History Main / MegaCity

* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' has the plane of Ravnica, a plane that spans an entire plane of existence.

The Mega City will probably be the capital or HubCity, and if it's not a MerchantCity, there'll definitely be a BazaarOfTheBizarre, where everything legal and [[BlackMarketillegal]] is available, if you know where to look and who to ask.

Depending on the setting you can expect to see a lot of tall buildings, endless suburbs and futuristic ways to get around. If you are lucky the author may have even thought of the troubles with providing food and water for all the inhabitants as well as the problems for the environment so many people naturally generate. If you are unlucky however, the heroes may find themselves alone at times and places where that should be impossible given the population density.

The Mega City will probably be the capital or HubCity, and if it's not a MerchantCity, there'll definitely be a BazaarOfTheBizarre if you know where to look.

Mega City is SuperTrope to CityPlanet, where the city encompasses the entire planet; SkyscraperCity, where the city has grown very tall (may or may not overlap with LayeredMetropolis); and HiveCity, where the city's growth has become dense and layered enough to transform it into a near-solid mass of architecture.

** Likewise ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' has Zanarkand.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* ''TabletopGame/ElectricBastionland'' takes place in the city of Bastion - a city that's not only massive, but constantly shifts its own [[{{Bizarrchitecture}} surreal architecture]], to the point where accurately mapping it out proves to be impossible. Hidden in many nooks and crannies of the city is countless treasure, which is what the players are tasked with looking for.

* The City from ''VideoGame/LobotomyCorporation'', ''VideoGame/LibraryOfRuina'' and ''VideoGame/LimbusCompany'' is the size of at least a continent and has a population in the billions - most of which live in sprawling slums called '[[WretchedHIve Backstreets]]', while the privileged few live in (relatively) safe zones called Nests controlled by one of several Megacorporations.

** The UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco Bay Area (in California), depending on where exactly you draw the boundaries, comprises up to 8.5 million people and is potentially the 5th-largest metropolis in the United States - after the Los Angeles area - with a steadily growing population from immigration into the region. It's a well-networked mesh of cities, suburbs, and large towns that surround the SF Bay, and continue to extend outward from there.

* ''Literature/TheCavesOfSteel'': All of Earth's population lives in eight hundred {{Arcologies}} known as "Cities". The average population of each City is eleven point two million. The governments of three large cities (New York, Philadelphia and Washington) are considering merging into one single ''Mega'' Mega City, but the logistics of maintaining and governing such a large conglomerate have so far prevented any action on the plan.

* ''TabletopGame/ElectricBastionland'' takes place in the city of Bastion - a city that's not only massive, but constantly shifts its own [[{{Bizarrechitecture}} surreal architecture]], to the point where accurately mapping it out proves to be impossible. Hidden in many nooks and crannies of the city is countless treasure, which is what the players are tasked with looking for.

* ''WesternAnimation/Phantom2040'': Metropia is a self-governing {{city state}} of thirty-two million inhabitants -- that's over 10% of the entire population of America at the time it was made.

* ''Literature/BigKievTechnician'':

* ''Literature/LaNagueFederation'': Earth (and some colonized planets) has several Megalops with stupidly huge buildings and nightmarish overpopulation. Food riots are not pleasant affairs.

* ''TabletopGame/SLAIndustries'': Mort City [[UpToEleven is roughly the size of Eurasia]].

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': Many Imperial worlds have Hive Cities, mountains of metal housing millions (if not billions) of inhabitants and dependent on imported food and water from neighboring [[SingleBiomePlanet Farm Planets]]. They tend to settle into very stratified societies, with the administrators and wealthiest citizens living comfortably in the Spire, while gangs, mutants, and worse struggle to survive in the dark and decaying Underhive. Many of the setting's "{{City Planet}}s" aren't actually covered entirely by urbanization, but are rather dotted with hive cities separated by the resulting {{Polluted Wasteland}}s.

