London has been one of the world's larger cities for a long time. In 1600 it had a population
of about 200,000. By 1700 it had grown to 550,000 and was the world's third largest city.
By 1800, spurred by the indistrial revolution, London had reached a population of 861,000 and
was the world's second largest city.
It continued to grow through the nineteenth century, reaching 2.4 million in 1850, 3.8 million in
1880, and 6.5 million in 1900. At the beginning of the twentieth century London was the largest city in
the world. The United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, in its 1996 global report on human
settlements, forecasts a population of 7,335,000 for the London "urban agglomeration" in the
year 2015. By then there will be many world cities considerably larger than London,
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Last Revised: August 18, 1998