The world's shrinking cities are concentrated in four countries: China, Russia, Japan and Ukraine. On the United Nations' World Urbanization Prospects 2025 estimates, 203 of the 1,162 cities that had at least 300,000 people in 2000 had fewer residents in mid-2025, or 17%. China has the most (45), then Russia (37), Japan (23) and Ukraine (15); together they hold 59% of the list. The steepest estimated falls are in New Orleans (down 38%; the US Census Bureau puts the fall for the city proper at 25%), Mianyang in China (down 36%) and Sarajevo (down 36%); the largest loss in sheer numbers is Osaka, down 1.52 million people. These are UN model estimates for whole urban areas, not counts within city limits, and where we could check them against national statistics the direction held but the size of the fall was often smaller.
What counts as a shrinking city here
The UN Population Division's cities database, released with the 2025 revision on 18 November 2025, gives a mid-year population for every city in the world from 1975 to 2025, with projections to 2050. It defines a city by the Degree of Urbanisation: a continuous patch of one-kilometre grid squares holding at least 1,500 people per square kilometre and 50,000 people in total, traced from satellite data on buildings and population. That means Detroit or Osaka here is the dense urban area around it, not the municipality.
We took every city with 300,000 or more people in 2000, the size threshold the UN used for its city tables until this edition: 1,335 of them. The UN grades each city's figure for each year as having high, moderate or low plausibility, and a fall is only meaningful if both ends hold up, so we left out 158 cities rated "Low" in 2000 or in 2025. We also dropped 13 whose population jumps by 10% or more in a single year, a sign that the outline was redrawn as neighbouring towns merged or split, and 2 whose 2000 figure is 10% or more above both 1995 and 2005, such as Chicago's Arlington Heights patch (290,000, 349,000, then 296,000 in 1995, 2000 and 2005). That leaves 1,162 cities. A city counts as shrinking if its mid-2025 population is below its mid-2000 one.
The 2025 figures are estimates and everything later is a projection, on which 477 of the same cities are smaller in 2050 than in 2025.
The 25 steepest declines, with the UN's own rating of each end of the comparison:
| # | City | Country | 2000 | 2025 | Change | 2050 (proj.) | UN rating 2000 | UN rating 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Orleans | United States | 418 | 258 | −38.2% | 260 | Moderate | Moderate |
| 2 | Mianyang | China | 997 | 637 | −36.2% | 524 | Moderate | High |
| 3 | Sarajevo | Bosnia and Herzegovina | 395 | 254 | −35.7% | 227 | High | Moderate |
| 4 | Suizhou | China | 434 | 282 | −35.1% | 179 | Moderate | Moderate |
| 5 | Xiantao | China | 437 | 298 | −31.9% | 231 | Moderate | Moderate |
| not ranked | Kebumen | Indonesia | 456 | 313 | −31.5% | 274 | Moderate | High |
| 6 | Euclid | United States | 423 | 291 | −31.2% | 211 | Moderate | Moderate |
| 7 | Tula | Russia | 512 | 356 | −30.5% | 365 | Moderate | High |
| 8 | Jingzhou | China | 958 | 679 | −29.2% | 558 | Moderate | High |
| 9 | Kirov | Russia | 454 | 322 | −29.0% | 299 | Moderate | High |
| 10 | Neijiang | China | 472 | 341 | −27.7% | 294 | Moderate | High |
| not ranked | Nag Hammadi | Egypt | 397 | 289 | −27.3% | 354 | High | Moderate |
| 11 | Chișinău | Moldova | 577 | 422 | −26.8% | 374 | High | Moderate |
| 12 | Kaunas | Lithuania | 361 | 264 | −26.7% | 239 | High | High |
| 13 | San Juan | Puerto Rico | 925 | 681 | −26.4% | 532 | High | Moderate |
| 14 | Poltava | Ukraine | 329 | 243 | −26.3% | 215 | High | Moderate |
| 15 | Kherson | Ukraine | 349 | 258 | −26.3% | 234 | High | Moderate |
| 16 | Vladimir | Russia | 339 | 251 | −25.8% | 233 | Moderate | High |
| 17 | Wakayama | Japan | 345 | 256 | −25.8% | 191 | High | Moderate |
| 18 | Jiangyou | China | 337 | 251 | −25.5% | 206 | Moderate | Moderate |
| 19 | Kryvyi Rih | Ukraine | 641 | 478 | −25.4% | 426 | High | Moderate |
| 20 | Ulan-Ude | Russia | 352 | 262 | −25.4% | 246 | High | Moderate |
| 21 | Donetsk | Ukraine | 944 | 706 | −25.2% | 576 | High | Moderate |
| 22 | Luhansk | Ukraine | 471 | 354 | −24.8% | 293 | High | Moderate |
| 23 | Zigong | China | 626 | 477 | −23.8% | 411 | Moderate | High |
Russia, Ukraine and eastern Europe
Ukraine has the highest share of shrinking big cities of any country with five or more: 15 of 16, or 94%. In Russia, 37 of 52 large cities (71%) were smaller in 2025 than in 2000, even though the country's population fell by only 2.0% between 2000 and 2024 on World Bank figures. Moscow grew 30% and Saint Petersburg 19% while smaller cities lost people. Tula fell from 512,000 to 356,000 (31% down); Kirov fell 29%. We could not reach Rosstat, Russia's statistics service, to check them, so they rest on UN estimates.