* The Last City from ''VideoGame/{{Destiny}}'', a huge sprawling metropolis that serves as the LastBastion of human civilization, with a population in the millions and ever-growing. It's size is never given, but it looks to be about as big as the [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Tokyo_Area Greater Tokyo Area]] ''at least''.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'': Midgar is a massive LayeredMetropolis so gigantic that each of it's nine districts is practically a city unto itself. It's ''so'' big that it takes [[PoweredByAForsakenChild tapping into]] TheLifestream to meet it's insane power demands and has to leech so much energy from it that the area surrounding the city [[GaiasLament is a barren, lifeless wasteland]].

* ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'': In most series, Cybertron is about as large as the Earth, all the way up to the size of ''Saturn'' in some series. Despite this, most of it's cities aren't just ''visible'' from orbit, they're so large they visibly alter the planet's silhouette. Population tends to be smaller than one might think, given that the average [[TransformingMecha native]] is around 20-30 feet tall and the infrastructure is accordingly scaled up.

* The Kowloon Walled City in UsefulNotes/HongKong is an interesting example: while relatively small in comparison to other examples, it occupies a tiny conclave of Chinese-owned territory in colonial Hong Kong, measuring a scant six-acre area in which it could legally be built. Because of it's tiny border, the city expanded ''upwards'' rather than outwards, and its architecture was ''very'' dense.

* ''TabletopGame/ElectricBastionland'' takes place in a city that's not only massive, but constantly shifts its own [[{{Bizarrechitecture}} surreal architecture]], to the point where accurately mapping it out proves to be impossible. Hidden in many nooks and crannies of the city is countless treasure, which is what the players are tasked with looking for.

%%* ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'': Sprawls/metroplexes.

%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1438165263005786200
%% Please do not replace or remove without starting a new thread.

%% This list of examples has been alphabetized. Please put new examples in order.

%% City Planet is a separate trope. Please put examples of it on its own page.

* ''WesternAnimation/Phantom2040'': Metropia is a self-governing {{city state}} of thirty-two million inhabitants -- that's over 10% of the entire population of America at the time it was made.

* ''VideoGame/Halo2'' and ''VideoGame/Halo3ODST'''s [[AllThereInTheManual supplemental materials]] establish that the African port city of Mombasa experienced a massive period of growth and prosperity in the early 2300s after a SpaceElevator was constructed within it. By the time the games begin in 2552, the municipal sprawl of "New Mombasa" has grown to encompass everything within a 74-kilometer radius of the original city. ''Halo 2'' features several levels set in the city as it's invaded by aliens, while ''ODST'' is set entirely within it, following a squad of [[LowerDeckEpisode ordinary soldiers]] trying to escape the city after the battle is lost.

* ''VideoGame/Halo2'' and ''VideoGame/Halo3ODST'''s [[AllThereInTheManual supplemental materials]] establish that the African port city of Mombasa experienced a massive period of growth and prosperity in the early 2300s after a SpaceElevator was constructed within it. By the time the games begin in 2552, the municipal sprawl of "New Mombasa" has grown to encompass everything within a 74-kilometer radius of the original city.

* [[AllThereInTheManual Supplemental materials]] for ''VideoGame/Halo2'' and ''VideoGame/Halo3ODST'' establish that the African port city of Mombasa experienced a massive period of growth and prosperity in the early 2300s after a SpaceElevator was constructed within it. By the time the games begin in 2552, the municipal sprawl of "New Mombasa" has grown to encompass everything within a 74-kilometer radius of the original city.

* ''Literature/MythAdventures'': The dimension of Deeva is entirely taken up by an open-air market.

Mega City is SuperTrope to two other tropes; CityPlanet, where the city now encompasses the entire planet, and SkyscraperCity, where the city has grown very tall (may or may not overlap with LayeredMetropolis).

* ''Manga/{{Blame}}'': The City is humongous. The toe-in art book says it's a growing DysonSphere the size of Jupiter's orbit. Creator/TsutomuNihei breathes this trope, hell, there's an artbook of his that consists solely of this. It's beautiful, and understandable coming from a guy who happened to study architecture several years.

%%* ''Film/{{Avatar}}'': In the extended version, and in [[AllThereInTheManual supplementary materials]] the cities of Earth have become this.%%Have become what?

