)–Düsseldorf	7,304,000
Kinshasa	9,046,000	Bangkok	7,151,000
Tianjin	8,922,000	Hong Kong	7,106,000
Chennai (Madras)	8,865,000	Wuhan	6,995,000
New Jersey	8,864,590	Washington	6,897,012
Bogotá	8,702,000	Massachusetts	6,646,144
Bengaluru (Bangalore)	8,670,000	Arizona	6,553,255

By the way, I thought this graph of population versus population rank on a log scale was really interesting, not just that population decreases at such a certain rate but that China and India are such outliers (note, by the way, that China's data point is in the top left corner of the graph -- it's not the dot on the "i" in "China" near India's data point). Click for larger -- graph from Wikipedia.

There a lot of interesting facts that can be gleaned from the above. for instance, the Tokyo metropolitan area (which can be defined a number of ways) has abut the same population as all of California. It, in fact, has four times the population density of Bangladesh. 

If Ontario and Quebec, the two largest Canadian provinces/territories, were U.S. states they'd be the fifth and fourteenth largest states by population. Canada has two provinces and three territories smaller than any U.S. State.

North Korea has a larger population than Australia. The population of Cuba is about the same as Ohio. The population of the London urban area is about the same as New Jersey.

Another interesting fact is that Israel's population is only about 8 million. The five countries that border it -- Egypt, Jordan, the State of Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon -- have a combined population of more than 120 million, 15 times the population of Israel. If one adds in other Arab countries and Iran, the population ratio against Israel is more like 40+ to 1.