--- title: Population and cities — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Population and cities», a lesson of the geography course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Imagine everyone on Earth standing in one long queue: about 8.2 billion people today. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/) / Population and cities # Population and cities Lesson 24 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 22 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/geography/24-population-and-cities/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/0/) — Imagine everyone on Earth standing in one long queue: about 8.2 billion people today. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/1/) — In 1337, the year Europa Universalis 5 begins, the queue was perhaps only about 400 million long, fewer people than India alone has now. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/2/) — People are not spread evenly like butter on toast. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/3/) — They crowd into river valleys, coastal plains and fertile lowlands, and leave deserts, high mountains and icy lands nearly empty; look at Egypt, where almost everyone lives in the thin green strip along the Nile. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/4/) — Cities grew at useful spots: where a river could be bridged, where a harbour was sheltered, where trade routes met. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/5/) — London grew at the lowest point where the Thames could be bridged. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/6/) — For most of history nearly everyone lived on the land and a city of 100,000 was huge. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/7/) — Since about 2007 more than half of all people have lived in towns and cities, and some cities now hold over 10 million. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/8/) — The game's starting map hides a disaster: just ten years after 1337 the Black Death reached Europe and killed perhaps a third to a half of its people. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/9/) — Real numbers are only estimates, so historians give ranges, not exact counts like a game screen. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/10/) — About 8.2 billion people live on Earth in 2026, compared with perhaps about 400 million around 1337. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/11/) — India and China are the two most populous countries, each with about 1.4 billion people, and India overtook China around 2023. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/12/) — Most people live in fairly small parts of the land: river valleys, coastal plains and fertile lowlands, while deserts, high mountains and polar lands are nearly empty. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/13/) — Since about 2007 more than half the world's people have lived in towns and cities. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/14/) — A megacity has more than 10 million people, and there are now over 30 of them, most in Asia, including Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, Dhaka, São Paulo, Cairo and Lagos. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/15/) — The largest cities of the 1300s, such as Constantinople, Paris or Hangzhou, had a few hundred thousand people at most. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/16/) — The Black Death killed perhaps a third to a half of Europe's people between 1347 and 1351. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/17/) — Population density means how many people live on each square kilometre, and Bangladesh has over 1,000 while Australia has about 3. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/18/) — Some countries, such as Japan and Italy, have many old people and few births, while countries such as Niger have very young populations; with few births there will later be fewer young workers to look after the old. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/19/) — The median age splits the people in half, half younger and half older; in Niger it is under 16, and in Japan it is about 49. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/20/) — Most great cities grew at useful spots: river crossings, natural harbours, estuaries or meeting points of trade routes. - [21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/24-population-and-cities/21/) — Migration means people moving to live in another place, inside their country or abroad. - ← previous: [Weather, storms and the changing climate](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/23-weather-storms-and-the-changing-climate/) - next →: [Languages and peoples on the map](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/25-languages-and-peoples-on-the-map/) - ↑ back to [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/)