Over drinks on Friday the subject of Auckland’s sprawl came up, and it was stated that Auckland is one of the largest cities in size. I questioned that, and have tried to find what the actual facts are. Auckland does sprawl, and needs careful management of future growth. But is is really as large as the London, L.A., New York and Tokyo urban areas?

Urban areas, as opposed to City or Regional local government areas, are fuzzy and hard to measure (how far apart do houses need to be before they are rural). Different countries have different definitions of what an urban area is. Auckland’s urban area as documented in Wikipedia from (citation needed!) Statistics New Zealand is 1,806 km². That is large.

I haven’t been able to find a world wide list of urban areas, but compared to urban areas of the USA, Auckland would be 19^th after San Diego’s urban area of 2,026km².

Some of the large urban areas, around the world:

*I’d really like to add a figure for London’s urban area which I believe is much bigger than the GLA.