Moldova's population fell from 2.92 million to 2.40 million between 2000 and 2024 (18% down) and its capital Chișinău went from 577,000 to 422,000 (27% down) on UN figures. Lithuania shrank 17% and Kaunas, its second city, 27%. Bosnia and Herzegovina (24% smaller) has Sarajevo down 36%. Poland is the other European outlier, with 9 of its 11 large cities shrinking.
Ukraine's cities were falling well before 2022. Statistics Ukraine's 2001 census counted 669,000 people in Kryvyi Rih; its estimate for 1 January 2022 was 603,904, a fall of 9.7%. During 2021 alone the country lost 421,019 people, and deaths outnumbered births by 442,280. The UN's series agrees on direction but is steeper: it has Kryvyi Rih down 18.0% over 2001 to 2021. Of the six Ukrainian cities we compared, the UN's fall is clearly steeper for five; only Zaporizhzhia matches, at 12.2% on the UN's figures and 12.9% on Ukraine's own.
Japan and South Korea: more deaths than births
Japan's cities shrink because the whole country does. Its population peaked at 128.1 million in 2008 and stood at 124.4 million in 2023, according to the Japan Statistical Yearbook. In 2023 the country recorded 758,000 births and 1,595,000 deaths, a natural loss of 837,000 in a single year. On UN figures, 23 of Japan's 31 large cities (74%) shrank; Tokyo, which peaked only in 2020, did not.
Osaka lost more people than any other city on the list: the UN has its urban area falling from 14.5 million in 2000 to 13.0 million in 2025, and projects 10.4 million by 2050. Japan's own count is gentler: the four prefectures the urban area spans (Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo and Nara) held 18.44 million people at the 2000 census and 17.96 million in 2023, a fall of 2.6%, against the UN's 9.2% for the urban area over the same years. The areas differ, but treat the UN's Osaka figure as an upper bound.
South Korea's population rose 10% between 2000 and 2024 on World Bank figures, and the UN's Seoul grew 19% between 2000 and 2025, yet 3 of the country's 9 analysed large cities shrank. Busan falls too, but its 2000 figure is rated "Low", so it is not counted.
America's rust belt and the Gulf Coast
The United States has only 7 shrinking cities among its 24 large ones on this measure: Buffalo, Chicago, Euclid, New Orleans, Parma, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. Euclid and Parma are not freestanding cities: their centres sit on the east and west sides of greater Cleveland, which the grid splits into two patches, each named after a suburb in it. The UN puts them at 291,000 and 322,000 in 2025, down 31% and 19% since 2000. The city of Cleveland itself fell from 477,450 in 2000 to 363,608 in 2025, 24% down, on Census Bureau estimates.
Detroit is not in our count, because the UN rates its 2025 figure "Low" plausibility. The UN has the Detroit urban area falling from 965,000 to 810,000, or 16%. The Census Bureau's figures for the city proper are far starker: 951,232 in April 2000 and 649,095 in July 2025, a loss of 32%. For the long story behind the city's fall, see our explainer on Detroit's collapse.
