That’s not to say that some of these cities weren’t huge though. Rome had ~750K at it’s peak. Some places in China had 1 million. We just have a lot more huge cities now.
Yeah but you’re comparing the 18th largest city in the US to what were at the time the largest cities in the world. Apples to oranges. Why not compare Rome’s 700k to say… Shanghai? There’s 25 million people in the city proper. Just one city. The population of the Han Empire, recorded in the tax census of 156 AD, was 50.6 million people in 12,366,470 households. The entire empire could now fit in 2 cities.
Seattle could have a lot higher population if it wasn’t obsessed with single family homes and actually rezoned for high occupancy lower income housing. Not even “low income” just lower considering a 1-2 bedroom house can run into the millions in Seattle
That’s not to say that some of these cities weren’t huge though. Rome had ~750K at it’s peak. Some places in China had 1 million. We just have a lot more huge cities now.
https://www.worldatlas.com/ancient-world/the-largest-ancient-cities-ever-built.html
Huge for that time, sure… But we’ve had concerts with more people than in those huge cities.
True, but a lot of cities that we think of as big are around those numbers. They couldn’t get much bigger because of infrastructure.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/united-states
Seattle is about 800k https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/washington/seattle
Yeah but you’re comparing the 18th largest city in the US to what were at the time the largest cities in the world. Apples to oranges. Why not compare Rome’s 700k to say… Shanghai? There’s 25 million people in the city proper. Just one city. The population of the Han Empire, recorded in the tax census of 156 AD, was 50.6 million people in 12,366,470 households. The entire empire could now fit in 2 cities.
Seattle could have a lot higher population if it wasn’t obsessed with single family homes and actually rezoned for high occupancy lower income housing. Not even “low income” just lower considering a 1-2 bedroom house can run into the millions in Seattle