* The Space Federation base from ''Anime/WelcomeToTheSpaceShow'' covers most of the dark side of The Moon and rises into space but somehow hasn't been noticed by humanity.
* The City from ''Manga/{{Blame}}'' is humongous. The toe-in art book says it's a growing DysonSphere the size of Jupiter's orbit.
** Creator/TsutomuNihei breathes this trope, hell, there's an artbook of his that consists solely of this. It's beautiful, and understandable coming from a guy who happened to study architecture several years.

* The City in ''ComicBook/{{Transmetropolitan}}''. It's unclear where it is or just how big it is, but some stories imply it to stretch from New York to the Great Lakes, and it's massive enough to be a deciding factor in elections.
* The world of ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'' is divided into these kind of cities. Much of the world outside the Mega Cities was destroyed in the Atomic War of 2070, leaving the metropoles as the last centers of advanced civilization due to their missile shields having withstood the worst nuclear attacks. Dredd's home city of Mega City One grew from [=BosWash=] until it covered the entire eastern seaboard. In fact, the whole point of the Apocalypse War arc was to trim its sheer size down, as it had become too big.
* Downlode in ''ComicBook/SinisterDexter'' stretches from northern Spain to west Poland.

* The city of [=NorthAm=] in ''ComicBook/MagnusRobotFighter,'' which covers all of North America.
* ''ComicBook/{{Killtopia}}'' is set in a Mega City in future Japan.
* The ''Magazine/DoctorWhoMagazine'' story, ''The Betrothal Of Sontar'' shows that the planet Sontar has continents covered by cities.

[[folder:Fan Fiction]]
* The city of Los Angeles, California has become one of these in the aftermath of [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt the Vanishing]] on ''Fanfic/CoreLine''. The ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Center police headquarters alone]]'' has become a multi-mile-high heavily-armored arcology. The old Los Angeles became an underground city wherein all kind of CyberPunk tropes are done willy-nilly, and it's essentially become the town's Red Light District.

* The pre-war human cities in ''Film/TheMatrix'', which "spanned hundreds of miles" and needed armies of robots to maintain themselves. It's implied that the entirety of civilization within the Matrix is one of these, dubbed "the city" for lack of need for a more specific name.
* The BigApplesauce has become this in the 1930's films ''Film/{{Metropolis}}'' and ''Film/JustImagine'' -- in those days New York was pretty much the only skyscraper city in existence.
* ''Film/{{Avatar}}'': In the extended version, and in [[AllThereInTheManual supplementary materials]] the cities of Earth have become this.
%%CityPlanet is a separate trope ''Franchise/StarWars'' has the city planet of Coruscant. It's rumored that one can walk all the way around the planet without ever setting foot on its surface.

* In Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''Literature/TheCavesOfSteel'', all of Earth's population lives in eight hundred arcologies known as "Cities". The average population of each City is eleven point two million. The governments of three large cities (New York, Philadelphia and Washington) are considering merging into one single ''Mega'' Mega City, but the logistics of maintaining and governing such a large conglomerate have so far prevented any action on the plan.
%%CityPlanet is a separate trope* Later in the ''Robots/Empire/Foundation'' series, Trantor, and presumably a few other worlds, are globe-spanning versions of these with populations in the billions. Trantor is very much the model for Coruscant.
* Literature/{{Discworld}}: While Ankh-Morpork only has a million inhabitants, it is still the biggest city in the [[MedievalStasis setting]]. In ''Literature/TheFifthElephant'', Carrot points out that it's actually the largest dwarf city, having more dwarfs than any purely dwarf city. (This isn't as far-fetched as it may seem -- a RealLife example is the city of São Paulo, whose Italian community is larger than any city in ''Italy itself''.)
* In the ''Literature/MythAdventures'' series the dimension of Deeva is entirely taken up by an open-air market.
* ''Literature/TheThirteenAndAHalfLivesOfCaptainBluebear'': The Capital of the continent of Zamonia, Atlantis, has over 200 million inhabitants.
* The arcologies in ''Literature/TheNightsDawnTrilogy''.
* In ''Literature/SuperMinion'', Fortress City is designed to hold the population of the entire western seaboard if need be. It's composed of fifteen concentric rings of eight sectors each, and each sector is big enough to need its own mayor and municipal law code.
* Creator/VladimirVasilyev's ''Literature/BigKievTechnician'' UrbanFantasy series:
** Big Kiev in this AlternateUniverse is roughly 600 miles in diameter. Big London is also mentioned, although it may be smaller. It takes 9 hours on a train to get from the Black Sea in the southern part of town to the Center (where our Kiev, Ukraine, is located). One of the old cities absorbed into Big Kiev is L'viv. Only canned goods are available in the Center due to lack of farmland or cattle so far from the edge, unless you're willing to spend a fortune on fresh meat and fruit.
** Big Moscow is mentioned to be even larger, although younger. A military conflict is mentioned to have happened in the past between Big Moscow and Big Berlin. DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything

* Creator/WilliamGibson's ''Literature/SprawlTrilogy'' has the titular [[TitleDrop Sprawl]], more officially known as BAMA, the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis, presumably an extension of the real Bos-Wash. Also notable for being almost completely covered by geodesic domes. Judging from descriptions in ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'' Chiba City and the other cities around Tokyo Bay also count.
* In one of Creator/AndreiLivadny's ''Literature/TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy'' novels, Earth cities are mentioned to have become these with populations of major cities approaching 20 billion ''each''. That's nearly triple the population of the entire world today in a single city. This is the main reason why President John Winston Hammer of the [[TheEmpire Earth Alliance]] sends a fleet to force the recently-discovered [[LostColony Lost Colonies]] into submission, so as to offload the extra population. By the time of the later novels, most of the population has moved to new colonies or died in the First Galactic War (the 30-year war with the colonies, which Earth ultimately loses) with only about 100 million people left on Earth. Most urban areas, now abandoned, are covered by lush jungles, and many surviving landmarks have been moved to other areas for preservation. After the war, the colonies emerge as the industrial, economic, and scientific power in human space, forming the [[TheFederation Confederacy of Suns]] for mutual protection (Earth isn't included).
* In F. Paul Wilson's ''[=LaNague=] Federation'' series, Earth (and some colonized planets) has several Megalops with stupidly huge buildings and nightmarish overpopulation. Food-riots are not pleasant affairs.
* Nessus from ''Literature/BookOfTheNewSun'' by Creator/GeneWolfe appears to be one of these in decline (along with rest of the planet.) It takes days to travel from its center to the outskirts. Large portions of it, however, are in ruins and inhabited by cannibals.
* ''OnTheEdgeOfEureka'' has Eleutheria, a metropolis so large it covers the planet.

* ''Series/{{Aftermath}}: Population Overload'': Most of the population of North America becomes concentrated around the Great Lakes after a drought-induced mass migration. A massive mega city surrounds the lakes.

[[folder:Pinballs]]
* Appropriately enough, the ''Pinball/JudgeDredd'' pinball takes place in Mega-City One.

[[folder:Radio]]
* ''Radio/JackFlanders'': At the start of "Dreams of Rio", all of North America has become one giant city, mostly devoted to selling Coca-Cola.
[[/folder]]