New Orleans lost its people in one blow. Hurricane Katrina came ashore in Louisiana on 29 August 2005, as the National Weather Service records, and the Census Bureau's estimate for the city fell from 494,294 in July 2005 to 230,172 a year later. It is still far short: 362,154 in 2025, 25% below the 2000 figure. The UN's estimate for the urban area falls further, 38%, from 418,000 to 258,000, and its footprint shrank from 159 km² to 102 km² as districts that thinned out dropped below the density line that defines the city.
Cities emptied by war
War adds a second wave in Ukraine. Between 2021 and 2025 every large Ukrainian city in the UN file loses between 8% and 11% of its people, except Simferopol, down 16%, in Crimea, which Statistics Ukraine lists as temporarily occupied territory and excludes from its own figures. Kyiv, the only one of 16 that is still larger than in 2000, drops from 2,841,000 in 2021 to 2,615,000. Statistics Ukraine's last city estimates are for 1 January 2022, so these cannot be checked. The scale shows in figures from UNHCR, which counted 5.22 million refugees from Ukraine and 3.71 million people displaced inside it at the end of 2025. Donetsk (down 25% since 2000) and Luhansk (down 25%) have been falling on UN estimates since about 1990.
Syria shows why the start and end dates matter. Aleppo is not on the list: it grew between 2000 and 2025, and its series jumps too sharply to pass our filter anyway. But the UN's estimates rise to 3.77 million in 2010, crash to 1.11 million by 2015 and recover to 2.92 million in 2025.
Declines the data cannot confirm
Two steep falls are kept out of the ranking because they sit in countries that grew fast and we found no national count to confirm them: Kebumen in Indonesia (down 32%) and Nag Hammadi in Egypt (down 27%), in countries that grew 31% and 59% between 2000 and 2024. They appear unranked in the chart and table above.
Four steeper falls in the UN file are left out because the UN rates an end of the comparison Low: Việt Trì, Vietnam (−72.8%, rated Low in 2025), Uíge, Angola (−57.6%, rated Low in 2000), Nampo, North Korea (−54.6%, rated Low in 2000) and Dearborn Heights, United States (−49.6%, rated Low in 2025). Uíge's Low years include its 1985 peak of 1,057,000, though Angola's population grew 134%.
China holds the most shrinking cities, 45, in two groups. The seven steepest falls all lie inland in Sichuan and Hubei, led by Mianyang (−36%), Suizhou (−35%), Xiantao (−32%) and Jingzhou (−29%). Another 7 are in the north-eastern provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang, among them Liaoyuan, Jixi, Chaoyang and Fuxin; Hegang, in Heilongjiang, is down 10% on the UN's figures. We could not check these against China's census at the same footprint, and a city near the 1,500-per-km² line can lose people on paper when its edges thin, so treat each fall as the UN's estimate. For how the giants are faring, see our ranking of the most populated cities in the world.
The data behind the map
Anyone curious about a particular country can download the data as a CSV: all 1,335 cities, with populations from 1990 to 2050, the UN's ratings and our reason for leaving any out. Filtered to one country, its columns chart neatly in Parity, which builds the charts for you from a spreadsheet.
- UN DESA Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects 2025 (cities database, Degree of Urbanisation): mid-year population of every city of 50,000+, 1975–2050 (estimates to 2025, projections after), with a plausibility grade per city and year; CC BY 3.0 IGO
- UN DESA press release on World Urbanization Prospects 2025, 18 November 2025
- US Census Bureau, intercensal estimates 2000–2010 and Vintage 2025 estimates for incorporated places: public domain
- Statistics Ukraine, All-Ukrainian Population Census 2001: urban population by city (archived)
- Statistics Ukraine, Number of Present Population of Ukraine as of 1 January 2022
- Statistics Bureau of Japan, Japan Statistical Yearbook 2025, chapter 2 (Population and Households)
- World Bank, World Development Indicators: population, total (SP.POP.TOTL): CC BY 4.0
- UNHCR Refugee Population Statistics Database, end-2025
- Natural Earth land and country outlines (via world-atlas): public domain
Japan is the case to watch: the UN projects all 31 of its large cities to be smaller in 2050 than in 2025, and our guide to the population of Japan follows the numbers behind it.