By: Edward Zeng

Some cities have always been famous because of their uniqueness or their big-city feel: New York City, Paris, Athens. Some cities have only recently gained attention because of a recent event: Wuhan, Sochi, Jeddah. However, some cities have hundreds of thousands—even millions—of people, and they’re just never mentioned. Today, we’ll be walking through some of these cities.

According to World Population Review, the 14th largest city in the world and the second largest in Africa is Kinshasa, DRC. It is also the largest French-speaking city in the world, surpassing Paris by the turn of the millennium. Kinshasa is the capital of the DRC, and it is right across the Congo River from Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of the Congo, making them the closest capitals in the entire world.

Of course, a list of huge cities wouldn’t be complete without a mention of China. Dongguan is a city in South China, between the iconic port city of Guangzhou and China’s tech capital, Shenzhen. It has a staggering population of 10 million, roughly equal to the population of Los Angeles County! Dongguan is a relatively new city, only changing from an agricultural town to an industrial city in the 1980’s.

Many Indian cities, such as Surat, Pune, and Kanpur, are also not well known. However, they are not particularly interesting. Navi Mumbai, the 37th largest city in India, is pretty interesting, though. According to World Cities, Navi Mumbai is one of the largest planned cities in the world. It was built in 1971 to relieve congestion from Mumbai, which was growing phenomenally. In the end, there was still a lot of traffic in Mumbai, and more than a fifth of Navi Mumbai’s population still lived in slums or undeveloped communities.

Many cities that are not well known are mediocre, and don’t stand up to their iconic counterparts. Sometimes, however, the cities are “hidden gems” for geography nerds to find, or trivia to impress your friends with.