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'':
** Many Imperial worlds have Hive Cities, mountains of metal housing millions (if not billions) of inhabitants and dependent on imported food and water from neighboring [[SingleBiomePlanet Farm Planets]]. They tend to settle into very stratified societies, with the administrators and wealthiest citizens living comfortably in the Spire, while gangs, mutants, and worse struggle to survive in the dark and decaying Underhive. Many of the setting's "{{City Planet}}s" aren't actually covered entirely by urbanization, but are rather dotted with hive cities separated by the resulting {{Polluted Wasteland}}s.
** Holy Terra is a proper CityPlanet, though individual complexes stand out as pseudo Mega Cities in their own right: the Imperial Palace covers a good portion of the northern hemisphere, the Inquisition's headquarters is beneath what used to be the southern ice cap, and the Hall of the Astronomican [[RefugeInAudacity was carved out of the interior of Mount Everest]]. Unlike many settings' hive cities, the value of Terra is not as a trade hub, but as the slow-beating administrative heart of the Imperium and the holiest of religious sites.
** There's also Commoragh, the ''city dimension'' of the Dark Eldar, which supposedly dwarfs imperial Hive worlds in size. Supposedly, because it's an extra-dimensional conglomerate of megalopolises, arranged in a way that [[AlienGeometry defies all common sense]].
* Sprawls/metroplexes in ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}''.
** Like much of the Shadowrun universe, these are most likely inspired by William Gibson's work, outlined above.
* Mort City in ''TabletopGame/SLAIndustries''. [[UpToEleven which, we feel we should stress, is roughly the size of Eurasia.]]
* Though there have been many cities mentioned in ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'', none quite so massive as the plane-spanning city of guilds, Ravnica. A city so big, it has all five mana-producing lands contained within it with room to spare. A city so big, it took ''[[http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Category:Ravnica_block two]] [[http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Category:Return_to_Ravnica_block blocks]]'' (at three card sets per block) to cover it all.
* One of the main locations in ''TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}}'' is Night City, a massive, Creator/WilliamGibson-style Mega-City in California founded by [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure Richard Night]], a businessman who wanted to create the ideal city. It came pretty close to actually meeting that goal, but after Night was assassinated by a criminal gang, it steadily became an overpopulated ViceCity. By the time of [[VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077 the video game]], its regarded as one of the worst places in the United States to live.

* Mega-Primus in ''VideoGame/XCOMApocalypse''. According to the {{backstory}}, it's actually the prototype of the concept designed to consolidate the remaining living space on the planet following the aversion of NoEndorHolocaust at the end of ''[[VideoGame/XCOMTerrorFromTheDeep Terror from the Deep]]''.
* One of the playable locations in ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' is a city representing the unification of Vancouver and Seattle.
* Kaineng City from ''VideoGame/GuildWars Factions''.
* One of the ultimate goals in any ''VideoGame/SimCity'' game is to reach as high a population as possible. In the original game, reaching a population of 100,000 would upgrade your city into a Metropolis. Reaching 500,000 citizens meant that your city be classified as a Megalopolis.
* Mute City in ''VideoGame/FZero''. Formerly called New York City (according to the anime), it grew to a population of over two billion people and aliens.

* One of the locations in ''VideoGame/DreamfallChapters'' is Europolis, a dystopian Stark city covering most of Central and Western Europe.
* ''VideoGame/TheMatrixPathOfNeo'' has the pre-war human Mega-cities during cutscenes.

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt'': The court itself has gigantic proportions, its full size has yet to be revealed.

* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'': Most of Earth's population lives in such megacities, ''averaging'' out at populations of three to five billion each, made of clusters of [[{{Arcology}} arcologies]]. Despite a planetary population of nearly 200 billion in the opening days of the thirty-first century, extensive use of such high towers means that they only take up about 10% of the Earth's surface.
* ''Webcomic/KillSixBillionDemons'' is mostly set within Throne, an utterly massive metropolis [[PortalCrossroadWorld in the center of the multiverse]] that was once HomeOfTheGods. Following [[{{Gotterdammerung}} the death of said gods in a huge war]], it is now inhabited by an ever-ballooning population of humans and aliens from numerous different worlds, and tyrannically ruled by the Seven, the only gods to survive the Multiversal War.

* In most series, [[Franchise/{{Transformers}} Cybertron]] is about as large as the Earth, all the way up to the size of ''Saturn'' in some series. Despite this, most of it's cities aren't just ''visible'' from orbit, they're so large they visibly alter the planet's silhouette. Population tends to be smaller than one might think, given that the average [[TransformingMecha native]] is around 20-30 feet tall and the infrastructure is accordingly scaled up.

* Metropia in ''Westernanimation/{{Phantom 2040}}'' is a self-governing {{city state}} of 32 million inhabitants - that's over 10% of the entire population of America at the time it was made.